GeoJournai 38.1:119-127.
© 1996 (January) Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Locating imaginary homelands:
Literature, geography, and Salman Rushdie
Sharp, Joanne P., Dr., Department of Geography, Glasgow University,
Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland
Abstract: This paper represents an exploration of the relationships between geographical
and fictional literatures. In general, geographers have not made sufficient use of literary
sources in their work. In this paper the author goes beyond using literary quotations to provide
a 'feel' or impression of a region or place, to regard specific texts as containing a 'voice'
which can speak to the geographies created by academics. This means that geographers can
regard fictional literature as offering an alternative account of the processes that they are
seeking to describe and explain. After a brief introduction to the current relationship between
geography and literature, it is discussed how fiction is used as a source in other disciplines.
Finally, the suggested approach to literature is applied to the work of Salman Rushdie,
especially to his controversial novel The Satanic Verses.
There can be no doubt that a large
majority of us opposes the free,
unrestricted migration of imaginary beings into an already
damaged reality . . . (Rushdie
1994)
Not surprisingly, geography's
concem with the arts has been
largely decorative. (Tuan 1978:
195)
Introduction
Perhaps because of the discipline's aspirations to be
regarded as a social science, there have been many
debates over geography's relationship to other
sciences, and to its adoption of various scientific
methodologies. Despite the recent introduction of
postmodernism and claims of a 'crisis of representation' in social science, most attention has been
focused upon critique of the scientific element of
geography rather than exploring the discipline's
relationship with other traditions. The connections
between the disciplines of geography and literature
have received significantly less attention.
In this paper I want to investigate the possibilities of a further engagement between geography and
fiction. I will go beyond using literary quotations to
provide a 'feel' or impression of a region or place,
to regard specific texts as containing a 'voice' which
can speak to the geographies created by academics.
Geographers could therefore see fiction as offering
an alternative account of the processes that they are
seeking to describe and explain.
After a brief introduction to the current relationship between geography and literature, I will discuss
how fiction is used as a source in other disciplines.
The second half of the paper is an attempt to apply
my approach to literature to the work of Salman
Rushdie, especially his controversial novel The
Satanic Verses. Rushdie's work is of particular
interest to me as a geographer because of his sensitivity towards, and self-conscious attention to, spatial
relations and identities. It is also of interest - perhaps
uniquely so - because of the availability of information on the reception of the novel in the widespread discussions of The Satanic Verses following
Islamic fundamentalist condemnation of the book. l
Geography and literature
In the vast majority of cases, geographers have
viewed literature as an unproblematic resource, 'a
valuable storehouse of vivid depictions of landscapes
and life' (Meinig 1983: 316), with which to enliven
their texts. Rich, literary descriptions of landscapes
can provide evocative introductions or contextualisations for intellectual analyses; such opening
passages conjure up the image and 'feel' of a place
in a manner in which geographers, trained in the
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rigours of 'scientific analyses,' rather than the
eloquent embellishments of literary prose, can only
dream of achieving. Caviedes presents the relationship between the texts of geographers and literary
writers thus,
As professionals of the sciences of place, we
[geographers] must often recognize (with envy)
the sensitivity and innate intuition with which
literary writers extract the purest reality of a
region. Through the skilful use of lyrics and
invocations, for example, a literary text can
convey convincingly the essence of a geographical reality and make the reader vibrate with the
scenery thus evoked. It is perhaps for this reason
that we geographers search for those literary texts
that, in our opinion, best convey the sense of
landscape reality that we are trying to isolate
(Caviedes 1987: 58, emphasis mine).
Geographers have often looked to literary description
with a longing not dissimilar to nineteenth century
Western intellectuals' romanticism of the 'Noble
Savage.' To many geographers it seems that the
expression of literary writers is more pure and natural
(drawing from their 'innate' intuition, for example)
- their ability to evoke the feel or essence of a place
or situation seen as being unfettered by the restrictions imposed by scientific modes of writing
demanded by contemporary social science.
