“We understand each other, then”: Binaries at Play in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

As the United States grappled with the fallout of the September 11th terrorist attacks, another, subtler conundrum was arising. As Mohsin Hamid writes in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a chasm of difference arose between the First World and the Third. In Derridian terms, the United States grew to center itself, forming its own complete national identity that defied the Third World's cultural realm. In his writing, Hamid viciously attacks this deepening realm of cultural difference by taking aim at the violent domineering and heteronormative American culture whose imposition in the Middle East served to severe any ties between the two cultures. In this essay, I extrapolate on research by Aldalala'a (2012), Benmoh (2016), and Tilwani (2021), in conjunction with post-structural analytic theory to illustrate how Hamid deconstructs the binary opposition that the First World created against itself and the Third World.