Rushdie’s Pakistan novel frames a narrow ruling elite’s experience as a whole nation’s.

Evidence

The problem is that the experience of a certain classrather, a ruling elite - is presented, in the rhetorical stance of the book, as the experience of a ‘country’ Far from being about ‘the East’ or even about ‘Pakistan’, the book is actually about a rather narrow social stratum - so narrow, in fact, that Rushdie himself is able to portray all the major characters as belonging to a single family. This plot device of turning all the antagonists into relatives is a wonderful technical resolution for reflecting the monopolistic structure of dictatorial power and the very narrow social spectrum within which this power in Pakistan circulates. It also helps him to bypass the easy liberal dichotomy between military villains and civilian innocents; they are all of the same stripe. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 556

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s central concern: a class-specific experience presented as national/collective ‘experience’ is a discourse-first essentialism — Ahmad’s materialist critique of postcolonial abstraction maps a specific case. — connects to: Rushdie’s fiction conflates a ruling elite’s corruption with an entire society. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 241
• ADDENDUM: Relates to ‘Grafting & Growth’ only loosely; stronger connection is the reader’s strategic-essentialism research showing how the singular ‘country’ voice performs an essentialist collectivity Rushdie cannot actually occupy.

Broader Connections

• Rushdie’s fiction conflates a ruling elite’s corruption with an entire society. #expands (0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 241