Browsing by Author "Hayat, Muhammad"

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    Preserved versus Subverted Stereotypes of the East - West Binary in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)
    (University of Management and Technology, 2017) Hayat, Muhammad
    The present thesis aims to study the evolution of the two oppositional blocks of the East - West stereotypes, as presented by Mohsin Hamid in his 2007 novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, through the conceptual framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, theories of postmodern philosophy, and core elements of Orientalism. The present MPhil project attempts to answer the following research questions: which of the East - West stereotypes does Mohsin Hamid preserve and which does he subvert, what are the effects of the auctorial devices on the culturally stamped audience, what is the role of nostalgia in Hamid’s message and how does it connect to his two other auctorial techniques, the frame story technique (the mise en abyme technique) and the dramatic monologue technique? Therefore the study draws its conclusions based on the research questions. The ‘Opposite’/ the ‘Other’ geo-political and cultural hemisphere are constantly (mis)judged in terms of these stereotypes. Consequently, a lot of (mis)representing imagery is created and erroneous judgments, tensions and even aggression between the East and the West. These global-scale socio-political stereotypes create a misleading, erroneous discourse which dramatically influences the everyday, micro-scale individual and his identity crises. This is what I intend to investigate in my MPhil thesis. The discourse of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, 2007 is compared and contrasted with the discourse articulated by the Occidental literature, music, paintings and films, cartoons and literary works the same issue. As a result of the investigation, it has been discovered that the East is misrepresented by the discourse deployed by the Occident for the Orient. The Occidental literature, music, paintings, films and cartoons present the Orient as weak, backward, mad, colonized, and with less technology. The author of this project wants to conduct some interviews and future researches can be conducted on the differences and oppositional impacts of such literary stereotypes in terms of age, socio-educational background, and exposure to other cultures.