Nicole Falkenhayner

Nicole Falkenhayner is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg,
Germany.

About the book
Tracing representations of the Rushdie affair from 1989 to 2009, this study establishes a
genealogy of how British Muslims appeared on the public scene and how an imaginary
and politics of this subject position developed. The book combines innovative approaches
in the theory of representation with close readings and rhetorical analysis of newspaper
debates, novels, film, autobiography and political publications. It establishes that the
figure of the British Muslim encapsulated the identity politics of a minority group just as
much as the identity politics of Great Britain, and “the West” in general in the last twenty
years. Falkenhayner argues that the imaginary that made the British Muslim was one of
constant deferral of the acceptance of Islam in Europe as an intrinsic part of its
self-image, and that dreams of purity on both the Islamic and the mainstream British
sides of the divide denied an always already hybridized cultural reality.

CONTENTS
PART I: THE RUSHDIE AFFAIR

1. Transnational Takeovers

2. Translation Failures

3. After the fatwa

PART II: FIGURATIONS AFTER THE EVENT

4. The Fanatic Son

5. Making the British Muslim in Literature

6. Making the British Muslim in Film and Autobiography

PART III: EVENTALIZATION TEMPLATES

7. Eventalizing the British Muslim

8. The Figure of the Muslim in Europe

Conclusion

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Europe in a Global Context
Hardback 9781137374943
Apr 2014 £65.00 105.00$ 121.00CAN$
Ebook(s) available