Cultural dislocation in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane : Freedom or anomie?

Abstract

Underlying Monica Ali’s endorsement of liberalism in her novel Brick Lane is a critique of the culturally relativistic views promoted by advocates of postcolonialism and multiculturalism in the West. Stressing the universality of the desire for freedom and autonomy, Ali’s liberal point of view seeks to shed light on the predicament of less powerful members of non-Western cultures, such as women, who are oppressed by the customs and traditions of their cultures. By employing a liberal perspective, however, Ali not only oversimplifies the cultural concerns of the Bangladeshi immigrants in England but also reproduces a problematic and stereotypical picture of Bangladesh. Thus, she vindicates postcolonial arguments regarding the inadequacies of liberal perspectives in understanding non-Western societies and cultures. Espousing different perceptions of cultures and individual agency, Ali and her postcolonial critics also stand for two distinct sets of concerns, experiences, and aspirations. In opposing one another, these two perspectives serve to complicate our overall conceptions of non-Western societies and cultures.

I

Initially, the rather negative reaction shown by postcolonial critics to Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003) may take us aback. As other critics have pointed out, Ali’s novel goes to great lengths to question monolithic stereotypes of the Bangladeshi immigrants in England by stressing both the diversity of their voices and the complexity of their individual trajectories. This is particularly true of Ali’s portrayal of her main character, Nazneen, whose strength and growth toward agency shatters many stereotypes about oppressed Muslim women. ¹ Besides, Brick Lane shows much sympathy for the problems and injustices facing Bengali immigrants in England as a Muslim minority. Ali humanizes her Muslim characters not only by explaining the important socio-political reasons for their feelings of anger against the West but also by underscoring the diversity of views and values they stand for (Hiddleston, 2005: 66). Given all these arguments for Ali’s success in bringing complexity to her depiction of a rather obscure and disenfranchised Bengali community in London’s East End, it may, indeed, be surprising that Ali should have received a rather cold reaction from her postcolonial readers.

However, on closer inspection, this reaction does not appear that untoward. The postcolonial arguments against Brick Lane are rooted in the general dispute between postcolonialism and liberalism. Postcolonial critics have argued that liberalism has built into it a rather superficial and evolutionary conception of traditional cultures and religions that makes it unable to sympathize with the importance non-Western people and immigrants attach to the survival of their cultures. Dismissing traditional cultures and religions either as unimportant or as backward and oppressive, liberalism cannot help its committed adherents understand why non-Western people may be worried about the erosion or loss of their cultures. Ali’s postcolonial critics do not say that she fails to take note of the problems of her Bengali immigrant subjects nor that she does not question Orientalist perceptions of Muslim women in Bangladesh or in London by displaying their desire for autonomy and freedom. Rather, they object that although it claims to represent the situation of Bangladeshi immigrants in England from an immigrant perspective, Brick Lane reaffirms an individualistic liberal perspective that is replete with reductive assumptions about the immigrant experience. The language of individualistic assimilation in which Ali couches Nazneen’s growth, they argue, oversimplifies the cultural concerns of minorities and immigrants by reducing a collective enterprise to an individual one (Cormack, 2006: 713). By employing a liberal perspective, they argue, Ali also ends up reproducing a very stereotypical and problematic picture of Bangladesh. ²

Reexamining Ali’s novel in light of the general dispute between postcolonialism and liberalism, however, may help us understand the reasons why Ali may have adopted a liberal lens in the first place. Contrary to her postcolonial critics, Ali does not endorse liberalism because she does not know about their relativistic perspectives but precisely because she is worried about the increasing popularity of such perspectives in the West. Indeed, Ali opts for liberalism to show her opposition to the culturally relativistic views promoted by postcolonialism and multiculturalism. ³ While many postcolonial critics are loath to admit it, their relativistic defense of cultural differences is not free of problems. Their essentialized and monolithic conceptions of different cultures distort the realities of non-Western societies and cultures. The radical aura surrounding postcolonialism and multiculturalism in the West obscures from view the conservative nature of their arguments in defence of cultures and the grave consequences these may entail for those in non-Western societies and cultures who are oppressed by their traditional cultures and religions. This is particularly true of women from non-Western societies who are most likely to be subordinated by the hierarchical and discriminatory traditions and customs of their ethnic cultures and religions. Emphasizing the universality of the desire for freedom and individualism, Ali seeks to show how liberalism better ensures the autonomy and equality of women in non-Western societies and cultures than relativistic discourses such as postcolonialism and multiculturalism. By unequivocally celebrating the integration of her liberated protagonist into the liberal culture of England, Ali argues that, contrary to postcolonialism, liberal cultures of Western societies such as England are not only compatible with the desires and interests of non-Western immigrants but also advantageous and favourable to them; they present immigrants, particularly women, with opportunities and freedoms that are not available to them in their own traditional societies and cultures.

