Salman Rushdie To Write Under Exile Identity

Post-colonialism is a new cultural trend of western academic circles that arise in the1970s, which focused on the relations of discourse power between between sovereign States and former colonial countries. The writers of Post-colonialism, as an emerging force, are now changing the Western’s hegemony in the world. Salman Rushdie, well-known as "The Godfather of Post-colonialism", was born in the former British colony of Indian and later immigrated to the center of western culture. Wandering between the "edge" and "center", he has lost the homeland and identity, so he tries to pursue their long lost identity and their homes through literary creation. The whole paper is divided into fives chapter which discuss the identity crisis in exile.Chapter1introduces the life and literary creation of Rushdie, together with the literature review of relevant studies, thus discuss how Rushdie write his marginal homeland and identity in exile.Chapter2analyzes Rushdie’s the political identity in exile. Rushdie immigrant experience enables him to change perspective more freely, and look at the world from a new angle. Firstly, he questions at the political propaganda in India and Pakistan, and he can look objectively at the whole event, because he lives outside. Even though he can’t be completely objective, the skeptical attitude that he holds to everything reflect one spirit of post-modernism. Secondly, he contends that in post-colonial ear Indians must re-write their own history and advocates to construct the national myth in Indian Culture.Chapter3analyzes Rushdie’s cultural identity under the exile life. Rushdie, as a post-colonial immigrant writer, did lose the cultural direction and became "rootless duckweed" like Edward Said and Naipaul. Although he walks around the world, and lives in different social and cultural environment, he stands between the two cultures (the dominant culture vs. the edge culture, the divided culture vs. the mixed culture) and examines and accepts the world he is in. By this chameleon strategy, he constructs his own culture identity in the splitting culture.Chapter4analyzes Rushdie’s religious identity in exile life, and he questions the Islamic fundamentalism. For him, the doctrine of Islamic fundamentalism leads to many extreme behaviors. He subverts the hegemony of fundamentalism though questioning, and realize the religious freedom. Most critics believe Rushdie don’t stopping putting faith in Islam, but actually he believes the uncertain and secular Islam influenced by modern western culture rather than the traditional Islam. He is always pursuing the religious secularism and freedom at the stance of western scholars.Finally, the conclusion part summarizes Rushdie’s writing in exile, from the perspective of political, cultural and regional identity. He questioned the authenticity of the history of India and Pakistan, and holds that people should seek their identity in different cultures. And he also questions the extreme religious behaviors of Islamic fundamentalism and advocate religious freedom, which all reflect the sprits of western post-modernism.