While such an approach to literature unquestionably achieves its goals of 'thickening' the geographer's factual description - for Caviedes is
undoubtedly correct in recognising the great stylistic
and evocative skill of literary writers in comparison
to the average 'professional' geographer - it leaves
me wondering whether this represents the full extent
of the potential relationship which can be established
between geographical and literary traditions. To do
justice to the 'voices' of literature, geographers might
do better to engage in a more involved dialogue with
literature - its textual forms as well as descriptions
rather than the current tendency of 'causal ransacking' (Gregory 1981).
The subdiscipline of geography that has devoted
the most effort towards understanding the relationships between geography and literature is humanistic
geography (see Tuan 1978; Pocock editor 1981). In
his introduction to the collection Humanistic
Geography and Literature, Pocock (1981: 9) presents
the case for the universality of literature in that it
speaks to 'the human condition':
The truth of fiction is a truth beyond mere facts.
Fictive reality may transcend or contain more truth
than the physical or everyday reality (Pocock
1981: 11).
-
Stephen Daniels (1985) has argued that Pocock's
vision of literature as a vehicle of transcendental
meaning is a result of an ignorance of literary con-
ventions. Instead, Daniels advises that a study of
methods of narration and description is integral to
understanding the representation of space and place
produced in a text.
In his argument for a materialist analysis of
literature, Silk (1984) proposes an analysis of the
contexts of writing/production and reading/consumption in order to expose the workings of the
'mental appropriation of the world' (Silk 1984:151).
Thus, literature is to be read for its role in the reproduction of societal norms and values; it is worthy of
scholarly study Silk (1984: 173) maintains, because
of its role of 'producing images and consciousness
of interest to geographers.'
Consequently, in addition to descriptions of place,
some literature offers insights into the nature of
spatial relations, the experience of travel and migration, and other, less obviously geographical themes.
Fiction presents the possibility of creating alternative
worlds to highlight and critique present conditions.
Finally, academic analysis of other modes of writing
might make geographers more aware of the limitations and effects of their own, or even promote
experiments in alternative styles of writing in this
discipline.
As Tuan (1978: 194) has noted, throughout the use
of literature by geographers, 'there is the tacit
assumption that we know the purpose of literature
and the modes of expression appropriate to it.' Before
I attempt an interaction or dialogue between literature and geography, I believe that several important
questions must be addressed. Most importantly, how
should literary 'data' be used with more traditional
forms of geographical information such as demographic figures, interview and archival material?
How should contradictions between sources be
mediated? Put more simply, what does literature
mean?
Many geographers who use literature in their
writings - especially regional geographers - appear
to side-step the issue of the nature of this alternative
source by selecting only those excerpts which reinforce their own comprehension or interpretation of
the region or situation. If literature is only to be used
as example, however, does it have any meaning
beyond the aesthetic? Brosseau has discussed this
problem in detail:
We are denying the potential interest of fiction or
of the fictitious treatment of geographical realities
within an exercise that deals with fiction. We are
using another source in search of 'new' insight
but, in the end, we are asking it to provide us with
traditional types of information (Brosseau 1994:
337).
In other words, Brosseau (1994: 347-348) is claiming
that geographers are neglecting the most vital part
of literature, which is the subversive potential of this
medium. He claims that instead of looking for fiction
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which reinforces what we already know, we should
look for works which destabilise our positions. The
best novels, agrees Salman Rushdie, are those 'which
attempt radical reformulations of language, form and
ideas, those that attempt to do what the word novel
seems to insist upon: to see the world anew' (Rushdie
1991: 393). It is this flexibility of language and form
which is so difficult for academics to introduce into
their mode of communication because of established
standards and conventions of writing. A social
science such as geography has as its goal some form
of interpretation and analysis of the real social situation, and hopefully, how to improve the status quo.
What then can fiction have to contribute to this
scientific undertaking?
Let me now approach this question from another
angle. Increasingly, geographers are questioning the
direction of their discipline's scientific endeavour.
