The Reluctant Fundamentalist
- This Blog is part of task given by Dr. Dilip Barad Click Here.
Pre-Watching Activities:
1. Critical Reading & Reflection o Read excerpts from Ania Loomba on the “New American Empire” and Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri’s Empire. How do these theories reframe globalization beyond the center–margin dichotomy? o Reflect in 300-word responses: How might these frameworks illuminate The Reluctant Fundamentalist as a text about empire, hybridity, and post-9/11 geopolitics?
The theoretical insights of Ania Loomba on the “New American Empire” and Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri’s Empire move beyond the traditional center–margin dichotomy by showing globalization as a networked, deterritorialized system of power. Rather than seeing empire solely as a fixed center dominating distant peripheries, these frameworks view it as a complex web where economic, political, and cultural forces operate transnationally, creating multiple sites of both dominance and resistance.
In the context of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, this reconceptualization of empire is crucial. Mohsin Hamid’s novel and Mira Nair’s film adaptation situate their protagonist, Changez, in the heart of American corporate capitalism Wall Street before charting his gradual alienation in the aftermath of 9/11. Here, empire is not just a matter of military force or territorial occupation; it is embodied in the ideology of corporate power, the pervasive reach of global finance, and the racialized gaze that polices identity in a supposedly borderless world.
Hybridity, as theorized through Bhabha’s “third space,” becomes central to understanding Changez’s identity. He exists between East and West, navigating the privileges of elite education and corporate success while increasingly aware of his cultural and racial otherness. The “New American Empire” operates not only through overt geopolitical strategies like the Global War on Terror but also through subtle cultural processes mimicry, suspicion, and marginalization that shape how individuals like Changez are seen and how they see themselves.
By reframing globalization as a dispersed network of economic, political, and cultural power, Loomba, Hardt, and Negri’s theories allow us to read The Reluctant Fundamentalist as more than a story about terrorism or identity crisis. It becomes a narrative about how post-9/11 geopolitics and neoliberal capitalism intersect to produce fractured, “reluctant” identities those who both belong to and resist the structures of empire.
2. Contextual Research o Investigate Hamid’s background and the timeline of writing the novel. Note how the 9/11 attacks reshaped his narrative. o Write a short summary (150 words): What is the significance of Hamid having begun the novel before 9/11 but completing it thereafter?
Mohsin Hamid began drafting The Reluctant Fundamentalist before the September 11, 2001 attacks, but the events profoundly reshaped the narrative. Initially conceived without the charged post-9/11 context, the story was restructured to reflect the seismic cultural and political shifts that followed. By situating Changez’s personal journey within this altered landscape, Hamid was able to explore how identity, belonging, and suspicion became reframed under the “New American Empire.” The attacks not only transformed global geopolitics but also intensified scrutiny of Muslim and South Asian identities, themes that became central to the novel. Changez’s disillusionment, once a more personal arc, evolved into a critique of both religious extremism and the corporate-state fundamentalism of the post-9/11 world. Writing across this historical rupture allowed Hamid to capture the tensions of hybridity, mistrust, and resistance that define life between East and West in the age of the Global War on Terror.
While-Watching Activities:
1. Character Conflicts & Themes o Father/son or generational split: Observe how corporate modernity (Changez at Underwood Samson) clashes with poetic-rooted values though more implicit, think via symbolism or narrative tension. o Changez and the American photographer (Erica): Watch how objectification and emotional estrangement are depicted visually and thematically. o Profit vs. knowledge/book: Look for cinematic metaphors of commodification versus literary or cultural value (e.g., scenes in Istanbul).
1. Father/Son or Generational Split
In both Hamid’s narrative and Nair’s adaptation, the tension between corporate modernity and rooted cultural values appears subtly. Changez’s rapid ascent at Underwood Samson symbolizes assimilation into the ideology of profit-driven globalization, while his Pakistani background rich in poetry, tradition, and humanist sensibility lingers beneath the surface. This split is not an overt rebellion but a quiet fracture, representing the generational and cultural negotiation between modern capitalist aspirations and inherited poetic, communal ethics.
2. Changez and Erica (American Photographer)
The relationship between Changez and Erica serves as a metaphor for the broader East–West dynamic. Erica’s inability to fully see Changez beyond her projections reflects a form of cultural objectification. Her emotional estrangement, especially after 9/11, mirrors the growing political and racial alienation Changez experiences in the U.S. Cinematically, this is shown through framing distance in shots, muted color palettes and through moments where Changez is physically present yet emotionally excluded.