As we can see, the differences between Ali and her postcolonial critics over the issues of cultures and liberalism are deep and fundamental. Espousing different perceptions of cultures and individual agency, they also stand for two distinct sets of concerns, experiences, and preoccupations. One is individualistic and universal, while the other is relativistic (non-universal) and communitarian (non-individualistic). One worries about the freedom and equality of individuals in non-Western cultures and societies, while the other is concerned about the survival of non-Western cultures and the perceptions of these cultures in the West. One valorizes liberalism as emancipatory, tolerant, and egalitarian, while the other accuses it of reductiveness, intolerance, and imperialism. Understanding the fundamental differences between Ali’s point of view and that of her postcolonial critics, we realize why dismissing one in favour of the other may not be advisable. Both sides have important insights and concerns that cannot be ignored. By completely rejecting one or the other, we are likely to distort or oversimplify our conceptions of non-Western cultures and societies. Instead of dismissing Ali’s liberal point of view, her postcolonial critics should see how it illuminates the shortcomings of their relativistic conception of cultures. Drawing on the relativistic insights of postcolonialism, on the other hand, we can better understand the problems that arise from Ali’s deployment of a liberal perspective in depicting the cultural concerns of non-Western immigrants.

II

We cannot understand Ali’s negative reaction to postcolonialism and multiculturalism without clearly grasping what the latter have advocated. While postcolonial critics may have different conceptions of cultures and multiculturalism, they are more or less unanimous in their opposition to liberalism. ⁴ The problem with liberalism, they argue, lies in its normative assumptions about the human subject, an enlightened, rational individual who treats his/her culture as insignificant and strictly private. The universal human civilization envisioned by liberalism is inhabited by such rational individuals who, regardless of their cultural and ethnic differences, have reached a consensus on the universal validity and superiority of the core values and principles of Enlightenment. From the individualistic and rational lens of liberalism, ways of life and cultures that are less individualistic or secular are automatically dismissed as backward, inferior, and oppressive. Such reductive and evolutionary conceptions of traditional cultures in liberalism, postcolonial critics argue, make it particularly unfit for understanding the cultural preoccupations of non-Western immigrants and minorities in the West. Viewing the integration of non-Western immigrants into the dominant cultures of Western societies as their emancipation, liberals may not understand why they should seek to preserve their traditional cultures or be anxious about their erosion and loss. This is why postcolonial critics campaign against liberalism. Left unchecked, they argue, it gives rise to a coercive and reductive rhetoric of individualized assimilation that is completely at odds with the cultural experiences and concerns of non-Western immigrants. To comprehend cultures as they are perceived by immigrants and minorities, postcolonial critics argue, we need to discard the universal premises of liberalism and adopt a culturally relativistic perspective. Cultural relativism is the idea that there are indeed genuinely different ways of life which are not only incommensurable (cannot be hierarchized) but also essential in their particularity to the functioning and meaningfulness of individual desires and motivations. Questioning universal and individualistic conceptions of human nature, it insists that individuals are never “wholly detached” and “unencumbered”. “From the start”, they are “situated, embedded in a history that locates [them] among others, and implicates [their] good in the good of the communities whose stories [they] share” (Sandel, 1984: 9). This is how immigrants and minorities conceive of themselves and their cultures, postcolonial critics argue. Unless we adopt a culturally relativistic point of view, they maintain, we will not be able to understand what immigrants and minorities have discovered through experience.

