Ideological Worldliness and Westoxification in Shamsie’s Home Fire

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire by employing Edward. W. Said’s conceptions of the worldliness. The study also aims at identifying and establishing an author’s deterministic representation of Pakistani diasporic Muslims. Said believes that each text is worldly as it is conceived and created by an author situated in the world whose worldliness is determined by his cultural, ideological and political affiliations. The paper intends to explore whether Shamsie perceives Muslims; both radicalized and westernized, as a potential threat to humanity. Shamsie’s latent Westoxification determines her selection of sarcastic remarks, combination and representation of events in such a way that the Muslims are perceived, stereotyped and stigmatized as irrational, sentimental and violent. Ideological worldliness of the narrative suggests that Shamsie has created a narrative to manifest her latent orientalism that makes her represent the moderate Muslim majority through a fraction of radicalized Muslim minority. The paper establishes that Islam in general and Pakistan in particular are stigmatized in Home Fire.