3. Profit vs. Knowledge/Book
Underwood Samson’s mantra of “focus on the fundamentals” embodies commodification’s logic, reducing complexity to market value. By contrast, scenes set in Istanbul especially those invoking history, art, or architecture evoke cultural depth and continuity. These moments stand as visual counterpoints to Wall Street’s sterile corporate spaces, suggesting the enduring value of knowledge, literature, and cultural heritage against the flattening effect of profit-centered modernity.
2. Title Significance & Dual Fundamentalism o Monitor moments where Changez reflects on the nature of “fundamentalism” does the film visually link religious and corporate forms of extremism? o Note scenes where Changez’s reluctance emerges does the film capture his ambivalence toward both terrorism and corporate dominance?
Title Significance & Dual Fundamentalism
The title The Reluctant Fundamentalist operates on two intertwined levels religious and corporate. In the film, corporate fundamentalism is embodied in Underwood Samson’s relentless profit-focus, visually reinforced by sleek glass offices, minimalist décor, and depersonalized meeting rooms. Religious fundamentalism appears more in the geopolitical background news footage, tense security checks, and overheard conversations rather than in direct action. Mira Nair often uses parallel visual cues to draw links: the rigidity of corporate analysis mirrors the unyielding ideological certainty associated with religious extremism.
Changez’s “reluctance” is shown through lingering close-ups, hesitant body language, and his quiet withdrawal from both worlds. His ambivalence is evident in moments where he critiques U.S. foreign policy but also resists aligning himself with militant violence. Istanbul sequences, with their layered history and cultural hybridity, visually underscore his search for a space beyond binary loyalties. The title thus encapsulates his unwillingness to fully submit to any single, absolutist ideology.
3. Empire Narratives o Identify how the film portrays post-9/11 paranoia, mistrust, and dialogue across borders. How are spaces of ambiguity used to suggest complicity or resistance?
Empire Narratives:
In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, post-9/11 paranoia is conveyed through subtle yet persistent visual and narrative cues airport interrogations, suspicious glances from colleagues, and the quiet shift in tone when Changez’s ethnicity becomes a point of unspoken scrutiny. The film frames these moments not as isolated prejudices but as symptoms of a broader imperial mindset in the “New American Empire,” where security logics blur into racial profiling.
Dialogue across borders occurs both literally in Changez’s conversation with the American journalist in Lahore and symbolically, through the film’s shifting settings: Wall Street, Istanbul, and Lahore. These transitions embody the negotiation between cultures, with each location carrying its own historical baggage of empire and resistance.
Spaces of ambiguity are crucial. Dimly lit streets in Lahore, Istanbul cafés, and even sterile corporate boardrooms become arenas where complicity and resistance coexist. By refusing to offer clear moral resolutions, these spaces allow Changez’s story to complicate the neat binaries of victim/perpetrator, East/West, and fundamentalist/liberal.
Post-Watching Activities:
1. Discussion Prompts (Small Groups) o Does the film provide a space for reconciliation between East and West or does it ultimately reinforce stereotypes? How successfully does Nair’s adaptation translate the novel’s dramatic monologue and ambiguity into cinematic language? Debate: Is Changez a figure of resistance, a victim of Empire, both or neither?
Ans:
1. Reconciliation or Reinforcement of Stereotypes
The film positions itself as conciliatory, offering moments of dialogue and mutual recognition, particularly in the framing conversation between Changez and the American journalist. However, it remains entangled in the cycle of orientalism and re-orientalism. While certain scenes humanize both sides, others lean on familiar visual tropes exoticized Eastern settings, shadowy streets, and hyper-visible security tensions that risk reinforcing cultural stereotypes even as they attempt to dismantle them.
2. Translating Monologue & Ambiguity to Cinema
Hamid’s novel unfolds entirely through Changez’s monologue, sustaining a rich ambiguity about his intentions and affiliations. Nair adapts this by intercutting the Lahore café dialogue with flashbacks, using shifting timelines, close-ups, and tonal contrasts to maintain uncertainty. While cinema inevitably externalizes some of the novel’s interior tension, Nair’s pacing, framing, and use of off-screen space keep much of the ambiguity intact, though arguably with a slightly more conciliatory tone than the text.