Culture becomes so important for many immigrants because, through cultural dislocation, they realize the central role played by their particular cultures in giving force to their desires and identities. Displaced from their own cultures and inserted into a different cultural environment, many immigrants realize that the values and desires of individuals are not derived from a universal human nature but from the conventions and interrelations of their particular society and culture. As the American anthropologist, Roy Wagner, explains in The Invention of Culture, we do not realize the particularity of our culture and its importance in shaping our identities and desires until we experience the “culture shock” that is entailed by cultural displacement (1981: 6). Situated with people who have similar religious, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds, we take our culture for granted and do not appreciate to what extent it is centrally operating in our lives (1981: 6–9). We tend to have what the philosopher Charles Taylor describes as a “monological” conception of our individual identities (1995: 230). We believe our individual identities to lie somewhere in the depth of our interior consciousness, completely particular to ourselves and distinct from our social surroundings. Our social and cultural contexts, we believe, have little or no bearing on our true identities and original selves. Such inattentiveness to the importance and boundedness of our particular cultures changes when we move into settings with radically different cultures. Through cultural dislocation, we become keenly aware of our own cultural differences and how they have shaped who we are, our desires and our values. We realize how differences in cultures are seriously impeding our efforts and weakening our desire to relate to and function in our new surroundings. Suddenly it appears as if we are nothing without our cultures. ⁵ It is the experience of this loss of self, or anomie, that makes cultural dislocation such a transformative experience. It is this anomie that changes how immigrants view their cultures: not as universal but as particular, not as just any culture, but the one particular culture in which they feel at home, the one particular culture that they deem necessary to their humanity, and thus the only culture worth preserving for the following generations. We cannot understand these non-universal and non-individualistic aspirations and preoccupations, postcolonial critics argue, without having recourse to the relativistic concept of cultures. By underscoring both the incommensurability of different cultures and the cultural (communitarian) nature of individual desires and identities, the relativistic concept of cultures helps us understand the importance placed by immigrants upon preserving their particular cultures.

III

By offering an alternative account of human desires and identities, cultural relativism helps postcolonial critics present a more complex and comprehensive explanation of the intricacies that arise from the existence of different cultures. It also helps them call into question the conventional wisdom that equates liberalism with tolerance and understanding by exposing its disparaging conception of traditional cultures and religions. But if cultural relativism is what has made postcolonialism into a revolutionary perspective in liberal Western societies, it is precisely what has made it problematic and threatening to some members of non-Western cultures and societies. Subscribing to the liberal worldview, these members of non-Western cultures may feel oppressed by the traditions and customs of their cultures. From the standpoint of these members, relativistic defense of cultures by postcolonial critics may only serve to empower conservative and reactionary forces in their cultures. This is why they call for a return to the universal and individualistic values of liberalism. Ali’s novel gives voice to the views and concerns of these members of non-Western cultures and societies. Opposing the culturally relativistic views promoted by postcolonialism, Brick Lane seeks to reaffirm the universal validity and superiority of liberalism.

A simple summary of the main plotline of Ali’s novel, however, does not tell us much about the nature of the attack she mounts on postcolonialism and multiculturalism. Set in a Bangladeshi community of immigrants in London, Brick Lane delineates the transformation of its female protagonist Nazneen from passivity to agency. Thanks to the influence of an extremely fatalistic mother in rural Bangladesh, Nazneen has grown to be utterly passive. At eighteen, she submits to an arranged marriage with the much older Chanu and is thus brought to England. Unsatisfied with her marriage but believing that it is no use “fighting against Fate”, she drifts into an affair with Karim, the young middleman who brings her clothes to work on at home. Nazneen displays a similarly fatalistic attitude in her affair with Karim, long after she has become convinced of its futility. The turning point of the novel occurs when Nazneen decides to stay on in London instead of returning with her husband to Bangladesh. As the novel highlights, this marked the first time in which she “could not wait for the future to be revealed but had to make it for herself” (2003: 5). ⁶ Nazneen’s transformation is firmly established by the rest of the novel. Putting an end to her family’s exploitation by the usurer Mrs Islam, she also ends her unsatisfactory relationship with her lover Karim. At the end of the novel, we learn that she has become a partner in a clothing business run by her best friend Razia.