Drawing upon literary theory, a growing number of
works are now pointing to the metaphors and
tropology underlying all written accounts, even
(perhaps, especially) scientific ones (Barnes and
Duncan 1992; Duncan and Ley 1993). The insistence
of the 'transparency' of scientific or objective
language is dangerously misleading. No text can be
mimetic of an external reality, each is firmly located
within an ideologically coloured discourse: even the
seeming universalism of modern science has been
revealed as resting within the cultural assumptions of
Eurocentric philosophy. Scientific theory is, therefore, subject to closure (which detracts from critical
reading) in the same way as narratives. Hence, reality
is not available to its observers in an unmediated
form but is always already interpreted for them,
coming from tradition and expectation, via academic,
literary and popular textual sources of all kinds. The
introduction of these concepts from literary theory
has introduced what is often called a 'crisis of
representation' in geography. Acknowledging the
impossibility of mimesis, Barnes and Duncan (1992:
3) submit that the 'point is that when we "tell it like
it is" we are also "telling it like we are".'
This literary theory has been expanded to the
physical landscape through the metaphor of 'landscape as text' (Duncan 1990; Duncan and Duncan
1988). In other words, we can never understand the
landscape without seeing it through already interpreted lenses. Whether understood through the lenses
of literature or science, the reality we seek to describe
has already been constructed for us in a variety of
metaphors and tropes.
Despite these recent theoretical pronouncements,
literature and geography cannot be treated as if there
were no differences between the two disciplines.
Although they are both limited by the impossibility
of representation, geography and literature are two
textual traditions with the particular literary conventions, norms, standards and expectations of distinctive institutions. For example, geographical and
fictive texts both rely upon metaphorical language
to produce semblances between otherwise apparently
dissimilar phenomena (Tuan 1978: 198). However,
a literary work is complex and does not aim to
conclude: the hinted relationships of one metaphor
are balanced by those of another. A scientific work
does aim at conclusion, which may be wrong if
the ruling metaphor is not explicitly recognized
(Tuan 1978: 198).
These differences of intention and technique have to
be taken into account before an exchange can be
opened up between geography and literature.
The relationship between academic analysis and
literature or fiction has not received much attention
within geography but it has been discussed in the
context of other disciplines.
Fictive voices in other disciplines
Much has been said of late in favour of sensitivity
to 'other voices' in the construction of academic
descriptions and analyses of the world (see, for
example, Marcus and Fischer 1986; Barnes and
Duncan 1992). These theories posit the impossibility
of representation, not only in the sense of representing physical reality mentioned above, but also the
impossibility of representing other people and other
voices. It is impossible to genuinely re-present the
subject of any academic work: no-one of us can claim
to speak for our subjects.
This has been argued convincingly, especially in
the field of anthropology, for the case of various
groups of people who have traditionally been
excluded from influencing academic work. Is it not
possible to argue also that literary works have a
voice? Perhaps a work of fiction has a message or
intention which is not congruent with academic intention; after all, is that not why certain authors chose
the vehicle of fiction to convey their message rather
than utilising a journalistic or academic mode? If this
is the case, then, along with an interrogation of the
text on the terms of the academic (to find the parts
that are of 'use' to their argument) should be an
examination of the text on its own terms.
Fiction and history
We are too impertinent with the past, counting on
it on this way for a reliable frisson. Why should
it play our game? (Barnes 1984: 120).
LaCapra argues that different literatures of/from the
past have voices which historians must be careful not
to simply appropriate; each textual form has its own
voice - its own message, intention, experience - with
which we must also be careful. LaCapra holds that
at present, novels, for example, tend to be used in
122
historical writing in two ways and I believe this is
also true for the use of literature in geography. On
one hand, literature can be used to reinforce information that is already known (LaCapra 1985: 126).
For example, a literary description may back up an
empirical observation which the academic author has
made from an analysis of other, more traditional
sources. LaCapra (1985: 126) contends that this
renders literature a redundant source because the
same information can be found elsewhere. Used in
this way, the only role for fiction is to restate and
fortify what the author knew before. On the other
hand, literature can be used suggestively to 'give a
feel' of a situation. This too is a restricted usage in
that, since this information cannot be checked against
another traditionally more 'reliable' source, it can
provide nothing more solid than a 'feel' for the
situation. In each case, literature is assigned secondclass status as a source of information, 'although
what cannot be checked may bear upon some of the
most. significant and subtle processes in life'
(LaCapra 1985: 126).
This leaves us with another problem. If literature
is not to be treated merely as a resource to be mined
for gems of quotes, how are we to we treat it?