3. Changez: Resistance, Victim, Both, or Neither?
Changez embodies both resistance and victimhood. As a victim, he experiences the racialized suspicion and alienation triggered by the post-9/11 climate. As a figure of resistance, he rejects both corporate fundamentalism and militant extremism, carving out an intellectual and moral space beyond binary loyalties. Yet his “reluctance” complicates the labels he is neither a radical hero nor a passive casualty, but a hybrid figure shaped by, and negotiating within, the structures of empire.
2. Short Analytical Essay (1,000 words) o Prompt: Using postcolonial theory (hybridity, third space, orientalism, re-orientalism), analyze how the film represents—through visual and narrative strategies the complexity of identity, power, and resistance in a post-9/11 world. o Support with reference to the novel’s framing, the film’s adaptation choices, and relevant scholarly critiques (e.g. Lau & Mendes on re-orientalism).
Negotiating Identities in the “New American Empire”: A Postcolonial Reading of The Reluctant Fundamentalist:
Mira Nair’s 2012 adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist offers a layered cinematic exploration of identity, power, and resistance in the shadow of the post-9/11 world. Drawing on postcolonial theory particularly Homi Bhabha’s concepts of hybridity and the “third space,” Edward Said’s orientalism, and Lau & Mendes’ formulation of re-orientalism the film reframes the novel’s intimate monologue into a broader dialogue across cultural, political, and narrative borders. It interrogates both religious and corporate forms of “fundamentalism,” situating personal identity within the wider structures of empire and globalization described by theorists such as Ania Loomba, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri.
Hybridity and the Fractured Self
Hamid’s Changez is the archetype of the hybrid subject. Educated at Princeton and employed at the elite valuation firm Underwood Samson, he initially thrives within the ideological and economic core of the “New American Empire.” Yet he remains tethered to the poetic traditions and communal sensibilities of his Pakistani upbringing. This dual affiliation is what Bhabha calls the “third space” a liminal zone where cultural meanings are negotiated, often under pressure from dominant narratives.
Visually, Nair represents this hybridity through spatial contrasts. The sleek, glass-and-steel architecture of Wall Street scenes conveys the sterile precision of corporate capitalism, while the Lahore café setting is textured, warm, and layered, suggesting history, community, and narrative depth. Istanbul, a city straddling East and West, becomes a visual and thematic metaphor for Changez’s own in-between state.
Orientalism and Re-Orientalism
Edward Said’s concept of orientalism where the East is imagined through the West’s lens of exoticism and difference permeates the post-9/11 backdrop. Changez’s life in the U.S. changes dramatically after the attacks: the racialized gaze intensifies, colleagues’ tones shift subtly, and his physical presence becomes subject to suspicion. Nair portrays these moments not through overt hostility alone but through small gestures, glances, and silences, highlighting how structural prejudice manifests in everyday interactions.
Yet Lau & Mendes’ idea of re-orientalism where Eastern authors and filmmakers engage with and sometimes replicate orientalist tropes in responding to Western audiences is also relevant. Nair’s attempt at a conciliatory narrative includes scenes that humanize both sides, but also moments that risk re-inscribing familiar imagery: shadowy urban landscapes, call-to-prayer soundscapes, and the framing of Lahore as both culturally rich and politically volatile. This tension mirrors the hybrid nature of the text itself: a critique of empire that nonetheless moves within the representational circuits of that empire.
Corporate and Religious Fundamentalism
The novel and film both broaden the meaning of “fundamentalism” beyond its religious connotations. Underwood Samson’s mantra “focus on the fundamentals” functions as an allegory for corporate fundamentalism: a rigid, profit-driven worldview that reduces complexity to quantifiable value. In parallel, the geopolitical climate after 9/11 is shown to be shaped by equally unyielding ideological positions, whether in the name of counterterrorism or religious extremism.
Nair links these forms visually through parallels in framing and tone. Boardroom meetings are shot with the same cold precision as military briefings; news footage of conflict is intercut with corporate analysis scenes, suggesting a shared logic of control and domination. This visual strategy underscores Loomba’s and Hardt & Negri’s claim that empire today is deterritorialized, operating through networks of capital, media, and governance as much as through armies.
