Writing Back, Emptying Out and Satanic Narration: Why London Wins Out in Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses

摘要

The Satanic Verses occupies a prominent place in the postcolonial canon because it challenges thesocial, historical and political place of London by ‘writing back’ or ‘emptying out’ the city’s imperialresidues. The novel’s narrative acts of ‘emptying out’ echo postcolonial literature’s broaderengagement with the place, legitimacy and ethics of marginalized migrant or diasporic points of viewwithin metropolitan centers. But while The Satanic Verses is imbricated in this postcolonial dynamic,techniques of ‘emptying’ are counterbalanced by the presence of Satan as the novel’s narrator. Bothas a symbolic figure and through the story he tells, Satan is identified with a rather more sinisteraspect of London: as the narrative challenges, resists and reconfigures London, London mounts astronger counter-resistance, absorbing blows, tolerating violence to its structures of power, but inthe end remaining as it is. The novel’s Satanic London represents how London ‘plays’ with socialand cultural identities – allowing marginalized subjects to reimagine themselves and the city – onlyto foreclose any possibilities for agency, social revolution, and economic equality.