Novel-empathy rhetoric can flatter Western readers while denigrating another culture

Evidence

At the center of this claim is the capacity to inspire empathy: “It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else’s shoes” (118), and “this respect for others, empathy, lies at the heart of the novel” (224). Truisms about empathy’s centrality to the novel form—ensured through its polyphony and by inference aligned with liberal politics—are repeated like a mantra. So, too, is the invocation of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” a right also at the heart of the novel protagonist’s quest throughout history and supposedly coming closest to realization in the United States of America. Seldom can a text have sought so egregiously to flatter the vanities of its assumed readership while at the same time flagellating an entire other culture. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 235

Categorization

• XREF: Links directly to the reader’s task: this is exactly the kind of ‘quietly reinforces while appearing liberal’ mode to watch for in Hamid and Naqvi. — connects to: Lerner claimed modern people possess psychological empathy that traditional people lack — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 250; Exile intellectuals’ critiques transfer authority to right wrongs from affected societies to Western readers. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 705
• SEED: An angle: the liberal empathy-paradigm as a covert civilizing discourse — ‘the novel teaches us your culture is flawed but lovable.’