The War on Terror and the Fiction of Agency: A Critical Analysis of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)

Clicks: 11
ID: 335458
2025
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Emerging

Ranked #24 of 1,121 articles by views in Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 1,121 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
The present study examines how Mohsin Hamid foregrounds the agency of Pakistanis and Pakistani writers in challenging and reshaping the dominant Western discourse. During the war on terror, Pakistan and the United States maintain an ambivalent relationship. Pakistan, supposedly a key ally, was always accused of pursuing conflicting interests and double gamer. Consequently, the Pakistani narrative was not heard in the West and the Pakistani agency often ignored or unnoticed. The present study employs Ambreen Hai’s (2009) three-dimensional model of human agency for textual analysis of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). The model is based on three-sided nature of agency as argued by Hai in her book, Making Words Matter: The Agency of Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. The paper concludes that although Changez as an agent of change tries to reclaim agency, however, his agency is used by the dominant western discourse against him. In addition, the protagonist of the novel remains a non-agent at the end of the novel the way he had been denied agency by American discourse in the beginning of the novel. The researcher recommends that other novels or literary texts may also be explored to understand how other writers tackle the issue of Agency in the wake of post 9/11 socio- cultural and Geopolitical scenarios
Reference Key
imported_1793229726_6ae2839ecab3c Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Irfan Ali Shah
Are you one of these authors? Claim your profile
Journal Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review
Year 2025
DOI
10.47205/plhr.2025(9-III)45
URL
https://ojs.plhr.org.pk/journal/article/view/1281
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.