Corrective realism in Muslim fiction accepts the stereotypes’ own framing terms

Evidence

Ahmed writes of how there has been an “anthropological interest” in British Muslims “reflecting a mainstream British readership’s spurious desire to ‘know’ the Muslim Other in the context of events such as 9/11 and 7/7.” This interest is catered for through the predominant use of forms of realism, reinforcing the illusion that direct experience is being rendered. There are good historical reasons for this use of realism—the desire to counteract stereotyped views with more accurate images in an era of racism, for example. The same impulses are understandably in play in our modern Islamophobic age, too, when Muslim-background writers feel a need to use their greater degree of proximity to minority groups to offer a more accurate view of them. However, it is equally possible to argue that employing direct realism in a bid to correct misconceptions is to accept a discussion whose terms have been set in advance by those creating the stereotypes. In Muslim fiction, the idea of a “corrective” realist text embodies the sanctioned flipside of the outsider’s anthropological gaze. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 162

Categorization

• XREF: Suspicion of realism as covert eyewitnessing connects directly to The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s monologue form — Changez speaks to a silent American — as a formal refusal of realist transparency that contests anthropological capture. Also echoes Naqvi’s Home Boy.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the sharpest analytical instrument in the chapter: realism as a corrective move that ‘accepts a discussion whose terms have been set in advance.’ Dense, counterintuitive, and directly deployable as a criterion for distinguishing contesting from reinforcing fiction.