“Silence Breaking”: Investigating Voice and Representation in Selected Postcolonial Novels

Abstract

Under the burgeoning pressure of the 21st Century global mobility of people, it becomes possible to understand that the world of today can no longer be viewed or read through the single lens of the hegemonic discourse Orientalism, but rather through human experiences that bring individuals of various ethnicities and cultural backgrounds together, constructing by that a fluid heterogeneous zone of contact for what were once considered monolithic blocks. The shift of bodies and cultures make the world in front of an ever increasing interconnectedness, what blurs boundaries between East/West as two presumably desperate entities. Therefore, the hegemonic discourse Orientalism, that pictured the Occident as a power that ‘spoke for’ and represented the Orient centuries ago as silent, static and exotic entity, is about to turn obsolete. With the emergence of Transcultural Literature and Writing, the dichotomy of Self/ the Other, resulted out of the discourse of Orientalism that marked polarization and restrictional bounderies, is about to fade away. Relying on Contemporary Postcolonial novels that dominated the best-selling list and awarded ManBooker Prize such as Souief’s (2000) The Map Of Love, Aboulela’s (1999) The Translator, and Mohsin Hamid’s (2017) Exit West, this thesis explores how exactly the postcolonial transcultural narrative intends to challenge the silence imposed by the discourse of Orientalism, by identifying the various ways of speaking and relying on personal narrative and human experiences. In following interdisciplinary approach and using Edward Said’s groundbreaking text Orientalism, Stuart Hall’s Representation theory, Spivack Shakravorty’s “Can The Subaltern Speak?” and most importantly Mikhail Epstein’s Transculture theory as a new model of seeing and being beyond radical Otherness, this thesis demonstrates that Transcultural writers are carving out a contact zone between East and West, wherein they set their differences as ground for similarity based on harmonious coexistence that breeds acceptance, empathy and tolerance.