A minority writer adopting dominant discourse terms risks being framed as answering hostile questions.

Evidence

In his view, “rather than conform to the stale Orientalist discourse of much western writing on Islam, fictional or otherwise, Aboulela adopts a subtle transgressive discourse which engages with Orientalist and postcolonial tropes in such a way as to project herself … as a representative for Islam.” Although this is an accurate description of the reading Aboulela’s work invites, the tactic of adopting the language and concerns of prevailing discourses may yield ambiguous results, framing her fiction as the “answer” to a question posed by—and in the terms of—a non-Muslim, curious, but also possibly hostile audience. … In fiction as elsewhere, the terms of such representativeness are always ultimately determined by operations of power, discursive frames that limit how and what will be recognized as representatively Muslim. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 472

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Naqvi’s Home Boy — both adopt Western narrative frames (the monologue form, the post-9/11 immigrant story) that risk the same co-optation Morey describes.
• DEFINE: Introduces the analytical concept of ‘representativeness’ as power-determined — the operative critical term for distinguishing contesting from reinforcing fiction. This is the hinge concept the reader wants.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does Hamid’s use of the dramatic monologue — a form that positions the Westerner as questioner — replicate exactly this ‘answer to a question posed in a hostile audience’s terms’ dynamic?