The Place Violence in Hybrid Identity Construction: A Reading of Salman Rushdie

Abstract

Violence is an important formative force in the construction and performance of identity. This paper discusses how Rushdie employs violence as a trope for the construction and performance of identity in the liminal space which is located at the overlap of cultures. It interrogates how characters in the texts become subjects of violence arising from their special position at points of cultural contact and overlaps. The paper argues that, owing to the nature of their placement, subjects are sometimes compelled to transgress on certain aspects of one culture in order to fit within another culture. The transgressions usually alienate the characters from one culture and drive them to another one which may also reject them because they are perceived as contaminations. The character as such is forced to develop a third sense which is a product of violence and which straddles the two contributing cultures and which are read as contaminations by either culture. The area at the overlap of cultures is fraught with contestations hence the attendant violence.