The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie is a postcolonial novel that details the rise of Nehruvian secularism followed by Hindu fundamentalism in post-independence India. Moor Zogoiby, the disabled protagonist, is used as a metaphor to represent the chaotic state of post-independence India; his disability becomes a metaphor for the fragmented nation under religious and political crisis. Disability studies scholars have extensively critiqued the use of disability as a narrative prosthesis or as a deconstructive literary trope that overlooks the experience of bodily difference; however, I argue that The Moor’s Last Sigh uses a different bodily metaphor to ask different questions about Indian nationalism and citizenship. I argue that Rushdie imagines forms of political community that circumvent the exclusionary tendencies of the nation-state; he inverts and disfigures the characters purposely to create a community of alterity. Some of the questions that I seek to address in this presentation include: How does the Moor’s disability inform his position as a citizen? How do citizenship and nationalism distinguish the insider from the outsider? What does it mean to live in a hybrid world while the protection of our rights remains firmly rooted in the realm of the national?
About the presenterSukshma Vedere
I am a Ph.D Student in the English Department at the George Washington University. I am interested in postcolonial and disability studies. My research focuses on the representation of disability in South Asian literature and film.