Representing cultural specificity requires formal invention rather than universal empathy

Evidence

As soon as one moves beyond bare corporeal facts to the human in society, the challenge becomes to try to find forms that will do justice to the complexity of individuals in the world in such a way as not to flatten or simplify experiences rooted in particular cultural contexts—in short, not to universalize those experiences. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 32

Categorization

• SEED: The test for Hamid and Naqvi: do their formal devices (Changez’s monologue, Shehzad’s pyrexia as narrative frame) resist universalizing, or let readers absorb them as familiar types?
• XREF: Echoes the Amardeep Singh/Albert Memmi line from chapter 1 on liberal sympathy’s limits — the form question recurs. — connects to: Valuing one’s own speech as citizenship requires inventing a new cultural niche — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1203; Restoring reciprocity ethics requires transplanting wild ideas across cultural walls — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 732; All representations of culture are necessarily partial accounts — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction: A…, 109