Abstract

Perhaps the most controversial novel of the 20th century, The Satanic Verses interrupts our binary oppositional assumptions of east and west, sacred and profane, as well as high art and pop culture. Drawing on the work communications theorists (Arnett 2010; 2016; Fisher, 1985), literary theorists (McKenzie 2009; Fowler, 2000), post-colonial theorists (Said, 1978; Bhabha, 1992; Ashcroft, 2001) and philosophers (Natanson, 1998; Deleuze and Guattari, 1975/2003, 1980), the author argues that Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses disrupts modernist, absolutist assumptions by putting forth a post-colonial philosophy of communication. This philosophy of communication recognizes multiple narratives, celebrates hybridity, and subverts the colonial relationship of language and power. In our current historical moment with the rise populism both in the Islamic world and in the west, the interruption to absolutist, modernist paradigms provided by the post-colonial philosophy of communication in The Satanic Verses questions the absolutist, binary oppositional narratives of populism.

Key words: philosophy of communication, post-colonial, The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie