Abstract
This chapter investigates further re-Orientalising strategies beyond the unreliable narrator, devised to circumvent some of the problematic issues of representation. In a reverse Orientalism, Mohsin Hamid, in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, represents East-West relationships entirely through an Eastern/Oriental lens, suppressing the Western viewpoint and further polarising East and West. This is an aggressive re-Orientalism, deliberate, dichotomising, and confrontational. A contrasting method is demonstrated through Anuradha Roy’s The Folded Earth, via a protagonist who is hardly identifiable culturally as Indian. This protagonist is the Even-Newer-Indian-Woman. Roy’s representations evade easy exoticisation or categorisation, eluding the traditional categorising boundaries of gender and culture.
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© 2014 Lisa Lau and Om Prakash Dwivedi
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Lau, L. (2014). “Reverse Orientalism” and Whimsy. In: Re-Orientalism and Indian Writing in English. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137401564_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137401564_3
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