Of Imperial Trauma; or, Mohsin Hamid’s Critique of American Empire

Abstract

Mohsin Hamid’s second novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist can be conveniently assigned to the literary family of what we now call post-9/11 fiction. Changez, a Princeton graduate and the narrator-protagonist of the novel, starts out as a third-world immigrant working as an analyst at a valuation firm in Manhattan. He considers his life in metropolitan New York a great success, and this encourages him to embrace the American dream wholeheartedly. However, his American dream turns sour and nightmarish in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the United States launches her global war on terror and wholesale intervention in world affairs—a theme that runs through the pages of the novel. In his reflections on the ways that make possible America’s “constant interference in the affairs of others,” Changez also diagnoses that “finance was a primary means by which the American empire exercised its power,” based, of course, on his various Manhattan experiences. Finding the new social-political atmosphere in the US suffocating and unbearable, Changez gives up his work in Manhattan and returns to his hometown, Lahore, campaigning against American imperialism and devoting himself to the cause of fighting American military and economic hegemony. This paper takes The Reluctant Fundamentalist as a fable of infatuation and disenchantment with the US. I shall analyse how 9/11 becomes a defining moment in the life of Changez, shattering his American dream and turning him into an American-made reluctant fundamentalist. I shall also draw on Judith Butler’s ideas of precarious life and livable life to foreground Changez’s critique of America’s failure to show due respect to, and be bound by, an ethical responsibility towards the Other.