This blog is task assigned by Prof. (Dr.) Dilip Barad, Department of English, (MKBU). It focuses on the relationship between globalization and postcolonial studies through two research articles: Globalization and the Future of Postcolonial Studies and Globalization and Fiction: Exploring Postcolonial Critique and Literary Representations. The task explores how globalization affects postcolonial identity, culture, economy, hybridity, and resistance. It also applies these ideas to a film to understand how postcolonial experiences are represented in a globalized world
Article: 1
GLOBALIZATION AND THE FUTURE OF POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES
This infographic is based on the article “Globalization and the Future of Postcolonial Studies.👇
How globalization reshapes postcolonial identities
The article's central move is to argue that postcolonial studies' old vocabulary margins and centers, colonizer and colonized no longer maps cleanly onto a globalized world. Hardt and Negri's Empire is the key reference point: unlike European colonialism, this new order has "no territorial center of power" and no "fixed boundaries," instead ruling through "modulating networks of command" that manage "hybrid identities" and "flexible hierarchies."
That shift matters for identity specifically colonial identity was defined against a clear metropole; postcolonial identity under globalization is defined against a diffuse, networked, often invisible system of power (finance, trade regimes, digital platforms, security regimes).
This is why O'Brien and Szeman's point in the article is important: treating "US power" as simply a new global center actually obscures how power now operates, because identity and domination are dispersed across transnational flows rather than located in one place. A postcolonial subject today isn't just negotiating a former colonizer they're negotiating supply chains, visa regimes, algorithmic surveillance, and a "War on Terror" security apparatus that racializes and sorts people (as the article's 9/11 section stresses) regardless of old colonial geography.
Global capitalism's cultural and economic effects
The article gives you two economic frameworks in tension:
- Friedman's "flat world" / Dell Theory globalization as integration that supposedly democratizes opportunity and even prevents conflict through supply-chain interdependence.
- Stiglitz and Sainath's counter-view the world is "not flat," and "Market Fundamentalism" (Sainath's phrase) functions almost as a religion, generating inequality and, notably, feeding "angry, despairing recruits" into fundamentalist movements of all kinds a direct link between economic dispossession and radicalization.
Culturally, this cashes out as a double bind for postcolonial subjects: global capitalism offers inclusion (via markets, migration, education, consumption) while simultaneously demanding assimilation into a dominant economic-cultural logic that's still coded as Western/American. Chomsky's point in the article sharpens this trade deals don't redistribute wealth between nations so much as within them, meaning the postcolonial elite may be drawn into global capital's inner circle while the majority is left more precarious, splitting "postcolonial identity" internally along class lines rather than just along colonizer/colonized lines.
Connecting this to The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mira Nair, 2012)
This film is an almost perfect dramatization of the article's argument.
Changez Khan's arc mirrors the "flat world" promise and its collapse.
He's a Pakistani who thrives at Princeton and lands at a top Wall Street valuation firm the very embodiment of Friedman's flat, meritocratic globalization, where talent anywhere can compete globally. His job literally involves calculating the human and economic cost of corporate restructuring across the world, i.e., he becomes an agent of the market-fundamentalist logic Stiglitz and Sainath critique someone who serves capital's interests, at first without question.
9/11 is the hinge, exactly as in the article.
The film uses 9/11 as the moment when Changez's identity is suddenly reprocessed not as global professional, but as a racialized, suspect "Muslim" body. This is the article's point about the New American Empire and the Global War on Terror made personal: a decentered, networked system of power (Hardt and Negri's "Empire") that had absorbed him as labor now marks him as threat, subjecting him to detentions, strip-searches, hostility showing how the security state re-imposes exactly the center/margin, us/them binary that Empire theory claims to have dissolved.
His disillusionment tracks Chomsky's and Sainath's critique. Changez comes to see his Wall Street work as complicit in a kind of "private tyranny" (Chomsky's term) valuations that gut companies and workers abroad for shareholder gain. His turn away from finance toward teaching and activism in Lahore is essentially him rejecting market fundamentalism as a doctrine, much as Sainath describes it "destroying more human lives than any other" ideology precisely because it crosses all boundaries.
