Transcending narrative and cultural boundaries : Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses and Shalimar the Clown as postmodern and postcolonial texts

Abstract

This study explores the interrelation between postmodernism and postcolonialism in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses and Shalimar the Clown. It presents the points of conjunction between the two disciplines and how this leads to a multiple-layered reading of the novels without attempting to limit interpretation to a particular, unified approach. Postmodern narrative techniques can enrich the postcolonial task through their similar project of dismantling binaries and hierarchical oppositions, while exploring the lack of closure and transcendence of boundaries in a globalized world. The introduction presents the theoretical standings of postmodernism and postcolonialism and the relation between them. The first chapter proceeds to discuss the postmodern narrative techniques in Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses, while the second chapter explores the cultural implications of such techniques in the same two novels. The third chapter moves to an understanding of how postcolonialism and postmodernism work efficiently together in Shalimar the Clown, to conclude that Rushdie's novels typify the direction of both the postmodern and the postcolonial novel in a world shaped by the process of globalization.