The prevailing tendency among critics is to read the fiction of Hari Kunzru through a postcolonial lens, emphasizing either his themes of fluidity and hybridity, or his cosmopolitan resistance to ...national boundaries. This essay takes a different approach by examining how Kunzru engages notions of political theology. Kunzru uses computer programming, for instance, as a metaphor for divine creation, so that in works like Transmission and Gods Without Men his protagonists, both programmers, confront the notion of hacking the divine "code." In Gods Without Men, this process is achieved through a computer program named Walter that is able to predict first the stock market, and then the course of historical events. Walter is named after Walter Benjamin, who argued that a concealed political theology underlies the logic of modern society. Following similar clues in Kunzru's fiction, this essay explores his diagnosis, on the one hand, of political theology's responsibility for the creation of a modern society of control, and the revolutionary potential of being able to subvert and manipulate that divine code, on the other. In a world where the hegemony of modern capitalism feels increasingly stifling, Kunzru offers a means of escape and resistance by turning society's code against itself.
This article analyzes three contemporary novels that engage with the most recent Iraq war: Point Omega by
Don DeLillo (2010)
, Gods without Men by Hari Kunzru (2011), and The Yellow Birds by
Kevin ...Powers (2012)
. It argues that the novels produce a kind of "connective dissonance" that works to redress what Judith Butler has described as a dehumanizing "derealization of loss" in the context of Western media representations of the war on terror.
Gunnin focuses on black British fiction. He reviews how some recent criticism has associated the realist novel with conservative representations of ethnic communities in Britain. He argues instead ...that form is less significant in understanding the portrayal of ethnic or racial difference than an imagined relationship between characters, author, and reader that relies upon a notion of ethnic authenticity. Furthermore, he suggests that in the recent work of three varied writers (Monica Ali, Caryl Phillips, and Hari Kunzru), people see attempts to replace the comfortable knowledge afforded by the crutch of "authenticity" with an address to the language and boundaries of empathy.
Two novels from the early 2000s set key scenes at the Empire Exhibition in London in 1924: Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist (2002) and Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004). In both novels, the Exhibition ...is clearly intended to enshrine in the collective memory of British citizens a particular, museum-like vision of Britain’s history with its colonies. In part, the imperial propaganda generated by the exhibition is born out of England’s interwar anxiety about the looming breakup of its empire. It is ironic then that in both cases, the exhibits seem to evoke a very different reaction in the characters who encounter them: the presence of real people — specifically real Africans — undermines the tightly ordered fixity of the museum display. Instead it becomes another kind of memory site: messy and unpredictable, with the constant potential to expose the superficiality of colonial stereotypes and bear witness to more jagged and less flattering histories. Indeed, the same anxieties that create the need for stable memories of the past also lead to cracks in the structures of colonial domination, giving characters space to recreate their identities and their collective memories.
Most critics will agree that the adjective cosmopolitan describes not just a way of organizing the world or a type of subject position but also a stance that pertains, in particular, to the ethical ...relation to the other. Here, Shelden examines the concepts of cosmopolitanism and love, the latter of which seems inseparable from the former, if people consider "cosmopolitan" to register a particular sort of ethical relation. Hari Kunzru's Transmission (2004) explores the idea of a specifically "cosmopolitan love," which does necessarily partake of a conventional ethical relation to the other. She argues that Kunzru takes up a truism about love--that it is a "universal" emotion--in order to offer a critique not only of this conception of love, not only of the homogenizing force of this idea, but also of the idea of cosmopolitanism itself. For Kunzru, cosmopolitanism might well promise to produce a global ethics that allows for the admission of difference without demanding the assimilation of these differences to universal sameness.
That's Where Coyote Comes In Gilbert, Erin
Publishers Weekly,
01/2012, Letnik:
259, Številka:
3
Trade Publication Article
For his new novel, Gods Without Men, Hari Kunzru goes into the Mojave Desert with Jesuits, Native Americans, Mormons, veterans, UFO enthusiasts, Iraqi immigrants working as extras in war games, a ...British rock star, and a New York couple traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of their autistic son. In an interview, Kunzru discusses the book.
Hari Kunzru: The Impressionist Kayle, Hilary S
Publishers Weekly,
01/2002, Letnik:
249, Številka:
4
Trade Publication Article
Kunzru's novel, which has already sold in 12 countries, features Pran Nath, an irrepressible 15-year-old boy who is thrown into the streets of an Indian city when his high caste family discovers he ...is the bastard son of an Englishman. In order to survive, Pran takes on many wide-ranging identities, even stealing the identity of an Englishman. This ability to conform to his surroundings, says Kunzru, is key to Pran's survival.
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