The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Secularism and the death and return of the author: Rereading the Rushdie affair after Joseph Anton

Secularism and the death and return of the author: Rereading the Rushdie affair after Joseph Anton
Secularism and the death and return of the author: Rereading the Rushdie affair after Joseph Anton

In what ways has the contemporary British novel served to contribute to the ethos of secular liberalism that underpins the ideology of the colonial present before and after the “War on Terror”? This article seeks to address this question through a rereading of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and its critical reception. Beginning with a discussion of the secularism/theology binary in Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author”, the paper considers how the ideology of secularism that Barthes attributes to the birth of the reader has shaped and influenced the public understanding of the Rushdie affair before and after 9/11. With close reference to Rushdie’s memoir, Joseph Anton, the essay proceeds to address how Rushdie’s own account of the production and reception of The Satanic Verses in Joseph Anton might be regarded as a particular form of secular misreading that calls the authority of the book’s implied author into question. By addressing questions such as these, this article suggests that Rushdie’s literary reworking of Islamic history in The Satanic Verses and his defence of this reworking in Joseph Anton demand a rethinking of the relationship between the ideology of secularism and postmodern theories of reading. Such a rethinking, I suggest, also demands a consideration of the ways in which the contemporary figure of the emancipated reader is implicated in the secularist ideology of the colonial present.

0021-9894
316-331
Morton, Stephen
3200c49e-fcfa-4088-9168-1d6998266ec1
Morton, Stephen
3200c49e-fcfa-4088-9168-1d6998266ec1

Morton, Stephen (2018) Secularism and the death and return of the author: Rereading the Rushdie affair after Joseph Anton. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 53 (2), 316-331. (doi:10.1177/0021989416686647).

Record type: Article

Abstract

In what ways has the contemporary British novel served to contribute to the ethos of secular liberalism that underpins the ideology of the colonial present before and after the “War on Terror”? This article seeks to address this question through a rereading of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and its critical reception. Beginning with a discussion of the secularism/theology binary in Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author”, the paper considers how the ideology of secularism that Barthes attributes to the birth of the reader has shaped and influenced the public understanding of the Rushdie affair before and after 9/11. With close reference to Rushdie’s memoir, Joseph Anton, the essay proceeds to address how Rushdie’s own account of the production and reception of The Satanic Verses in Joseph Anton might be regarded as a particular form of secular misreading that calls the authority of the book’s implied author into question. By addressing questions such as these, this article suggests that Rushdie’s literary reworking of Islamic history in The Satanic Verses and his defence of this reworking in Joseph Anton demand a rethinking of the relationship between the ideology of secularism and postmodern theories of reading. Such a rethinking, I suggest, also demands a consideration of the ways in which the contemporary figure of the emancipated reader is implicated in the secularist ideology of the colonial present.

Text
10 Morton FINAL REVISED.doc - Accepted Manuscript
Download (137kB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 25 October 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 6 June 2018
Published date: June 2018
Organisations: English

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 405720
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/405720
ISSN: 0021-9894
PURE UUID: 997ef1bd-3b27-47d4-9f95-0daa4e699574

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 18 Feb 2017 00:22
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 05:01

Export record

Altmetrics

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×