Ambiguity and Narrative Framing
Hamid’s novel unfolds entirely through Changez’s first-person monologue to an unnamed American in a Lahore café, creating an atmosphere of sustained ambiguity: Is the American a spy? Is Changez confessing or warning? Is violence imminent? Nair adapts this by retaining the café conversation but intercutting it with flashbacks to Changez’s time in the U.S. and Istanbul. The result externalizes much of the novel’s interiority but maintains ambiguity through pacing, lighting, and incomplete information.
Close-ups on Changez’s face during the café scenes invite the viewer to search for truth in his expressions, while the camera’s occasional shift to the American’s wary glances reminds us that mutual mistrust frames the exchange. This interplay echoes Bhabha’s “third space,” where meaning emerges not from unilateral truth-telling but from the negotiation of difference.
Post-9/11 Paranoia and Spaces of Ambiguity
The film’s empire narrative is built on the everyday paranoia and mistrust that took root after 9/11. Security checks, casual racism, and media discourse form a background hum to Changez’s personal and professional life. Yet Nair also invests in spaces of ambiguity dimly lit Lahore streets, Istanbul cafés, and even corporate lobbies that resist fixed meanings. These locations allow complicity and resistance to coexist, mirroring Changez’s own reluctance to fully align with either corporate America or militant opposition.
By refusing to provide clear resolutions about Changez’s politics, the American’s role, or the ultimate outcome of their meeting the film resists the binary logic of the Global War on Terror, which demands clear-cut categories of ally and enemy.
Resistance, Victimhood, or Both?
Changez emerges as both a victim of and a resistor to empire. He suffers from racial profiling, cultural alienation, and the loss of personal relationships in the U.S., positioning him as a casualty of post-9/11 geopolitics. Simultaneously, his eventual rejection of Underwood Samson and his decision to return to Pakistan mark acts of resistance not toward militant extremism but toward any ideology that demands totalizing loyalty.
This reluctance captured in the film’s title is what makes Changez such a complex figure. His resistance is intellectual and moral rather than militant; his victimhood is real but does not define him entirely. Through this complexity, Nair and Hamid offer a character who destabilizes both Western and Eastern narratives about identity in a time of empire.
Conclusion:
By integrating postcolonial concepts of hybridity, third space, orientalism, and re-orientalism, The Reluctant Fundamentalist emerges as a text deeply engaged with the complexity of identity, power, and resistance in the post-9/11 era. Nair’s visual strategies contrasting spaces, parallel framings, and carefully cultivated ambiguity translate the novel’s monologue into a cinematic language that retains much of its theoretical depth while engaging with a global audience.
The film’s greatest achievement lies in its refusal to offer simple answers. It neither fully reconciles East and West nor wholly condemns either side. Instead, it inhabits the contested third space where identities are hybrid, loyalties are fractured, and narratives of empire remain unsettled. In doing so, it reflects the enduring condition of our globalized, post-9/11 world: one in which the boundaries between victimhood and resistance, complicity and critique, remain permeable and perpetually in negotiation.
3. Reflective Journal o Reflect on your own positionality as a viewer: Did the film shift your perspective on issues of identity, power, or representation? How might these reflections deepen your understanding of postcolonial subjects under global empire?
Reflective Journal:
Watching The Reluctant Fundamentalist made me more aware of how narratives of identity and power are rarely as straightforward as political discourse often presents them. As a viewer, I began with an awareness of post-9/11 geopolitics shaped largely by Western media framing where the lines between “us” and “them” are drawn sharply, and suspicion is a normalized part of security culture. The film unsettled that clarity.
Through Changez’s journey, I saw how identity under global empire is shaped not only by personal choices but also by systems that impose suspicion, commodify talent, and control movement. His hybridity navigating Princeton’s privilege, Wall Street’s corporate ethos, and Lahore’s rooted traditions resonated as a reminder that belonging is often conditional when power is unequally distributed.
The film also made me question my own interpretive habits. Was I unconsciously searching for “proof” of Changez’s innocence or guilt? That reflex reflects the same binary logic the film critiques. By inhabiting ambiguous spaces and resisting simple categorization, The Reluctant Fundamentalist forces viewers to acknowledge their own position within the circuits of representation and empire.
This reflection deepens my understanding of postcolonial subjects as more than victims or rebels; they are negotiators, translators, and critics, often operating in the contested third space Bhabha describes. Their identities are not static but constantly redefined in response to the shifting forces of globalization, orientalism, and re-orientalism.
In that sense, the film does not just tell Changez’s story it implicates the viewer, making us confront how we participate in sustaining or challenging the very structures it portrays.
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