LaCapra (1985: 129) suggests a threefold analysis
of the 'context of interpretation' of a piece of literature: the context of writing, critical reading, and the
context of reception.
The first element in LaCapra's analysis of the
context of interpretation is the 'context of writing.'
This includes the extra textual references that provide
the 'reality effect' within the operation of any piece
of fiction. In distinction from the work of humanistic
geographers, this element of LaCapra's work posits
that all texts are produced from somewhere, by
someone, and it is impossible for anyone to truly
escape these positionings.
Roland Barthes has explored the relationship
between author, text and 'reality' in many works but
perhaps most strikingly in his book, Empire of Signs
(Barthes 1987 [English edition]). The opening lines
of Empire of Signs place the text within a poststructural frame, in the transgressive space of what
Derrida has termed diff&ance. Despite the use of
many images of Japan - most often, stereotypical
images - Barthes claims that the book is not about
Japan. Instead, the text offers a sophisticated reflection upon the nature of repreSentation.2
Barthes's text does not derive a 'truth' from its
correspondence with an external reality called Japan
but a poetics produced within the system of the text
itself. Like Rene Magritte's painting which juxtaposes an image of a pipe with the painted words 'ceci
n'est pas une pipe,' Barthes produces an image of a
country which 'looks' like western expectations of
the country Japan, and yet he too questions the
possibility of the representation he creates by writing
'this is not Japan' (Sharp 1994: 78).
Barthes claims that he could not have written
about a truly fictive place because he does not
possess sufficient agency independent of the structure of language to create anything strictly original.
He is left to choose among the elements of a place
that already exists from which to create his own
order. Because he uses familiar symbols - signifiers
which are conventionally used within western sign
systems describing Japan - there is a tension in his
work which would not exist if his text were read
simply as fiction. Most readers would recognise
Barthes's descriptions as being elements of Japanese
culture - sushi, haiku, and the painted linguistic
s y m b o l s - and yet, as he claims, in truth, they do
not represent the reality of Japan. Instead these
selected images of different represent the Otherness
which Barthes desires from his engagement with this
non-western cultural system; they are the favored
aspects of a plethora of signification which overdetermines the place/idea 'Japan.' Empire of Signs
thus serves to highlight the act of creation present in
every attempt at describing a place.
Empire of Signs provides a particularly powerful
example of the impossibility of true representation.
Nevertheless, Barthes realises that he is unable to
achieve the opposite of representation: fiction. He
argues that just as he is unable to represent a place
in an entire and mimetic sense, he is incapable of
producing a piece of purely original fiction: it is
impossible for him to invent someplace totally new
(totally imagined) because of the power of linguistic
and cultural standards which through normalisation,
have become naturalised and position him vis-h-vis
the world.
Salman Rushdie addresses the relation between his
writing of fiction and his place in the world in a more
direct manner. Despite his use of fantastic characters and events, Rushdie suggests that the context of
writing simply cannot be ignored, rather it has to be
faced directly in order to allow one's work to fit in
with the heightened awareness typical of the contemporary world. In other words, the reality effect
of his writings would fail to operate if his political,
cultural, economic and social circumstances were not
included in his books:
Sometimes one envies Jane Austen her fine disregard for the Napoleonic Wars. Today, with the
television bringing visions of the world into every
home, it seems somehow false to try and shut out
the noise of gunfire, screams, weeping, to stop our
ears against the inexorable ticking of the
doomsday clock (Rushdie 1991: 376).
LaCapra's second element in history's engagement
with fiction is critical reading. This is a close analysis
of the manner in which a literary text 'functions,'
particularlY the manner in which the reader is
addressed. As Althusser suggested, it is through
address that individuals are interpellated into
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ideology to become subject within it (see Laclau
1977: 100). It is thus the textual strategies which
draw readers into the text and allow them the 'wilful
suspension of disbelief' characteristic of novelistic
fiction. These modes need to be studied in order to
see how the literary work functions to reinforce
and/or subvert norms and standards, how it allows
the formation of different ways of thinking about the
world, and how it convinces the readership to go
along with this new formation.
The final element in LaCapra's scheme is the
context of reception of fiction. This context refers
to how texts are used and abused by their readerships.
