The Reluctant Fundamentalist - fju.edu.t · MOHSIN HAMID -- born in 1971 in Lehore, Pakistan. -- lived in the United States from age 3-9. -- attended Princeton, spent a year at the

OUTLINE

1. Theoretical Preamble

2. Introduction –The Novel into Film; Mira Nair and the

Film

3. Changez and his American Dream

4. Erica & Underwood Samson

5. The Development of his Anti-Americanism

6. Bobby Lincoln

7. Fundamentalism Defined

3: BEYOND EUROCENTRISM:

TRAUMA THEORY IN THE GLOBAL

AGE1. Eurocentrism as exemplified in Caruth’s work (e.g. her

treatment of Hiroshima mon amour)

2. Anti-Eurocentrism:

1.PTSD – a Western artefact (Allan Young)

2. “psychiatric universalism”

3. event-based, ignoring “normative, quotidian aspects of

trauma” Type II trauma, complex PTSD, etc. (49)

4.Beyond trauma aesthetics

3. Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna:

1) PTSD --disorder is their reality ("You call it a disorder, my

friend. We call it 1ife")

2) "witch doctor's treatment

3) silence as a coping mechanism

Stef Craps

4: AFFECT, BODY, PLACE: TRAUMA

THEORY IN THE WORLD

1. Talk cure and mourning may not be ways out of

trauma

2. The use of songs – e.g. the post-Partition

trajectorγ of ‘viraha' or ‘longing caused by

separation’

3. ‘Bodhi‘ in front of a Cambodian museum--

recuperation-through-consumption

4. kuduro, the Angolan electronic music-dance

complex

Ananya Jahanara Kabir

MOHSIN HAMID

-- born in 1971 in Lehore, Pakistan.

-- lived in the United States from age 3-9.

-- attended Princeton, spent a year at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and then graduated from Harvard School of Law in 1997.

-- worked for a while as a management consultant in New York City.

-- A secular Muslim, Hamid became a British citizen and, as of 2010, lived in London with his wife, Zhara, where he worked part time as a freelance journalist and brand analyst.

Official homepage

MOHSIN HAMID

Novels:

Moth Smoke – one man’s career of drug abuse, which

ends in a scandalous trial; fundamentalists (Fundo) in

the background.

Reluctant Fundamentalist – the writing started before

911, and continued after it.

Official homepage

MOHSIN HAMID

"As someone who is naturally split between two cultures, the fact that the cultures are becoming so increasingly hostile to each other makes me much more unsettled within myself." NPR Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross on The Reluctant Fundamentalist (audio)

"I believe that the core skill of a novelist is empathy: the ability to imagine what someone else might feel. And I believe that the world is suffering from a deficit of empathy at the moment." Harcourt interview on The Reluctant Fundamentalist

MIRA NAIR•Born in Orissa (Odisha), went to Dehli U. and Harvard U

•11 years in Uganda, now in New York.

•Father raised in Lahore before Partition

•Started with documentaries;

•Salaam Bombay! -- Camera d‘Or at

Cannes 坎城金棕櫚大獎 in 1988 and an

Academy Award nomination

•Mississippi Masala: America as a big Masala, conflicts between the two specific group of diaspora, Afro-Americans and Indians.

9Note: masala;

Bollywood film is called masala film

MIRA NAIR (2)

10Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996)

性典 –very controversial

Vanity Fair (2004) (浮華世界)

Amelia (2009)

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Changez’s American Dream? How is he disillusioned?

2. How is American culture presented by Changez in terms of its Corporate culture and Erica? How about its Pakistani counterpart?

3. Changez vs. Bobby: Similarities/Empathy & Differences? Are they respectively involved in the local AsalMujahideen and CIA? What does the thriller genre add to the sense of suspense?

4. Who are the fundamentalists?

5. Filmic presentation of the cities and their cultures?

CHANGEZ’S AMERICAN DREAM

1. Underwood Samson: Becoming a manager at the

age of 30, crying when given a tie pin

2. Erica: “I don't recognize my own voice anymore.”

0:33 Pretend I’m him.

