Though I was too young to remember it, 9/11 is one of the major contemporary events of this generation. After September 11^th many things would never be the same, predominantly the discourse used from news casts to political rhetoric representing the American response to the tragedy in which they victimized themselves and created a culture of fear. In response to the attacks, American’s seemed to experience nostalgia and a renewal of patriotism which caused the United States to take on the role of the aggressor in the Middle East with recognizable colonial undertones. My final essay for ASTU seeks to answer: How is strategic exoticism used in The Reluctant Fundamentalist to represent post-9/11 neo-orientalism? How does this discourse represent who gets to speak?

Towards the beginning of the novel Changez describes the vacation to Athens with a group of “Princetonians” he went on the summer after he graduated. One of the group members, Chuck, asked everyone what they wanted to become, when it was Changez’s turn he said that he hoped to be “the dictator of an Islamic Republic” (29). Hamid writes that everyone was shocked and Changez had to quickly explain that he was joking. This is just one example of, what literature scholar Graham Huggan terms strategic exoticism – times when post-colonial writers knowingly include descriptions in a way that draws attention to the publishing and reading practices which recycle such essentially orientalist images – found in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The way the other character’s in the novel acted in response to Changez’s joke illustrate the way in which westerners other and stereotype certain groups of people, in this case someone from the Middle East. What Hamid alludes to by using strategic exoticism here is, that we all carry with us preconceived notions, narratives, and labels of what it means to be Middle Eastern. Even before the events of 9/11 many Americans applied a Muslim identity to everyone in the Middle East and not only that, but people did and still see religious fundamentalism as a strictly an Islamic phenomenon. So, when Changez jokes that he wants to be a “dictator of an Islamic Republic” this doesn’t seem like a joke to someone who has been exposed to the master narrative of Middle Easterners or Islam in America, in fact it fits the narrative exactly. Strategic Exoticism here and throughout the novel calls the reader’s attention to the binary opposition of the West and the “Orient”, particularly how the West positions itself in relation to the “Orient” of the “other”. Thus, by using Strategic Exoticism The Reluctant Fundamentalist is used to offer an alternative to the western master narrative of 9/11 and by further extension challenges our assumptions and the reality of who gets to speak.

Hamid, Moshin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. 1st ed. Orlando: Harcourt Inc., 2007.