A marketable marginalized identity lets third-world writers critique the West acceptably

Evidence

The fluidity of identity implied here means that Changez’s marginality is always to some extent recuperable for a Western audience who might have been alienated by actual confessions of terrorist activity or a sudden discovery of religious conviction. The fact that Changez ends up the figurehead for a broad coalition standing up against American meddling in South Asia and not a foaming Islamist militant allows for his critique to find its target audience—primarily liberal Westerners who are more likely to accept criticism that comes from within a narrative of secular nationalism. … Being from “there” in this sense is primarily a kind of literary passport that identifies the artist as being from a region of underdevelopment and pain.… All are fresh, political writers of epic events (if not writers of epics) who are critical of the West but only as those whose sympathies finally belong here. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 455

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s hinge work on Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist — Changez’s recoverability for a Western audience is exactly the contesting-vs-reinforcing distinction being hunted. — connects to: Postmodernism’s dominance frames both critics and canonized Third World authors. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 488; Western radical intellectuals must choose between granting oppressed expressive subjectivity or declaring them unrepresentable — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1777; Exile intellectuals’ critiques transfer authority to right wrongs from affected societies to Western readers. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 705 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces the sanctioned role of the Third World cultural representative as a critical concept for distinguishing acceptable critique from alienating confession.