The frame narrative (the journalist interview) dramatizes the "clash of narratives" the article's final section describes the same tension in the ACTA report debate, where critical, dissenting scholarship (Loomba, Eakin, Foner) is treated as suspect or unpatriotic. Changez is literally interrogated to determine whether his critical perspective on America makes him a terrorist sympathizer the real-world equivalent of Stanley Kurtz's push to police "anti-American sentiment" in postcolonial scholarship.
Article: 2
GLOBALIZATION AND FICTION: EXPLORING POSTCOLONIAL CRITIQUE AND LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS
From economic critique to psychic critique
The article's thinkers Stiglitz, Chomsky, Sainath critique globalization structurally: institutions, trade policy, capital flows. Postcolonial novelists tend to take that same structural violence and relocate it inside the individual consciousness. Where Stiglitz asks "who does the IMF disadvantage," a novelist like Adiga or Roy asks "what does it do to a person's sense of self to live inside that disadvantage." This is the shift Homi Bhabha's concept of hybridity and Franz Fanon's writing on colonized psychology make possible: globalization isn't just an economic system imposed from outside, it's a condition lived from inside a fractured identity.
Adiga's The White Tiger (already discussed in the article as satire of social mobility) works this way: Balram's "entrepreneurial" self-making mimics the very market logic Stiglitz condemns, but Adiga shows that mimicry is corrosive Balram escapes the "Rooster Coop" of caste only by internalizing and then weaponizing the amorality of the system that oppressed him. That's a very postcolonial move: the colonized/exploited subject doesn't escape the system by opposing it from outside, but by grotesquely becoming it. Bhabha would call this a form of "colonial mimicry" repetition with menace.
Roy's Ministry of Utmost Happiness does the opposite: instead of one character absorbed into the market, she assembles a fragmented cast (a hijra community, Kashmiri separatists, displaced villagers) whose very formal fragmentation mirrors Gupta's point in the article about movements having a "diverse and fragmentary character." The novel's structure refuses the coherence that a nation-state or a global market wants to impose it insists identity and resistance are necessarily plural, not unified into one clean ideological banner.
Hybridity as both wound and resource
A recurring postcolonial move distinct from the mostly Western authors in Barad's list (DeLillo, McEwan) is treating hybridity ambivalently: it's simultaneously what globalization inflicts (a forced, often humiliating mixture of cultures, languages, and value systems) and what allows resistance (code-switching, irony, doubled consciousness as a survival tool). Authors like Mohsin Hamid, Kiran Desai, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie extend this:
- Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) directly picks up where the article's 9/11/War on Terror thread leaves off. Changez, a Pakistani Princeton grad working in New York finance, embodies globalization's promise (meritocratic mobility, the "flat world" Friedman celebrates) and then watches that promise curdle after 9/11 into suspicion and racial profiling. His "reluctance" is the novel's central hybridity crisis: is he fundamentalist in religion, or fundamentalist in finance (his job literally involves reducing companies to their "fundamentals")? Hamid uses that pun to link the article's two threads market fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism showing they're structurally the same mode of totalizing certainty.
- Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (2006) splits its narrative between a retired judge in Kalimpong and his cook's son working illegally in New York kitchens, showing globalization's two faces simultaneously: the fantasy of the West as sold to migrants, and the degrading reality of undocumented labor.
Film: The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mira Nair, 2012)
Since Hamid's novel translates well to screen and covers exactly the terrain Barad's article ends on (9/11, the "New American Empire," the War on Terror as constitutive of globalization), it's a strong film companion piece.
Nair's adaptation frames the story as an interrogation: Changez tells his story to an American journalist (who may be a CIA operative) in a Lahore café, with the implicit threat of violence hanging over the conversation. This framing device does formally what the article's Hardt-and-Negri quote describes about Empire power that is "decentered," not located in a visible army but diffused into surveillance, suspicion, and the assumption of guilt. The film's visual grammar constantly intercuts Changez's Wall Street success (glass towers, valuation spreadsheets) with Lahore street life and later with images of drone strikes and interrogation rooms, making the connection between finance capital and the War on Terror explicit in a way the novel only implies through wordplay.
Where DeLillo's Cosmopolis (per the article) shows anti-globalization protest as an external threat converging on the billionaire protagonist, Nair's film locates that antagonism inside the protagonist himself Changez is both the financier and the suspect, both the beneficiary and the target of globalization's violence. That's arguably the sharper postcolonial move: rather than dramatizing globalization as protesters-versus-elite (as in DeLillo or Newman), it dramatizes the identity crisis of someone who is structurally both at once.
The throughline
What connects these postcolonial texts to the theorists Barad cites is a shared refusal of globalization's claim to be a neutral, universalizing force. Stiglitz calls market fundamentalism a disguised "religious fundamentalism"; Hamid literalizes that pun through Changez's dual identity; Roy and Adiga insist that the "flat world" (Friedman) is not flat at all when viewed from below it's a rooster coop, a fragmented mosaic of unequal access. Postcolonial fiction and film, in other words, don't just add more examples to the pro-/anti-globalization ledger the article builds they relocate the whole conflict from the street (protests, WTO summits) into the self, showing that the deepest site of globalization's violence, and its resistance, is the hybridized postcolonial subject.
When the Market Becomes a Religion: A Postcolonial Reading of Globalization in Fiction and Film
Postcolonial Critique: Empire Without a Center
This reframing changes the question postcolonial critique asks. It is no longer simply "who is dominating whom," but: what happens to selfhood when domination has no single address? Fanon described the colonized psyche as fractured by a visible colonizer. But what happens when the colonizer is a spreadsheet, an IMF policy, or an algorithm when, as Sainath notes in Barad's article, market logic "cuts across all national, cultural, geographic, religious, and other boundaries," equally at home "in Moscow as in Mumbai or Minnesota"?
Under this diffuse Empire, the postcolonial subject is caught not between two cultures, but between the promise of global belonging and the reality of conditional, revocable inclusion. This tension is exactly what Mira Nair's film dramatizes.
Applying the Framework: The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Based on Mohsin Hamid's novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist follows Changez, a Pakistani Princeton graduate who rises fast at a New York valuation firm. His job is to reduce companies to their "fundamentals" and recommend layoffs in the name of efficiency he is, quite literally, an agent of the market fundamentalism Stiglitz names. At first, Changez embodies Friedman's "flat world" fantasy: talent from anywhere can rise anywhere, borders dissolving before merit.
Barad's article, quoting Stiglitz's direct rebuttal to Friedman, insists that "the world is not flat... in many ways, it has been getting less flat." Nair's film enacts this reversal almost scene for scene. After 9/11, Changez's brown skin and Muslim name make him instantly, retroactively suspect: strip-searched at airports, stared at on the street, treated as a threat by the very system that had just celebrated his ascent.
Two features make this a genuinely postcolonial text, not just a political thriller:
- The fusion of market logic and security logic. Changez's employer's mantra "focus on the fundamentals" becomes, after 9/11, indistinguishable from the surveillance state's demand that he prove his innocence and loyalty. Capitalism and the War on Terror are not two separate forces in the film; they are the same gesture wearing two faces.
- The decentered, faceless nature of his antagonist. Nair's framing device Changez narrating his life to an American who may be a CIA operative, in a Lahore café under implicit threat of violence visualizes Hardt and Negri's "decentered" Empire almost literally. There is no single villain, no colonial office, just a diffuse, ambient suspicion that follows Changez across two continents.
This is where the film moves beyond DeLillo's Cosmopolis, which Barad describes as staging anti-globalization protest as an external force converging on a billionaire protagonist crowds outside, Eric Packer inside his limousine. Nair internalizes that same conflict. Changez is not the protester and the financier in two separate bodies; he is both at once, in one body and that doubling is precisely what Homi Bhabha's concept of colonial mimicry describes: the colonized subject who learns the colonizer's language so fluently that he becomes almost, but not quite, one of them, and is punished for the "almost."