Rarely is it possible to gauge the reception that a
particular text receives. The work of Salman Rushdie,
however, in particular his novel, The Satanic Verses,
has been widely discussed and debated in the light
of the fatwa placed on him by the late Iranian leader
the Ayatollah Khomenei.
Salman
Rushdie
The work of Salman Rushdie provides a vivid interlocutor for geographers intent on coming to terms
with the ever integrating world-system of politics,
economics, culture and identity. His texts are rich
with the ambivalences, contradictions and sometimes
bizarre juxtapositions of present-day life. Rushdie
places references to Western TV images and Indian
literature next to each other, and traditional songs and
movie themes sit side by side in his narration of
contemporary globalized societies. In the contemporary (post) modern media-ted world, this is indeed
the form in which a large number of people receive
their information about and knowledge of the world
and understand their own place and identity within
it. 'The international media system has in actuality
done what idealistic or ideologically inspired notions
of collectivity - imagined communities - aspire to
d o . . . the media are not only a fully integrated practical network, but a very efficient mode of articulation knitting the world together' (Said 1993: 374).
The literary mode that Rushdie employs is also
revealing. He has written the majority of his work
as novels. Thus, Rushdie has chosen a very specific
literary device, associated with a particular period
of Western history, that of modern nation-state
building. Although adopting this form of writing,
Rushdie has not been faithful to its conventions.
Instead, he has subverted the novelistic style, forcing
it to represent the hybridity that his protagonists
display. As a post-colonial subject using his master's
voice, Rushdie recolonises the Western mode of
representation to tell of the ambiguity, rather than the
singularity, of subjectivity. The structure of the text
therefore mirrors the structure of the world that
Rushdie has created.
As a result, it is not only information and knowl-
edge that Rushdie fragments and juxtaposes, it is also
identity. His gleeful merging of cultural traditions and
styles denies the possibility of authentic, untouched
identity or tradition. Rushdie's novels are dominated
by a combination of realism and magic realism. 3 For
Rushdie, the real and metaphorical do not exist in
separate worlds: the symbolic and literal are in part
constitutive of each other:
If one is to attempt honestly to describe reality as
it is experienced by religious people, for whom
God is no symbol but an everyday fact, then the
conventions of what is called realism are quite
inadequate. The rationalism of that form comes
to be seen like a judgement upon, an invalidation
of, the religious faith of the characters being
described. A form must be created which allows
the miraculous and the mundane to coexist at the
same level - as the same order of event (Rushdie
1991: 376).
The existence of mythological elements in Rushdie's
work also allows for an examination of the power of
language in society. In The Satanic Verses, the two
main characters arrive in Britain only to find themselves metamorphosed into chimerical beasts. Their
metamorphosis exposes the power of stereotypical
images. The protagonists are hybrids of British and
Indian culture but in racist contemporary Britain,
they are seen to be foreign and Other. Rushdie is thus
playing with the British Orientalist stereotypes of
Indian people and their culture by re-imaging his
protagonists as fantastic but frightful characters. But,
Rushdie takes this a degree further; other Indians also
see the protagonists as beasts. Thus he refers to the
continuing hold of colonial power-relations today
which gives the West, 'the power of description, and
we [non-western peoples] succumb to the pictures
they construct' (Rushdie 1988: 168). As mythical
creatures, the migrants find that their mobility is
limited; they are ridiculed and physically threatened
which meant that their social geography of London
- their perception of, and mobility within, the city is duly effected.
Rushdie's mythic narrativisation is not limited to
the migrant condition however. One of the protagonists of The Satanic Verses, Gibreel Farishta, finds
himself metamorphizing into the characters he portrayed in the Indian cinema, representing perhaps, the
increasing mediation of contemporary life through
the TV and movie screens where all images are
flattened into equal (un)reality.
