The Functions and Varieties of Postcolonial Satire in V.s. Naipaul's the Mystic Masseur, Hanif Kureishi's the Buddha of Suburbia, and Noviolet Bulawayo's Glory

Abstract

This thesis examines the various forms and functions satire fulfills in three different postcolonial novels. As a mode of writing satire can offer unfiltered critique and take varying shapes and forms. With its openness to take different shapes or forms, satire lends itself easily to the purposes of postcolonial fiction. The various uses of satire in the chosen novels; namely V.S. Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur, Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, and NoViolet Bulawayo's Glory, demonstrate that postcolonial satire is often characterized by the flexibility of both postcolonial condition and satire. The satirical elements of all these novels also remove the authorial expectations of a "postcolonial author" as satire is oppositional by nature, which parallels similar resistant attributes of postcolonial writing. Consequently, using satire allows these authors to make criticisms with regards to the postcolonial realities they know, from an ironic distance. The ironic distance allows these authors to freely criticize the postcolonial realities in question. Hence, all these novels can be regarded as products of the authors' personal reflections on these postcolonial realities. In The Mystic Masseur, Naipaul's employment of satire enables him to show his ambivalent point of view on his homeland, Trinidad. In The Buddha of Suburbia, the satire of the novel subverts the conventional expectations of a Bildungsroman. In Glory, Bulawayo makes use of satire's openness to capture the diverse voices of Jidada, a fictionalized version of her homeland of Zimbabwe. All these novels make critiques of these contexts through satirical ridicule, irony, parody, and exaggerations from clearly subjective perspectives. Moreover, these novels also question the performative nature of postcolonial state and identity politics. This aspect is a common thread in all three of the texts. Colonial mimicry is oftentimes similar to parody, and the novels illustrate this idea through the performative roles the characters take on. Through the analysis of the stylistics features of these novels, this thesis aims to show how the satire and the satirical elements of the chosen novels function as means to reveal the absence of truth behind these acts of performativity.