A Re-Orientalist Critique of Moni Mohsin’s The End of Innocence

Abstract

The complicity of Western intellectuals in optimizing the oppression of the Orient even after the end of European empires is a much-debated issue within postcolonial literary circles. This argument is mostly centered around the critiques of European modernity doctrine which is held as a new face of the Imperialist project. West maintains its superiority over the East through different modes, among them diasporic fiction is identified as serving this project by Lisa Lau. In particular, Lau’s idea of re-orientalism reveals the involvement of migrant writers who highlight the inferiority of their indigenous cultures in their fiction. By considering the re-Orientalist perspective with its attention to the suspicion of meta-narratives and repetition of the stories already popular among Western readers, this paper points out the subtle ways in which formulaic representation of characters, emplotment of the story in specific socio-cultural Pakistani society and the narratorial references to historical and political happenings of the Pakistani society re-construct the orient as ‘other’. This paper concludes Moni Mohsin’s The End of Innocence as a cultural construct serving the European agenda of colonization, wherein the novelist has depicted the backward, sensual and illiterate Pakistani culture through the stereotyping of the indigenous population.