Once we pair Nazneen’s story with that of her younger sister Hasina, however, the different elements of Ali’s attack on postcolonialism become much clearer. Conveyed through a long series of letters, the story of Hasina in Bangladesh provides a sharp contrast to that of Nazneen in England. While Nazneen eventually gains her voice and comes to celebrate her freedom and agency in England, Hasina is constantly punished for wanting to be independent in a traditional Bangladesh. The “love marriage” for which Hasina is disowned by her family proving a failure, she goes to Dhaka where she finds employment in a garment factory. Soon, however, she loses her job on charges of immodesty. The resulting poverty pushes her to prostitution. She marries again but is soon abandoned by her husband who is ashamed of introducing her to his family. The last time we hear of her, she works as a lowly maid for a wealthy family who had taken her from a shelter for fallen women. By pairing Nazneen’s story with that of Hasina, Ali seeks to contrast the empowering and disempowering effects of their respective social and cultural contexts. Hasina’s tale of misery and suffering is closely related to the setting in which it takes place, namely, Bangladesh. According to Brick Lane, Hasina’s troubles arise from her penchant for freedom and autonomy in a traditional society where they are not tolerated. Ali similarly links Nazneen’s story of growth and empowerment to its setting, England, where as her friend Razia says at the end of the novel, “you can do whatever you like” (415). While Bangladesh is represented as a society that relentlessly punishes Hasina for wanting independence and freedom, England is, for Nazneen, a society where she discovers and asserts her autonomy and freedom.

This positive image of England stands in sharp contrast to the one entertained by Nazneen’s husband Chanu. For Chanu, life in England is tragic because it has an alien culture in which they cannot feel at home. From the beginning of the novel, Chanu is distinguished by his obsession with his Bengali culture and heritage. Although he has gone to great lengths to transmit his Bengali culture to his two daughters, he is still worried that, unless he takes them back to Bangladesh, they will be “spoiled” by the surrounding English culture (18). Asked to describe the cultural concerns which keep him from being happy in England, he says:

I’m talking about the clash between Western values and our own. I’m talking about the struggle to assimilate and the need to preserve one’s identity and heritage. I’m talking about children who don’t know what their identity is. I’m talking about the feelings of alienation engendered by a society where racism is prevalent. I’m talking about the terrific struggle to preserve one’s sanity while striving to achieve the best for one’s family. (88)

Deeming the dominant English culture to be at odds with his Bengali heritage and culture, Chanu does not approve of the increasing Anglicization of his daughters. This is why he constantly talks about returning to Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, he argues, they will be free from the cultural alienation and anomie that plague them in England.

The bleak picture of Bangladesh in Hasina’s story is Ali’s response to Chanu. Through Hasina’s story, Brick Lane debunks the romanticized picture of Bangladesh cherished by Chanu as “the happiest nation on earth” (290). Besides highlighting the advantages of life in a liberal England over a traditional Bangladesh, Hasina’s letters also help Ali undermine Chanu’s argument for the importance of preserving their Bengali culture in England. It is precisely a traditional Bengali culture, Ali insists, that is responsible for much of the suffering experienced by Hasina. By moving out of her traditional culture in Bangladesh, Nazneen has, in fact, been freed from the restrictions and injustices it imposes on its women. Thus, contra Chanu, “to be an immigrant”, Brick Lane suggests, is not to “live out a tragedy” (87). At least, as far as women from traditional non-Western cultures are concerned, dislocation from one’s culture may, in fact, amount to freedom and empowerment. Herein lies Ali’s general attack on culturally relativistic perspectives such as postcolonialism and multiculturalism: the sanitized images of non-Western cultures and societies presented by advocates of multiculturalism to rationalize the preservation of non-Western cultures in the West are both artificial and problematic. Obscuring the harsh realities of non-Western cultures, these monolithic and artificially positive images also paper over the predicament of those who are oppressed by the traditions and customs of their ethnic cultures. Contrary to postcolonial critics in the West, Ali argues, not everyone within non-Western immigrant communities is equally invested in preserving their traditional cultures. In fact, many may see the survival of their traditional cultures as the perpetuation of their oppression and subordination. ⁷ This is particularly true of women in non-Western immigrant communities in the West.

Besides the sufferings of Hasina under a traditional culture in Bangladesh, Ali also highlights the pressures facing women from their immigrant families’ obsession with the survival of their cultures. This obsession exacts a high price from female members of non-Western immigrant communities because it reduces them to the principal means by which an out-of-place ethnic culture can ensure its reproduction. Brick Lane gives us a glimpse of these pressures in the story of Nazneen herself. One of the main reasons for which Nazneen ends her relationship with her lover, Karim, is her realization that he, like her husband Chanu, was attracted to her only because she embodied the Bengali cultural identity for which he yearned in exile. When Nazneen asks Karim why he likes her, he replies,

Well, basically you’ve got two types. Make your choice. There’s your Westernized girl, wears what she likes, all the makeup going on, short skirts and that soon as she’s out of her father’s sight. She’s into going out, getting good jobs, having a laugh. Then there’s your religious girl, wears the scarf or even the burkha. You’d think, right, they’d be good for wife material. But they ain’t. Because all they want to do is to argue. And they always think they know best because they’ve been off to all these summer camps for Muslim sisters.

