Acts of Negation: Modality and Spatiality in the Satanic Verses

This paper reads salman rushdie’s the satanic verses through a postcolonial critical perspective. it argues that the author rewrites the history of islam by utilizing postcolonial strategies of historiographic modality and spatiality in order to challenge islam as a colonizing force and deconstruct what he considers its essentialist creeds. ironically, rushdie negates postcolonial discourse by essentializing islam and evaluating it from an imperial perspective and a eurocentric point of view. such practice undermines his claims to modality and to spatial history writing and compromises his decolonizing project against islam.