‘To be born again, first you have to die’: Westbound Air Transports as Initiation Rites in Rushdie’s Novels
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25 mars 2022
- doi: 10.4000/books.pulm.14353
- isbn: 9782842697679
- eisbn: 9782367814087
https://www.openedition.org/12554 , info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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esclavage commonwealth transports Empire Britannique slavery Commonwealth transports British Empire Political Science Public Admin. & Development POL028000 JPQBSujets proches
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Cécile Leonard, « ‘To be born again, first you have to die’: Westbound Air Transports as Initiation Rites in Rushdie’s Novels », Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, ID : 10.4000/books.pulm.14353
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One of Rushdie’s recurring images features Indian migrants on an airplane en route to Great Britain. The inaugural scene of The Satanic Verses may be well known, but several similar crossings are to be found in The Moor’s Last Sigh and The Ground beneath her Feet, too. Such East-West passages recall what Edward Said had once described as the ‘voyage in’: the ex-colonised sets foot on the ex-colonizer’s land and responds to the very colonial gesture. This paper shows how Rushdie’s writing tends to represent those crossings in terms of initiation rites, which contribute to create and consolidate postcolonial identity. Thanks to the celestial environment and to the limbo-like nature of the aircraft, the migrant crosses imaginary frontiers (images of membranes or moulting skin abound) and experiences profound metamorphoses. The structure of initiation (separation, transition and reintegration) works as the framework through which characters achieve their political and individual coming-of-age.