… You are the real thing. (321)

Hearing this from Karim, Nazneen recalls Chanu, similarly, praising her as “an unspoilt girl. From the village” (321). Thus, Nazneen realizes that both Chanu and Karim have cherished her less for who she is than for being “the real thing”: “a Bengali wife. A Bengali mother. An idea of home. An idea of [themselves] that [they] found in her” (382). In this way, Ali demonstrates how women and girls are negatively affected by their immigrant families’ obsession with cultural survival. ⁸

To highlight Ali’s attack on multiculturalism and postcolonialism is not to say that Brick Lane is indifferent to the problems and concerns of non-Western immigrants in the West. On the contrary, Ali demonstrates an acute awareness of such problems. This is particularly true of her depiction of the troubles of Bangladeshi immigrants as Muslims in the West. Through her portrayal of the fictional rivalry between the anti-immigrant far right group Lion Hearts and the Bangladeshi Islamic activist group Bengal Tigers, Ali shows how, as Muslims, Bangladeshi immigrants have become embroiled in the politicized tug of war over Islam in the West. Thus, we see how, like other anti-Islamic factions in the West, the anti-immigrant group Lion Hearts exploits the Orientalist stereotypes of Islam and Muslims as barbarous and violent in order to advance its undemocratic and inhumane purposes. By, first, exposing us to the virulent prejudices of anti-Islamic factions such as the Lion Hearts, Ali helps us understand that the anti-Western sentiments that youth such as Karim espouse in their meetings arise neither from the scriptures of their religion nor from Muslims’ lagging behind the West in wealth, power, and technological advancement, but from particular acts of hostility and aggression against Islam and Muslims in England and around the world. ⁹ To register the widespread nature of the anger of Muslims in the West, Ali shows how the intensity and hypocrisy of the attacks on Islam drive even Nazneen’s secular husband Chanu to the public defence of Islam (206; 217). Ali further undermines the reductive and damaging stereotypes of Islam in the West by underscoring the diversity of views and opinions espoused within the Islamic activist group Bengal Tigers. Contrary to Islamophobic factions in the West, Ali argues, not all Muslim activists are violent fundamentalists.

Thus, it cannot be said that Ali ignores the particular problems facing non-Western immigrants in the West. She registers these problems, but she does not seem to believe that they justify the promotion of culturally relativistic perspectives such as multiculturalism and postcolonialism. Instead of ameliorating the problems of immigrants, these relativistic perspectives may only worsen them and create new ones. By politicizing traditional cultures and advocating for their survival, Ali argues, postcolonial critics only help bring to power reactionary elements in non-Western societies and communities. Liberal Western societies, such as England, may not be free of problems for non-Western immigrants, but they are much more conducive to the flourishing and self-realization of individuals than traditional non-Western societies. Having the story of Nazneen conform, almost completely, to a conventional liberal narrative of individualism is Ali’s way of clinching her argument against postcolonialism and multiculturalism. This is why, at the end of the novel, she goes out of her way to stress the disdain with which the newly empowered Nazneen rejects any desire for political activism on behalf of Islam and Muslims in the West, saying that her days of activism belonged to the period “before [she] knew what she could do” (410). Endorsing the private and apolitical significance given to cultural and religious identities in liberalism, Ali thus rejects their politicization by advocates of postcolonialism.

IV

Emphasizing the universality of the desire for freedom across different cultures, Ali’s liberal perspective helps her give voice to concerns and preoccupations in non-Western cultures and societies that tend to be neglected by postcolonial critics. Besides underscoring the diversity of voices and interests in non-Western cultures, a liberal perspective also helps Ali to speak out non-defensively against the non-egalitarian and restrictive customs and traditions of non-Western cultures and societies. But, if liberalism enables Ali to expose the shortcomings of the relativistic conception of cultures in postcolonialism, it also vindicates postcolonial arguments regarding the inadequacies of liberalism in understanding non-Western societies and cultures. We do not need to be committed relativists to realize that Ali’s postcolonial critics have a point in objecting to the reductive and degraded image of Bangladesh she uses to advance her argument regarding the advantages of a liberal culture in England for the newly emancipated Nazneen. Although, from a liberal perspective, Bangladesh and its culture may appear as oppressive and bleak as they do in Ali’s novel, few can deny that there is something wrong with using such comparisons between Western and non-Western cultures and societies to dismiss the cultural concerns of non-Western immigrants. Ali’s liberal point of view not only misunderstands and oversimplifies the cultural concerns of Bengali immigrants in England but also reinforces the negative and reductive stereotypes of Bangladesh and its culture in the West.

