Abstract
This paper explores the complex configuration and negotiation of notions of ethical nomadism and deterritorialization as manifested in Manzu Islam's novel Burrow. Burrow is predicated on a sophisticated and intricate engagement with writers and theorists as diverse as Forster, Dante, Conrad, Rushdie, Harris and Deleuze and on an intricate interweaving and fusion of cross-cultural philosophical, historical and spiritual experiences and imperatives. Islam's novel, this paper suggests, works to instigate a new ethical deterritorializing aesthetic that, while informed by these sometimes competing, often intersecting, cross-cultural philosophical, religious and theoretical narratives, is not limited or restricted by them. Focussing primarily on Tapan Ali's series of interrogative rhizomic journeys, the paper examines how Burrow disrupts and undermines linear and fixed determinations of historical, geographical, cultural and even spatial specificity, thereby dismantling notions of molar subjectivity, and enabling the emergence of a uniquely deterritorialized, molecular self that repudiates any attempted discursive containment of the subject without, however, losing sight of the importance of the subject as an historical-political presence.