POST-9/11 MUSLIM IDENTITY NEGOTIATION IN KAMILA SHAMSIE’S BURNT SHADOWS: A BHABHAIAN MIMICRY READING

Abstract

This article discusses how a post-9/11 Bhabhaian mimic manouevre is played out in Kamila Shamsie’s novel, Burnt Shadows by the protagonist shaping her Muslim identity. The study explores how the novel imagines the fraught articulation of Muslim identity in contemporary, globalized, post-9/11 context of a world where religious and cultural identities are being constantly questioned. I will analyze the characters’ appropriation, mimicry and subversion of changing identities through Homi K. Bhabha's concept of mimicry (the ways in which colonial subjects imitate, reformulate and resist colonial discourse). The research reveals that Shamsie’s heroines struggle with the dynamic of assimilation and resistance as they internalize Western ideologies against whose authenticity they rebel. The paper examines how the deployment of mimicry in the novel serves to reveal paradoxes about post-9 11 Muslim subjectivity and to accentuate persistent influences of colonialism, global conflict upon personal identity. The study further enriches discussions around questions of diaspora, identity and the shaping influence of geopolitical events on literature, with implications for understanding Shamsie’s work in particular as well as the larger debate concerning representation in contemporary post-9/11 writing.