There is a further reason for Rushdie's merging
of the fictive and descriptive. He can combine realistic and fantastic devices by simultaneously producing images of empirically real and mythological
places. For example, the India in Midnight's Children
is constructed from memories and dreams, The
Satanic Verses' holy city of Jahilia, 'both "is and is
not" Mecca' (Rushdie 1991: 409). Like Barthes's
124
Japan/not-Japan of Empire of Signs, Rushdie presents
the reader with the description of places which seem
familiar and comprehensible, and then throws the
reader off with descriptions which make the place
unintelligible. Rushdie (1991: 409) claims that
fiction, 'uses facts as a starting-place and then spirals
away to explore its real concerns, which are only
tangentially historical.' This is where literature can
be subversive. From a recognisable starting point,
fiction can suddenly disorient the reader, it can 'spiral
away' and ask, 'what i f . . . '
Authorial intention, however, does not mean
control of reader resPonse. Rushdie's work has
become evidence of this. Unintended interpretations
of his 1988 work, The Satanic Verses, gave the postmodern idiom of the 'death of the author' a new
materiality. This is testament to the importance of
literature in the construction of 'reality,' and the
inseparability of 'fictional' texts and those which
purport, more directly, to re-present reality. For
Rushdie himself, the division between fact and
fiction became highly permeable. His death under the
Islamic fatwa was fictionalised by Brian Clark into
a play entitled, 'Who killed Salman Rushdie?'
Meanwhile, other elements of the media opened his
life for debate:
On TV shows, studio audiences were asked for a
show of hands on the question of whether I should
die. A man's murder (mine) became a legitimate
subject for a national opinion pole (Rushdie 1991:
407).
Brennan's (1989: viii) description of the reactions to
The Satanic Verses, 'the book-burning in Bradford,
the violent and fatal demonstrations in Pakistan and
India, and the Imam's famous bounty,' could have
come straight from a section of Rushdie's own
geographing4 of the media-ted world in his novel. As
Said (1993: 373) concludes, 'To have provoked
Islamic fundamentalism when once he had been a
virtual representative of Indian Islam - this testifies
to the urgent conjunction of art and politics, which
can be explosive.'
The study of both the content and form of
Rushdie's construction of contemporary subjectivity,
and the reactions to it, are interesting in and of
themselves. The interstice between the two, however,
provides insight into aspects of the world system
which Rushdie failed to take into account, and sheds
a different light onto some of the descriptions used
in the geo-graphing of the world in The Satanic
Verses. The remainder of this paper will engage in
both of these analyses.
A. Rushdie's geo-graphing
Rushdie's novels - especially Midnight's Children,
Shame, and The Satanic Verses - are self-consciously
spatial texts in that one of the central themes of each
is territorial forms of identification, the meaning of
post-colonial national identity, and the ambiguities
which arise from the hybridized subjectivity of
migration. Each text can therefore be analysed for its
construction of geography, in the etymological sense
of the term: earth writing.
Rushdie makes the post-modern blurring of genres
come to life through the use of many literary devices
including, most obviously, magical realism, but also
farce, black comedy, traditional mythology, and
science fiction. His intertextual references range from
the Ramayana to Western advertising, the content and
form of 'Bollywood' films to religious texts of
Eastern and Western orthodoxies. The juxtaposition
of these diverse, sometimes apparently incompatible,
references, break up the linear flow of Rushdie's
narration of events. In turn, this writing and reading
process has the effect of emphasising the disjointed
experience of the hybrid subjects he is describing.
The heightened sense of limbo and discomfort that
Rushdie's works produce for the migrant subject often represented by fantastic or mythical beings and
events - does not restrict itself to the physical
migrant; through his use of familiar and less familiar
references, Rushdie attempts to make all readers
feel as if they do and do not belong. All readers are
positioned as hybrids in Rushdie's construction of his
readership.
If The Santanic Verses is anything, it is the
migrants' view of the world. It is written from the
very experience of uprooting, disjuncture and
m e t a m o r p h o s i s . . , that is the migrant condition,
and from which, I believe, can be derived a
metaphor for all humanity' (Rushdie quoted in
Bhabha 1990: 16).
