Distortion, Messianism, and Apocalyptic Time in The Satanic Verses

• Autores: Clara Eisinger
• Localización: Altre Modernità: Rivista di studi letterari e culturali, ISSN-e 2035-7680, Nº. 9, 2013 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Apocalisse 2012), págs. 81-91
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Salman Rushdie�s novel The Satanic Verses presents its readers with a striking perspective on apocalypse. Taking place in the context of a modernist, migrant worldview, this apocalypse works to unsettle its participating characters by teaching them how to create a world in which they might someday belong. Though often defined as destructive, the apocalypse as I define it involves a reaching for or gesture towards the impossible, which the Verses achieves through massive temporal distortion. Linear time finds itself subverted; characters� narratives speed up or slow down, forcing them to question their various adventures in 1980s London. Rushdie�s protagonist Saladin Chamcha re-grasps and reinvents his world; his other protagonist, Gibreel Farishta, does not. For one man, apocalypse becomes a means of empowerment; for another, it develops into a black hole. Unlike real black holes, however, Rushdie�s apocalypse does not kill all who venture into it, but instead stretches its hardiest entrants both emotionally and intellectually before dropping them into a new universe. Apocalypse and the post-apocalyptic are not therefore to be feared but to be reached for: worthy achievements for those individuals who can survive the risk, the compression, and the disorientation to emerge in a �post� that is not a wasteland but a realm of ceaseless energetic creation�a realm which allows migrants to construct for themselves better lives in the 21st century world