Bollywood Example:
A Postcolonial Reading of Swades (2004)
Ashutosh Gowariker’s Swades: We, the People (2004) can be understood through Dilip Barad’s discussion of globalization, postcolonial identity, cultural hybridity, and economic inequality. The film follows Mohan Bhargava, an Indian working at NASA in the United States, who returns to his village, Charanpur. His journey reflects the tension between global opportunities and local responsibilities.
Globalization and Identity
Mohan represents the globalized postcolonial subject. Although he is professionally successful in America, his return to India makes him reconsider his cultural identity and sense of belonging. He exists between two worlds, making his character an example of cultural hybridity.
Globalization and Inequality
The contrast between NASA and Charanpur highlights the unequal effects of globalization. While Mohan works in a technologically advanced environment, the village struggles with electricity, poverty, education, and social inequality. The film therefore challenges the idea that globalization benefits everyone equally.
Centre and Margin
The United States initially appears as a global centre of technological power, while Charanpur represents the marginalized local community. However, the film questions this hierarchy when Mohan brings his technological knowledge back to the village. His hydroelectric project shows how global knowledge can be adapted to local needs.
Resistance and Alternative Development
Mohan eventually chooses community development over simply pursuing personal success abroad. His decision represents a form of resistance to a purely market-oriented model of globalization. The film suggests that development should include social responsibility and the empowerment of local communities.
New York (2009)
Kabir Khan’s New York (2009) can be read through Dilip Barad’s discussion of globalization, postcolonial identity, the New American Empire, and the War on Terror. Like The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the film examines how the events of 9/11 transformed the lives and identities of Muslims living in the United States.
9/11 and Postcolonial Identity
The film shows how 9/11 changes Omar’s and Samir’s experiences in America. Samir, who had earlier lived a relatively integrated life, becomes a target of suspicion because of his Muslim identity. This represents the fracturing of postcolonial identity under the pressure of global political events.
Islamophobia and Racial Profiling
Samir is subjected to racial profiling, interrogation, and detention by American authorities. His identity changes from that of an ordinary student and citizen to that of a suspected terrorist. This illustrates how the War on Terror created new divisions between “us” and “them.”
America as a Global Power
Through its representation of surveillance and state security, New York reflects Barad’s discussion of the New American Empire. Power operates not only through military force but also through institutions of surveillance, interrogation, and security. The film shows how global political power can directly affect individual identity.
Belonging and Alienation
Before 9/11, Samir, Omar, and Maya experience America as a place of education, friendship, and opportunity. After 9/11, Samir becomes alienated from the society in which he had built his life. His experience demonstrates the instability of belonging in a globalized world.
Broader Implications: Postcolonial Thought in a Globalized World
This analysis suggests that postcolonial critique can no longer only ask "who colonized whom." It must also ask how domination now operates through systems that claim to be neutral markets, security protocols, meritocracies and what it costs individuals to live inside those systems while never being fully trusted by them.
Barad's article closes by insisting that fiction's power lies in holding together the "dominations and hegemonic attempts" of global capital with the "diverse protests and movements" that resist it. The Reluctant Fundamentalist extends that insight by showing that resistance does not always take the form of a street protest. Sometimes it is a single person's refusal to keep translating himself for a system that will never fully claim him.
In an age of "Globalization 4.0," where technology, finance, and security are increasingly fused, that refusal the decision to stop performing belonging on someone else's terms may be one of the last, and most necessary, forms of postcolonial agency left.
References:
Barad, Dilip. “Globalization and the Future of Postcolonial Studies.” Journal of Higher Education and Research Society: A Refereed International, vol. 10, no. 2, Oct. 2022, pp. 186–196. ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376374570_GLOBALIZATION_AND_THE_FUTURE_OF_POSTCOLONIAL_STUDIES
Barad, Dilip. “Globalization and Fiction: Exploring Postcolonial Critique and Literary Representations.” Journal of Higher Education and Research Society: A Refereed International, Oct. 2022. ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376371617_GLOBALIZATION_AND_FICTION_EXPLORING_POSTCOLONIAL_CRITIQUE_AND_LITERARY_REPRESENTATIONS
Nair, Mira, director. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. IFC Films, 2012
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