In The Satanic Verses, Rushdie attempts to effect the
extension of this hybrid subjectivity to his entire
readership through certain textual strategies. Most
importantly, Rushdie 'recolonizes' the English
language. He scatters the text with constructions and
terms which are not 'proper' English but distortions
of it. He claims the language for the hybrids and thus
renders the English reader's native language,
although understandable, somewhat foreign. The
mono-lingual English speaker, who has little or no
knowledge of South Asian and Islamic traditions, is
not always included in the whole meaning of parts
the text. Rushdie draws upon intertextual references
from Britain, India, the US and other places, sometimes explaining the reference, other times leaving
it unexplained. For those who are ignorant of the
reference, it may often go unnoticed. For example,
many character names have meanings in Arabic but
simply appear as exotic signifiers to a reader who
does not know that language: Jahilia, Rushdie's name
for the Holy city in The Satanic Verses, means
'ignorance' in Arabic and refers to the name for the
period before Islam (Rushdie 1991: 398), and the
125
name Chamcha, given to one of the protagonists in
the same novel means 'ass-kisser' (Spivak 1993:
219). On other occasions, reference is made to details
of English and British history, particularly with
reference to the Norman Conquest, or to advertisements and American movies•
There is thus a geography in the readership of
Rushdie's work. Different readers achieve different
interpretations and readings of the text, each reader
being included in some references, excluded from the
meaning of others. It would seem therefore that by
making use of this disjointed narrative style Rushdie
is attempting to make the reader simultaneously feel
that s/he belongs and that s/he is excluded from his
world• He thus endeavours to subvert the reader's
identity and to introduce the sense of hybridity which
forms the migrant condition. It is this differential
understanding of his texts, the different meanings that
readers can draw from them which provide Rushdie's
work with their vivid cartographies of modern international life.
B. The geopolitics of reception
We, the public, are easily, lethally, offended• We
have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than
our rage which gives us, in our opinion, the moral
high ground. From this high ground we can shoot
down at our enemies and inflict heavy casualties
Our anger elevates, transcends . . . (Rushdie
1994).
•
.
.
Obviously, there are many different interpretations of
any text. No author has control of reception so that
literary devices do not always produce in the
audience the effect desired by the author. This has
certainly been the case with The Satanic Verses•
Some fundamentalist Muslims do not accept
Rushdie's claims that the book be taken as a fictional
tale of a description of a man dealing with religious
uncertainty. The passages in the novel which have
caused the most offence to Islamic fundamentalists
occur within a dream sequence of one of the protagonists and deals with places and characters whose
names bear an ironic or humorous relationship with
the originals in the Koran:
The use of fiction was a way of creating the sort
of distance from actuality that I felt would prevent
offence• I was wrong (Rushdie 1991: 408-409).
According to Said (1985: ch. 3), for fundamentalist
Muslims, stories are intended to ornament the world
rather than offer alternative representations of it, or
manners in which it might be changed. The novel,
'an institutionalisation of the intention to begin' (Said
1985: 100), is especially problematic to this worldview:
it is significant that the desire to create an
•
.
.
alternative world, to modify or augment the real
world through the act of writing (which is one
motive underlying the novelistic tradition in the
West) is inimical to the Islamic world-view. The
Prophet is he who has completed a world-view;
thus the word hersey in Arabic is synonymous
with the verb 'to innovate' or 'to begin.' Islam
views the world as a plenum, capable of neither
diminishment nor amplification (S aid 1985: 81).
Part of The Satanic Verses scripts an alternative
account of Mohammed's writing of the Koran.
Although this occurs in a dream sequence of a
character whose doubt of religion ultimately dooms
him, it is written within a novel which questions the
distinction between good and bad, sacred and
profane. The religious purity of the Koran's verses
cannot be questioned, especially by an author
heralded by the literary institutions of the West as the
saviour of Southern Asian writing.
It is therefore an irony that Rushdie's writing of
The Satanic Verses has erased his author-ity. Of the
reams of print devoted to The Satanic Verses, only a
tiny proportion has discussed the novel itself: 'it is
the late Ayatollah who can be seen as fil!ing the
Author-function, and Salman Rushdie, himself,
caught in a different cultural logic, is no more than
the writer-as-performer' (Spivak 1993:218-219).
In the West, the 'Rushdie affair' was often interpreted as arising from the parochial, even arcane,
beliefs of certain Islamic leaders, which ran against
the modem, universal value of freedom of speech.
