JAVED ur REHMAN, Hafiz & CONDIT, Celeste Michelle

Fall 2022, 52.5 pages: 479-493

The Practice of Transformation-Oriented Anti-Colonial Dialogue: Personae in Post-9/11 Novels by Pakistani Authors in English

Abstract:

This essay argues for embodied dialog among scholars from different global situations as an academic practice crucial to anticolonial transformation. The essay illustrates this practice by recounting the critical interpretations of two differently situated anticolonial persons and the changes in interpretations wrought by our dialog. We draw on postcolonial and dialogic orientations and recent materialist theories that envision rhetorical scholarship as “making” in order to encourage expansion of the range of depictions of Muslims in literature. The analysis employs a persona theory revised through Burkean dramatism and the anticolonial perspective. The transformative potential of the approach is illustrated by a dialogically executed analysis of the Pakistan-focused novel, The Spinner’s Tale, by Omar Shahid Hamid.