MENACING THE RACIST VOICES: READING SALMAN RUSHDIE’S REPRESENTATION OF THE MIGRANT EXPERIENCE IN QUICHOTTE

Author Name: 1. Dr. Chhutan Dey

Volume/Issue: 04/04

Country: India

DOI NO.: 08.2020-25662434 DOI Link: https://doi-ds.org/doilink/09.2023-43153291/UIJIR

Affiliation:

1. School Teacher, Udaipur, Gomati, Tripura, India.

ABSTRACT

A postmodern retelling of Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605), Rushdie’s novel Quichotte (2019) engages with the migrant experience of life in contemporary America. It explores how immigrants of different racial and geographical origins in America are constantly subjected to racial abuse, violence and pushed to the peripheries of society. Rushdie suggests in the novel that the process of the marginalisation of immigrants is fuelled by racially motivated and artificially manufactured discourses which constantly seek to demonise the immigrants. In other words, for Rushdie, it is the racist descriptions of the immigrants by the white society, which perpetuate racism and marginalisation of the immigrant communities. Hence, for him, the first step to countering racism and the process of marginalisation of immigrant communities is to seize and remake the very means itself i.e., the language by which such descriptions are manufactured and legitimised. This paper explores Rushdie’s representation of the reclamation and assertion of identity by the immigrants through their redescription of the country in their own private language, which becomes an act of resistance and assertion of their rightful ownership of the country, of equal space, which the racist society denies them. Through a close textual analysis of Quichotte, this paper analyses how Rushdie remakes the English language and menaces its power of description by making his characters of Indian origin speak a language that indulges in intentional obscenities and liberties, mixing the standard English language with the vernacular, “Bambaiyya” and disrupting its syntactic and semantic structures as well.

Key words: Racism, white supremacy, migrant experience, marginalisation, racialised space