Literature as Discourse

This article criticizes various ways in which literature is perceived as a privileged discursive zone. It illustrates the ways in which Salman Rushdie employs literary discourse in The Satanic Verses in both deconstructive counters of hegemonic discourses like religion and ethnocentrism and as a vehicle to formulate a polycentric, third‐space epistemology, supposedly liberated from traditional discursive games and motives. The article then moves on to dissect Rushdie's literary ploys, revealing how his own language, and hence literature itself, may be seen as essentializing discourse, repeating traditional discursive features like claims to truth, dichotomizing imagery and strategies of exclusion.