Contraste con la teoría

Before I attempt a more thorough answer, I want to state a few remarks

concerning what my analysis does not seek to propose. The narrative schemes analyzed so far, repetition and fragmentation in Little Mountain, hyperbole and digression in Midnight’s Children, have all been seen as signs of literary

movements. Under such rubric (i.e., localized signs defining broader movements or literary trends), the reflections of Midnight’s Children’s narrator contained in his “manifesto” on narration may also serve as definitive signs of the text’s postmodernist outlook. Moreover, the narrator’s hopeless quest for larger meaning coupled with the narrative’s simultaneous deployment of the absurd could also serve as a justification for the influential argument that Rushdie’s novel indeed belongs to the canon of the postmodernist novel. While making such a claim is not wrong per se, a claim of this sort overshadows the novel’s more significant contributions outlined in the third chapter for the sake of

proving yet once more that literature of or about the so-called third-world merits serious consideration, not necessarily as a result of its own specific aesthetic qualities but for its coevalness (read: similarity) to what is being written elsewhere.

A comparable argument could be proposed with regard to the specific approach to narration by repetition, fragmentation of narrative cohesiveness, focalization, and point of view the reader encounters in Khoury’s novel, though it is not at all clear whether the definitive verdict in this case would grant Little

Mountain the status of belonging to the canon of modernism or postmodernism.55

Khoury’s novel, as we have seen, is presented as having finally pushed ahead and entered into the realm of the contemporary novel, leaving behind the lagging or still developing tradition of the Arabic novel.

My intention, however, is not to use the analysis of the novels’ literary devices either to celebrate their aesthetic “maturity” or to argue for their

inclusion (and by extension, their authors’) into one literary club or another, be it the club of modernism, postmodernism, or to world literature.56 Instead, what I pursue in this final chapter is in many ways a continuation of the line of thought established in the second and third chapters, namely looking at the way in which these same narrative elements (which, I concede, could undeniably be read as markers of literary modernism or postmodernism) should actually be read as treating a more basic yet more intractable question, doing so through intervening to achieve a readjustment of modernity’s relationship to nationalism as well as providing an opportunity to rethink conventional assessments of the advent of modernity.

This readjustment is especially remarkable as it is brought about through narrative elements which are not in any clear or definitive way inimical to conventional ways of positing “national consciousness.” Instead, their specific

55

Starkey writes that Khoury’s work is “variously described as ‘modernist’ or even ‘post-modernist’” (149).

56

World literature is undoubtedly a slippery designation. I think it is more productive to think of this designation as a network than a body of specific works. Thinking of world literature as a network allows us to define the works based on their impact or influence and would prevent us from delimiting the designation through criteria, criteria which would be in need to constant readjustment.

intervention in narrative, as elaborated upon in the previous two chapters, engenders a force which could be seen as one that strives to tackle the resilient suppositions of national consciousness rather than serve as its diametric

opposition. These narrative elements, by virtue of their dialectal forgetting of the corrosively sacred force of national consciousness, end up creating stylistic conditions whose influence reaches beyond the questions of nationalism and national identity. This is so mainly because they push against the set of assumption normally associated with what is termed as the “condition of

modernity” by penetrating under the groundwork from which modern identity emanates.

It is now time to go back to the question with which I begin this chapter. Is the purpose of the analysis limited to elaborating stylistic approaches which celebrate individuality? If the short answer to this question is simply, “no,” according to what terms, then, the longer one about identity, similitude, and difference is to be pursued? In order to show the ramifications of the particular treatment of the principles of individuality and nationality in these case studies, the longer answer must add to the central categories henceforth interrogated (those of individual identity and the nation) the undeniably broader category within which the former two operate—modernity.

As a way of integrating the inescapable problematics of modernity into this analysis, I start with an exposition whose goal is two-fold: to narrow down the broad, umbrella term “modernity” so as to focus on those issues applicable to the context at hand before providing an overview of the ubiquitous problems relating to definitions, interpretations, and critiques that arise almost anytime

modernity is invoked. With this two-fold goal taking up a significant portion of this chapter, the focus then shifts to demonstrating the necessity—perhaps even the urgency—of an alternative assessment of modernity and to explaining how the narrative-based critique of national identity also leads to the undoubtedly more daunting task of interrogating the standard assessments of modernity. This task is especially daunting in those contexts that experienced the ramifications of modernity’s introduction as part of the projects of colonialism and imperialism.