Class struggle over resources is disguised as cultural incompatibility between groups

Evidence

However, if we read this ending against its utopian grain—considering the solidarities broken or left behind on Nazneen’s journey—we can see a refutation of the kinds of unity capable of at least making a dent in the smooth functioning of neoliberal capitalism. Hence, the importance of returning to center stage the fact that tensions between the white working class and Muslims—although dressed up as cultural—are in fact a struggle for shrinking resources in the increasingly privatized modern nation, a struggle infamously enshrined in the “immigrants taking our jobs” narrative. It is in politicians’ interest to disguise this struggle by projecting it as being about incompatible values. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 514

Categorization

• DEFINE: Supplies the key analytic move: read a novel’s ‘triumphant’ ending against its grain to expose what it refutes — the underlying resource struggle.
• XREF: Directly extends the argument of Chapter 8 on Brick Lane; also resonates with the class-vs-culture analysis in The Reluctant Fundamentalist where Changez’s Pakistani identity reads as class-consciousness displaced onto religion. — connects to: Revisionism makes theory palatable by suppressing whatever demands praxis, notably class struggle. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 21; The slur Indian giver masks a genuine cross-cultural economic misunderstanding — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 103; Ultranationalism arises from the failure of class politics — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1851