The Satanic Verses Post-Festum : The Global, The Local, The Literary

In the following pages, I do not intend to present a systematic scholarly essay on either the Rushdie affair or the novel that precipitated it, The Satanic Verses.¹ My intention, instead, is to discuss some of what I would regard as neglected aspects of both novel and affair by making a kind of collage of analyses, observations, criticisms and commentaries on several conventional and unconventional issues that this unprecedented international politico-literary scandal threw into such prominence.

I. Globalization and Literature

The 1970s ended with a major international debate sparked by the publication of Edward Said's book Orientalism.² At the time, I contributed, both in Arabic and English, to the polemics, debates and discussions raging practically everywhere about the vexed questions and issues raised in and by Said's book.³

As the controversy unfolded, I was struck by a vague but persistent feeling that there is something special, unique and/or qualitatively new about the universality of the discussions over this whole Orientalism issue. They seemed international, world-encompassing and transcendent of habitual geographical locations, national borders and cultural differences in a most unprecedented way, especially for a work emerging out of the American academy. No book in recent memory, no matter how great, revolutionary, critical and/or offensive, had managed to simultaneously draw such complex and powerful reactions, both positive and negative, from Arabs, Indians, Africans, Americans, Europeans, Latin Americans, Russians, Muslims, Christians, Jews etc., as well as from Marxists, liberals, nationalists, Islamists, rightists, leftists, neutralists, culturalists, universalists, nativists, postmodernists, and much of it through the medium of English.

Similarly, no book before Edward Said's Orientalism had succeeded in commanding the simultaneous and spontaneous attention of highly articulate sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, linguists, literary critics, historians, philosophers, humanists, orientalists, journalists, politicians, diplomats, public intellectuals, immigrants and so on, in all four corners of the earth.

In the early 1980s, I found myself explaining away these novel features of the Orientalism debate by attributing them variously to: (a) A concatenation of some very special and exceptional circumstances such as had surrounded Boris Pasternak's novel Dr. Zhivago, leading to an unprecedented international crisis and debate over both the novel and the Nobel Prize for literature awarded to the author in 1958. But, I, then, dismissed the Pasternak incident as no more than a highly unusual episode of the Cold War at one of its worst moments. (b) The random convergence of various lines of radical concerns, postcolonial interests, and critical intellectual approaches emanating from very many parts of the world and their seemingly accidental intersection at the time of the publication of Said's Orientalism. (c) The earlier stirrings within the field of Orientalism itself, indicating that perhaps the time was ripe for some critical stock-taking, soul-searching and consciousness-raising concerning what the discipline was all about, particularly in those days.

But, then, the 1980s surprised us by ending with an even more protracted and massive transnational, transcultural and transcontinental controversy, row and struggle over Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses. Again, I contributed, both in Arabic and English, to the polemics, debates and discussions raging literally everywhere on the surface of the earth about the vexed questions and issues raised both in and by the novel.⁴

As the Rushdie controversy unfolded, it dawned on me that the universalism of the earlier Orientalism debate was really neither an exceptional circumstance nor an accidental episode, but the beginning of a genuinely new world-wide movement and trend. This became confirmed, first, by the starkly global nature of the Rushdie affair and the singular sweep of the controversies over The Satanic Verses throughout the 1990s; and second, by the equally universal and transcultural attention given practically everywhere around the world to the articles and books of Francis Fukuyama⁵ and Samuel P...