In a pivotal scene of Brick Lane, Ali herself seems to have been struck by the reductive and simplistic nature of liberal evaluations of non-Western societies and cultures. This occurs relatively early in the novel in the debate between Chanu and his friend’s wife, Mrs Azad, over what Chanu describes as the cultural dilemmas of immigration. Dismissing Chanu’s complaints about cultural alienation and the loss of their Bengali culture and heritage in England as “crap”, Mrs Azad proceeds to enumerate the important reasons why they should be happy that they live in a liberal culture and society like England:

Why do you make it so complicated? … Assimilation this, alienation that! Let me tell you a few simple facts. Fact: we live in a Western society. Fact: our children will act more and more like Westerners. Fact: that’s no bad thing. My daughter is free to come and go. Do I wish I had enjoyed myself like her when I was young? Yes! (88–9)

Embedded in Mrs Azad’s comments are the reigning liberal premises about human nature according to which different social and cultural systems can be classified hierarchically, from the most restrictive and backward to the most progressive and liberal. Instead of complaining about the loss of their Bangladeshi culture in England, Mrs Azad, here, argues that they should be happy that they are integrating into its more advanced and civilized way of life. In this scene, Ali seems to have noted the reductive nature of such a dismissive reaction to the cultural problems of immigration because she does not hesitate to contradict Mrs Azad’s statements by underscoring the unhappy state of her family and the vulgarity of her manners. However, by the end of the novel, Ali comes to endorse a position that is actually quite similar to the one expounded by Mrs Azad. Through Hasina’s story in Bangladesh, she, like Mrs Azad, seeks to explain why, contrary to Chanu, Nazneen should be happy to have been freed from the oppressive and backward culture of Bangladesh. Instead of mourning the erosion of their ethnic cultures in the West, Ali’s final vision suggests that non-Western immigrants, like Bangladeshis, should be happy that they are assimilating into the superior liberal culture of a Western society such as England. Contrary to the final vision of her novel, however, Ali was right to notice the reductiveness in Mrs Azad’s dismissal of Chanu’s cultural concerns and anxieties. Chanu idealizes Bangladesh neither because it is the most developed country in the world nor because its culture is very liberal. He idealizes Bangladesh because, through cultural dislocation, he has realized how important that place and its culture have been in shaping his identity and desires.

Besides making her treatment of the cultural preoccupations of dislocated immigrants somewhat crude and insensitive, Ali’s liberal perspective also oversimplifies her understanding of Bangladesh. It makes her focus exclusively on the individualistic values of freedom and individualism and thus disregard the importance of other factors in empowering or disempowering individuals. Here, Michael Perfect’s analysis of Ali’s portrayal of Hasina in Bangladesh is instructive. As Perfect notes (2008), the character of Hasina in Ali’s novel is derived, to a large extent, from Naila Kabeer’s ethnography of the situation of Bangladeshi female garment workers in Bangladesh and London, The Power to Choose (2000). And yet, what is striking about Ali’s usage of this book, Perfect argues, is her reversal of its conclusions regarding the empowering or disempowering consequences of the garment business for women in Bangladesh and England. In Kabeer’s book, it is women in Bangladesh who are empowered by their employment in garment factories and it is Bangladeshi women in England whose situation is barely improved by their involvement in the garment business. As Perfect explains, in Ali’s novel, the exact opposite is the case. Working in the garment factory does not make much of a difference in Hasina’s sad life, while the garment business in London helps Nazneen become independent (2008: 116–19). Unlike Perfect, I do not want to imply that Ali is obligated to faithfully conform to the conclusions and descriptions of the book that inspired her character Hasina. Rather, I want to relate Ali’s inversion of the picture of Bangladesh in Kabeer’s book to her liberal perspective. Equating agency and empowerment exclusively with freedom, Ali cannot consider other important factors that may have a bearing on enhancing or limiting the autonomy and agency of women in different contexts and societies. From Ali’s liberal standpoint, people either live in a liberal society where they are empowered or they live in non-liberal settings where they are oppressed. From her liberal perspective, in other words, the picture of women in Bangladesh as oppressed is a foregone conclusion. It cannot be otherwise. ¹⁰ This is why postcolonial critics have warned against using liberal perspectives in understanding non-Western societies and cultures. Liberalism gives rise to a reductive picture of the world in which non-Western individuals are presumed to have nothing to gain from their cultures except oppression and backwardness.

