Magic realism and science fiction: Salman Rushdie's inter-generic writing

Abstract

Salman Rushdie's fiction is well-known for its abundant mixes of magic realist and science fiction textual elements. By resorting to three writing strategies, namely "meta-writing," "split-writing" and writing about identity-related issues, Rushdie generates a type of "inter-generic writing" that serves to voice authorial appeals for hybridity, impurity and plurality. Meta-writing is an authorial construction of the neo-historicist verisimilitude justifying thelegitimacy and self-sufficiency of literary writing. Split-writing reveals "the alterity of selves," thus advocating tolerance and pluralism. Writing about identity-related issues is no less than a politicized identity construction, in the quest for multiple postcolonial subjectivities in the "Third Space."