3. Self-belittling humor –• 00:21 -- “I'm gonna be the dictator of an Islamic Republic...

with nuclear capability.”

• 00:32 -- "Changez, throw a Burqa on me...and confiscate

my college degree, and take me home to Mama."

ERICA = AM-ERICA

1) Erica’s trauma 30:16 (Chris, who died 23

weeks ago)

2) Her work 1:18 –What are the problems?

ERICA’S WORK

US = UNDERWOOD SAMSON

UNDERWOOD SAMSON –CHANGEZ

SOCIAL CLIMBING AND ALIENATION

Manila, Philippines -- 00:36

Manila, Manila,

hide your virgins and your extra

layers of middle management...

'cause we're not here to play.

Istanbul, Turkey – 1:13

We're upping you.

You're the youngest associate in the history of

Underwood Samson.

911

Erica’s work

The father’s work

CHANGEZ BECOMES ALIENATED

• Before 911: at a party, welcome by Jim,

Erica’s father and Erica.

• 00:41 -- Seeing 911 attacks on TV “all I

felt was awe… a split second of pleasure”

• being targeted–

• asked to strip;

• violent verbal attack

• sent to the police station and interrogated

CHARGEZ’S ANTI-AMERICAN

SENTIMENT

– modern-day janissaries 1:26

-- Teaching in college, he is engaged in anti-American protests

“00:41 Bobby: You teach a course in violent revolution at

Lahore University. Your lectures are full of anti American

rhetoric.”

1:42 Fazil: “The Americans speak of equality...then take a

hundred Muslim lives to avenge one life of their own.

They speak of democracy, then support kings and dictators.”

CHANGEZ’S VIEWS OF PAKISTANI

CULTURE

• his family: father a poet

• No “Pakistani dream”

• History of dictators and American intervention

SIMILARITIES & DIFFERENCES

BETWEEN THE TWO CITIES

Lahore and New York –congested, maze-like

00:25

C: You think I had something to do with

this kidnapping, Bobby?

B: I'm not the one you have to convince.

C: Is that the first lie you've told me today?

NEW YORK

BOBBY – IN CHANGEZ’S EYES

0:44 These are the people who tore my office

apart. … you were there.

1:30 I see a man with hash under his

fingernails who likely smokes it alone.

I see the odd white man who lives in the old

quarter... and only ventures out to buy local

fruit and local girls. He's been here so long his

own blood family have forgotten him.

SUSPICION

WHO IS THE RELUCTANT

FUNDAMENTALIST?

1. “Focus on the fundamentals” to expand

interest

2. Religious fundamentalists

3. Fundamentalists discriminating against or

eliminating the other races or cultures in

contemporary society.

4. Changez: 01:44

Our only hope as a people are the fundamental

truths... given to us in the Q'uran.

We do that by focusing on the fundamentals

THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALISTS -- CHANGEZ

AND BOBBY’S DIALOGUE FOR EMPATHY –IN A

THRILLER

For Understanding -- offering tea, Your book on Massoud,

fighting the Taliban. Great stuff

Thriller: Bobby’s unease, CIA surveillance, and impending

danger amidst many strangers, bats, students protest

-- “You're exposed and the clock is ticking on Rainier.”

Plea for understanding –

Bobby: Raineir -- We can protect your family, relocate

them… He's a friend, a mentor, like Jim Cross was to you.

Changez:

These young men were engaged in their own valuation.

Just like Underwood Samson.

Moving human beings in and out of binary columns.

FUNDAMENTALISTS

PAKISTANI PERSPECTIVES

Film Title

Music:

• eight minute duet called "Kangna", sung

by Ayaz and Mohammed for the opening

scene. creating both pleasure &

suspense

• Faiz Ahmed Faiz poetry based songs were

used in the film

OPENING SCENE

SYMPATHY AND UNKNOWN NETWORK

TRADITION

SYMPATHY

THE FILM’S ENDING

Bobby writing the story

WORK CITED

Buelens, Gert, Samuel Durrant & Robert

Eagleston, eds. The Future of Trauma

Theory: Contemporary Literary and

Cultural Criticism. NY: Routledge, 2013.