NEGOTIATING THE COLONIAL SHADOW: JUNGIAN INDIVIDUATION AND POSTCOLONIAL IDENTITY IN THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST

Abstract

This article combines Abdul JanMohamed’s description of colonial psyche with Carl Jung's theory of individuation to offer a fresh and unique insight into Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). It contends that Changez’s journey transcends the common geopolitical, diasporic and economic tropes and is more an expression of a historically inflected psychic process. This article introduces the concept of colonial shadow integration, a form of individuation that is attuned to the cultural specificities in which the postcolonial subject encounters and integrate aspects of the self repressed under the internalized Manichean binaries of empire. This article studies Changez’s journey from a brightly enacted Wall Street persona, through the devastating eruption of a colonial shadow after September 11, to his complex engagement with Erica as both anima and maya towards the conditional synthesis emerges from Lahore. This article contends that Hamid postulates fundamentalism not as an ideological standpoint but as an internalized psychic struggle, foregrounding the ethical assimilation of a historically troubled shadow as the main challenge of postcolonial selfhood in the contemporary geopolitical capitalist world order.