Postcolonial Identity through the Politics of Language in Salman Rushdie's Shame

Abstract

The study aims to analyse the issue of language politics and postcolonial identity in Salman Rushdie's Shame through the framework of postcolonial literary theories. The research considers the author's use of the English language as a tool of overcoming the colonizer's linguistic hegemony and creation of his unique postcolonial identity by means of the incorporation of native language forms, untranslatability, and hybrid narration techniques. Using qualitative textual analysis method in combination with the theoretical approaches proposed by Frantz Fanon, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, Roland Barthes, and T. S. Eliot, this paper analyses the connection between history, memory, displacement, and cultural identity. It is shown that Shame turns the language into a means of resistance and a site for the constant negotiation of issues of belonging, nationhood, and selfhood. In addition, Rushdie transforms the metaphor of shame from personal one into the collective cultural and political one.