However, it would be disingenuous to suggest that
it was only the Islamic voices who represented a
particular belief set in this debate:
• . . there is another absurdity, equally extreme,
equally common• And that is to pretend that the
scriptor/author is ignorant of the social context in
which the work is produced, the potential for a
novel that draws, however sympathetically, on the
life of the prophet to become an orientalist icon
in a racist world . . . The Satanic Verses, regardless of the author's inclinations, is marked by the
stigmata of the literary world that defines it as a
classic (Keith and Pile 1993: 33).
C
o
n
c
l
u
s
i
o
n
Rushdie's global geo-graphing and the geo-graphing
of Rushdie have come into conflict. The Satanic
Verses can be regarded as a text which attempts to
grapple with the realities of contemporary cultural
hybridity - and its political effects - by producing a
geography in which religious/mystical and 'real'
cartographies intersect• He produces an account of
the fluidity and barriers met by migrants between
colonial and post-colonial, and through a reworking
126
of concepts of home, identity and authenticity, offers
an alternative conceptualisation of identity which
does not require a territorial geography of us-them
alterity. Instead, identity is constructed from flows
and narratives, recognizing and accepting difference.
The Satanic Verses illustrates the utopic nature of
both extremes of fiction (represented by the migrant
Chamcha who constantly tries to reinvent himself)
and authenticity (in the figure of Gibreel, also a
migrant, but who desperately attempts to grasp hold
of his Indian identity). Rushdie suggests that neither
extreme, neither subjectivity, is attainable. Near
the end of the novel, the protagonists merge 'Gibreelsaladin Farishtachamcha' - exposing the
interdependence and inseparability of the two. For
students of post-modernism or what has been called
the 'condition of postmodernity,' Rushdie's account
provides clear instance of the impossibility of authenticity, and illustrates the situatedness of knowledge
and truth. Sadly, it also illustrates the failings and
limitations of current trends in post-modernism.
Rushdie's geo-graphing came into conflict with
other geographies which do not accept the ambivalence of postmodern subjectivity. As Spivak (1993:
225) has observed, 'fabricating decentered subjects
as the sign of the times is not necessarily these times
decentering the subject.' It is impossible to understand the reactions to The Satanic Verses without
reference to the Western discursive constructions of
contemporary geopolitics. The geopolitics of information and entertainment have circulated such
external dangers as, for example, 'terrorists' and,
more importantly, 'fundamentalists.' The worldviews of both fundamentalist Islam and Western
universalism could not accept the fluidity by which
Rushdie characterised his world.
The 'Rushdie Affair' illustrates the continuing
contradictions between movement and fluidity and
containment. Not only has Rushdie's fluid geographing come up against the fixity of the post-cold
war geopolitical order (where, it appears that Islam
might become the next Evil Empire), but now the
Rushdie Affair has itself fed into the binary opposition which forms the West-Islam division. Rushdie's
work offers the geographer a world where the
fluidities of hybridity and mobile spatial practices can
play out; it offers an alternative account of the
condition of postmodernity. Yet, it is only by interpreting the contexts of writing and reception which
envelop the work that it is possible to understand the
novel's relationship with the world that it seeks to
narrate.
Notes
On 14 February 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini issued a 'fatwa' or
decree on Radio Tehran. It stated that
'In the name of God A l m i g h t y . . . I would like to inform
all the intrepid Muslims in the world that the author of the
book entitled The Satanic Verses, which has been copied,
printed and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet and
the Koran, as well as those publishers who were aware of its
contents, have been sentenced to d e a t h . . . I call on all zealous
Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they find them,
so that no one will dare to insult the Islamic sanctions.' Quoted
in Appignanesi and Maitland (1990: 68).
Barthes preferred an indirect approach to critique: 'Meaning
cannot be attacked head-on, by the simple assertion of its
contrary, you must cheat, steal, refine - parody, if you must,
but, better yet, counterfeit' (Barthes 1985:119).
Midnight's Children and Shame deal, respectively, with postindependence India and Pakistan, and The Satanic Verses
focuses upon the ordeals of two Indian migrants in London.
I use geo-graphing - 'writing the earth' - to emphasise the
constructive role of writing geography (see (3 Tuathail 1994).
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