Liberal utopian endings can let fiction quietly erase the real cost of anti-Islamophobia struggle
Evidence
Finally, the book’s liberal utopianism is evident in its epilogue. Not only is Mo now rich and internationally celebrated, with a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Architecture, but we are told, “American Muslims were now, if not embraced, accepted. Trusted. Their rights unquestioned” (287). Just like that! With no explanation. Islamophobia is here mapped onto and equated with all those previous struggles against discrimination, from anti-Catholicism to civil rights, in a patriotic reiteration of America’s inherent capacity to integrate and forgive. Nothing is said about the struggles, bloodshed, and loss of life that always accompany this drawn-out and painful process. American Muslims have somehow effortlessly entered the sunny uplands of the future, conveyed there by some painless magical process we are not permitted to witness. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 296
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Directly parallel to the analytical move the reader wants to apply to Hamid — a happy ending that papers over ongoing struggle is itself a political gesture; connects to Home Boy’s own ending tensions.
- DEFINE: Gives a working definition of ‘liberal utopianism’ as a fault mode: happy reconciliation without the witnessed cost.
Related
- A fictional happy ending can quietly reinforce the very Islamophobia it critiques (similarity 0.92)
- A conventionally liberating novel ending can quietly reinforce anti-Muslim prejudice. (similarity 0.82)
- Liberal-humanist endings depend on converting the threatening Other. (similarity 0.78)
- The Forsterian stance fails to balance personal and political trauma in Islamophobia fiction (similarity 0.78)
- Novels can expose imperialism through their endings rather than endorse it (similarity 0.78)