Finally, the individualistic and non-political form of agency endorsed by Ali risks revitalizing some of the problematic distinctions that her novel had called into question. As I explained earlier, to express her opposition to postcolonialism, at the end of the novel, Ali has Nazneen emphatically reject any desire for political activism on behalf of Islam and Muslims in the West, by saying that her days of activism belonged to the period “before [she] knew what she could do” (410). Endorsing the apolitical nature of Nazneen’s conception of her religious and cultural identity, Ali thus seeks to emphasize the harmony between her individualistic agency and the surrounding liberal culture. The disdain with which Ali has Nazneen reject political activism, however, contradicts her earlier emphasis on the politicized nature of Islam in the West. By turning Nazneen into a “good”, assimilated Muslim who has a properly privatized conception of her religion and culture and who does not politicize them like “bad” Muslims do, Ali undermines her earlier deconstruction of such reductive distinctions between good and bad Muslims. ¹¹ After hearing Nazneen say that her days of political activism belonged to the period before her growth, less informed readers of Ali’s novel are likely to infer that all forms of political activism on behalf of minorities such as Muslims are the work of bad or misguided immigrants. This is while Ali’s novel had gone to great lengths to show that the rise of political Islam among immigrants is neither the expression of the undemocratic character of Islam nor the result of the activities of a few bad Muslims, but a reaction to the proliferation of politically motivated attacks on Islam in the West.

V

Given the predominance of liberalism in Western societies, it is understandable that postcolonial critics should feel defensive about liberal critiques of their relativistic defence of cultures. This defensiveness is further justified when we realize how, at times, even conservative and reactionary forces in the West exploit liberal arguments to advance their racist and unsavoury political purposes against non-Western cultures and societies. By attacking postcolonialism from a liberal point of view, postcolonial critics may argue, authors such as Ali not only reaffirm the dominant negative stereotypes of non-Western cultures in the West but also further undermine the already tenuous position of postcolonial critics in the West. However, this may not be how Ali and others, who, like her, are sceptical of relativistic perspectives such as postcolonialism and multiculturalism, perceive the situation. These concerned sceptics of postcolonialism may argue that, by employing a liberal perspective, they correct the misrepresentations of non-Western cultures that are manufactured by postcolonial critics in the West. By critiquing non-Western societies and cultures from a liberal point of view, they shed light on the suffering of those members of non-Western cultures who are oppressed by the traditional norms and customs of their local cultures.

Viewing the controversy over Ali’s novel in this light shows how the two sides can benefit from sympathizing with the fundamentally different insights and concerns of one another. Studying Ali’s novel could help postcolonial critics understand how threatening and problematic their relativistic conception of cultures may appear to some members of non-Western cultures who believe in the universality and superiority of the modernity promised by liberalism. It could also help them see that, while cultural relativism provides a more complex account of the diversity of cultures and ways of life, it is not free from ethical and epistemological problems. On the other hand, noting the problems that arise from Ali’s employment and endorsement of liberalism in her novel could help other concerned sceptics of postcolonialism understand why completely rejecting the political and cultural insights of postcolonialism in favour of liberalism may not be advisable. Universal and individualistic perspectives such as liberalism may not be plagued by the ambiguities and overgeneralizations that afflict culturally relativistic perspectives such as postcolonialism, but they are too thin and reductive to be of much help in understanding the complexities that arise from the diversity of cultures and the cultural nature of identities and desires. Given our backgrounds, experiences, and circumstances, we may be inclined to sympathize with one or the other side of this dispute, but it is important to remember the fundamentally different and yet equally legitimate views, concerns, and preoccupations of the other side. By offering a worldview completely different from our own, they remind us that human beings are too complex to lend themselves to our neatly crafted formulas.