Acts of negation : modality and spatiality in the satanic verses

Abstract EN

This paper reads Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses through a postcolonial critical perspective.

It argues that the author rewrites the history of Islam by utilizing postcolonial strategies of historiographic modality and spatiality in order to challenge Islam as a colonizing force and deconstruct what he considers its essentialist creeds.

Ironically, Rushdie negates postcolonial discourse by essentializing Islam and evaluating it from an imperial perspective and a Eurocentric point of view.

Such practice undermines his claims to modality and to spatial history writing and compromises his decolonizing project against Islam.