A novel can expose stereotypes yet trap its own character within them

Evidence

However, as I argue, Flanagan’s approach also points up some of the shortcomings in the liberal novel’s treatment of Islamophobia: limitations we can also see in the Le Carré and Fesperman novels. These limitations have to do with the fact that the characters who experience discrimination and exclusion most directly or toward whom our emotional investment is directed tend not to be Muslim. Setting aside real-world inequalities, these novels tacitly assume that the reader will more readily identify with the quandaries of protagonists who share a known, familiar cultural orientation. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 355 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Even sympathetic progressive writers reproduced degrading stereotypes of Untouchables; Muslim characters can break stereotype when faith is incidental to personality — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 537; The monologue form makes readers complicit in the Othering the novel critiques (+21 more)

Related

• Omniscient narration can preempt paranoid misreadings of a Muslim character (similarity 0.83)
• A novel can undermine its own polyphonic argument by monolithically portraying Muslims. (similarity 0.83)
• Anti-Islamophobia novels can themselves profit from trading in Muslim stereotypes. (similarity 0.83)
• Novels encode their stance on Islamic identity through form as much as content. (similarity 0.83)
• Liberal novels on Islamophobia center non-Muslim protagonists for reader identification (similarity 0.83)
• Even distinguished literary novelists voice crude anti-Muslim prejudice (similarity 0.83)
• Liberal novels often center non-Muslim protagonists in Islamophobia stories (similarity 0.82)
• Liberal thrillers can reinforce Islamophobia by refusing to narrate Muslim interiority (similarity 0.82)
• Islamophobia in literature can reside in universalist reading practices rather than overt denunciation (similarity 0.82)
• Transparent realist form cannot escape the reader’s prevailing prejudices (similarity 0.81)
• Refusing to narrate Muslim experience can itself constitute latent Islamophobia (similarity 0.81)
• Fiction can reinforce racial stereotypes even while nominally condemning extremism (similarity 0.81)
• A novel contesting Islamophobia can still quietly reinforce liberal-manichean binaries in its characterization. (similarity 0.81)
• The novel’s liberal individualist form inherently limits what it can contest (similarity 0.80)
• A novel can expose Islamophobia’s machinery while containing no Muslims at all. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Omniscient narration can preempt paranoid misreadings of a Muslim character #expands (0.70)
• A liberal-humanist stance toward novels can itself smuggle in Islamophobic assumptions #corroborates (0.65)
• Liberal novels often center non-Muslim protagonists in Islamophobia stories #exemplifies (0.60) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 355