ESSENTIALIZED REPRESENTATION OF THE EAST: A REORIENTALIST STUDY OF SELECTED PAKISTANI DIASPORIC ANGLOPHONE FICTION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52567/pjsr.v4i1.984Abstract
The present study is oriented to sift the theory of reorientalism that the Pakistani diasporic writers use as a tool to represent an essentialised and glorified picture of their native land. Unlike orientalism, reorientalism deals with how the East is presented as a spectacle of consumption in the West by the Eastern writers themselves. This study examines the issue of literary representation at the global level which goes through Western gatekeepers for publication. Pakistani diasporic writers are instigating a simulated truth instead of a holistic portrayal of 21st century Pakistan by culturally appropriating and mimicking their native cultural and regional aspects. This study proposes that these writers are marketed as insiders by the West but in actuality, they are outsiders as they have lost touch with their roots. The critique of the selected text highlights that contemporary Pakistani fiction requires radical epistemic delinking from the colonial matrix of power and aims to highlight the establishment of epistemic pluriversality and calls for an end of cultural and epistemic exploitation and hierarchies among several epistemologies
Keywords: commodification, cultural appropriation, epistemic pluriversality, essentialism, mis-representation, reorientalism
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