The Rushdie affair pitted authorial freedom against community representation duties
Evidence
The target here is clearly Rushdie, but the main point is to underline the supposed responsibilities of an author to his or her community when writing about minorities. Once more the burden of representation falls heavily. All we learn from such self-indulgent authors, according to Riaz, is the “filthy” contents of their imagination. To Shahid’s riposte that “a free imagination, looking into itself, illuminates others,” Riaz retorts, “We are discussing here the free and unbridled imagination of men who live apart from the people.… Must we prefer this indulgence to the profound and satisfying comforts of religion?” (183–84). Riaz’s view that freedom in any society must be limited here morphs into the kind of call for censorship in the interests of community sensitivities that has provoked the ire of the liberal intelligentsia in the years since the Rushdie affair when confronted by Muslims’ sense of offense. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 177
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s task: the liberal/‘free imagination’ framework reasserted after 9/11 is the frame Hamid’s Changez and Naqvi’s characters occupy. Also echoes the burden of representation concept relevant to both novels.
- DEFINE: Frames ‘burden of representation’ — the expectation that minority authors answer for their community — as a core concept in the Islamophobia-and-novel debate.