The interstice of the comma : five instances of ironic inversion in Salman Rushdie’s East, West

Abstract

O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar a forma como Salman Rushdie usa ironia e humor em sua coletânea de contos East, West para desconstruir ideias preconcebidas sobre o Oriente ao mesmo tempo em que usa a ironia para colocar o Ocidente sob escrutínio similar ao que as culturas orientais são submetidas. Para conduzir essa análise, foram selecionados cinco contos do livro East, West: “The Prophet’s Hair”, “Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies”, “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers”, “Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella Consummate their Relationship (Santa Fé, AD 1492), e “The Courter”. Como escritor indiano diaspórico, Salman Rushdie ocupa uma posição “entre” a cultura orientas e a ocidental, e esse posicionamento intermediário permite que ele borre os limites historicamente construídos entre o Oriente e o Ocidente ao mesmo tempo em que faz uma inversão irônica de temas como religião, lar, pertencimento e a identidade do escritor migrante. Na seção “Identity, Diaspora, and Rushdie’s “In-Betweeness’, ” esses temas e a natureza de seu impacto na escrita de Rushdie, cujo uso da ironia permite a desconstrução da expectativa de leitores sobre o que encontrar em histórias existentes na coletânea East, West foram explorados. Portanto, torna-se fundamental que ironia seja definida, o que foi feito na seção “Conceptualizing Irony. ” Na seção subsequente, foi realizada a análise estendida dos cincos contos, o que permitiu que se conclua que Salman Rushdie promove o trânsito entre fronteiras culturais e geográficas em East, West e que ele é capaz de navegar sua própria posição intermediária usando a ironia e o humor como compasso.

The aim of this work is to analyze how Salman Rushdie uses irony and humor in his collection of short stories East, West to deconstruct some preconceived ideas about the East while using irony to put the West under the similar scrutiny that Eastern cultures are subject to. In order to carry out this analysis, I selected five selected short stories from Rushdie’s East, West: “The Prophet’s Hair”, “Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies”, “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers”, “Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella Consummate their Relationship (Santa Fé, AD 1492), and “The Courter”. As a diasporic Indian writer, Salman Rushdie occupies a position “in-between” Eastern and Western cultures, and this liminal position permits that he blurs the historically built boundaries between East and West at the same time that he provides ironic inversion on themes such as religion, home, belonging and the identity of a migrant write. In the section, “Identity, Diaspora, and Rushdie’s “In-Betweeness’,” I address these issues and explore the nature of their impact on Rushdie’s writings. His use of irony helps deconstruct the readers’ expectations as to what to find in stories such as those found in East, West. Therefore, conceptualizing irony becomes a fundamental step, which is addressed in the section “Conceptualizing Irony.” In the next section, I carry out the extended analysis of each of the five stories which helped draw the conclusion that Salman Rushdie promotes the transit between cultural and geographical borders in East, West and that he is able to navigate his own liminal position by using irony and humor as a compass