Literature’s unverifiability lets it contest hegemonic discourse better than policy analysis.

Evidence

In her book Death of a Discipline (2003), Gayatri Spivak notes the appetite for a new global political awareness in the study of literature. The urgency of such a planetary project after 9/11 was palpable. Remarking on the heterogeneity of cultures and disciplines in the multicultural era before the attacks, she writes: “Today the backlash is on the rise. There is a demand for humanism, with a nod towards Asia; for universalism, however ambiguous; for quality control; to fight terrorism.” The qualifiers in the second sentence might alert us to a certain ruefulness that the agenda of some antagonists of multiculturalism from the right and the agenda of those on the left made uneasy by identity politics’ demand for the prioritization of difference seem to have moved into alignment. Yet Spivak’s insights into the value of literature in creating a space that can complicate and contest hegemonic discourses remains vital. She lauds literature’s complexity and indirectness—something that makes it more than an addendum to social science or policy-oriented perspectives. Citing the Aristotelian view that the creative imagination allows for more openness and catholicity than the “single-mindedness of history,” Spivak identifies the value of literature as being its “unverifiability: it cannot be tied to a single ‘fact.’ ” “Literature cannot predict, but it can prefigure.… Literature is what escapes the system; you cannot speed read it. The figure is irreducible. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 50

Categorization

• DEFINE: Spivak’s ‘unverifiability’ is the working definition here — literature’s irreducible figure as what escapes the system — a term the reader can carry into reading Hamid and Naqvi.
• XREF: Connects to Spivak’s Death of a Discipline and to the broader planetary criticism project; also resonates with the reader’s goal of treating Hamid/Naqvi as evidence rather than illustration.