Coly Midnights Children
Coly Midnights Children
Coly Midnights Children
Professor Coly
Colonial and Postcolonial Masculinities
Friday the 24th of May 2013
(Rewriting Herstory)
Despite writing women into his story, Midnights Children,
Rushdie articulates a postmodern, postcolonial, postnationalist politics
centred around the man Saleem Sinai, who writes himself as
metonomy for India, who writes his story as Indias history. Though
theorists such as Cynthia Enloe in Nationalism and Masculinity argue
for the necessity and possibility of feminist nationalisms, feminist
nationalism is impossible because, as Anne McClintock argues in
Imperial Leather, the nation mimics and mirrors the inevitably
patriarchal domestic family structure, forming the patriarchal family
tree of the nation. However, the patriarchy inherent in nationalist
movements does not stop patriarchy from existing outside nationalism.
Rushdies postcolonial, postnationalist narrative carries critique of
postcolonial nationalism in India and on the subcontinent generally,
and while a variety of women with varying levels and expressions of
power appear in this narrative, Rushdies feminist politics are complex,
subtle, and somewhat noncommittal. Rushdies postnationalism
introduces instability into male-domination, though his critique of
nationalism questions history, religion, and homogeneity much more
explicitly than it questions patriarchy. The figures of Reverend Mother,
Indira Gandhi, and Padma play complex, diverse, and subtle roles in
and the Bible throughout the novel. Saleem also links the story of the
nation to his own story, engaging in a critical retelling of history
shaped around the history he wishes to inherit (Price 101). Though
Saleems narrative, through which Rushdie launches his critique of
nationalism, is focused upon himself, a man, the ever-present but
parenthesised character Padma fundamentally transforms the
narrative and thus the history.
While it is obvious that Saleem focuses the narrative he is writing
upon himself, tying his family history, his genealogy, to Indias,
Rushdie writes Padma in. Though the postcolonial nationalist man the
one who is India, no less writes himself into history, to the almost
complete exclusion of his wife, Rushdie does not. Rushdie insists upon
her presence and her influence. Though parentheses, in which Padma
is contained, often indicate side-thoughts unrelated to the rest of the
sentence, these parentheses serve to mark her presence, to draw the
readers attention to her. They also acknowledge that she is outside of
the dominant narrative; she has been excluded. Saleem, then, is not
the only man practicing critical history; through writing Padma back
into this history yet acknowledging her separation, Rushdie also
constructs a preferred history, one constructed from and in fragments.
Padmas constant disapproval of Saleems writing demonstrates a
disdain for this kind of purposeful disseminating of history: But what
is so precious about all this writing-shiting? Padma snorts. Wrist
Works Cited
Ahmed, Leila. The Discourse of the Veil. Postcolonialisms: An
Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism. Ed. Gaurav Desai and
Supriya Nair. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University
Press, 2005. 315-338. Print.
Enloe, Cynthia. Nationalism and Masculinity. Bananas, Beaches, &
Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkely,
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990. PDF.
Kimmel, Michael. Globalization and its Mal(e)contents: The Gendered
Moral and Political Economy of Terrorism. Handbook of Studies
on Men & Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, London, New Dehli:
Sage Publications, 2005. PDF.