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: With specific focus on the male characters of Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, this paper seeks to re-address the concept of ‘identity’ within a neo-colonial perspective. The theoretical insights for this research have been drawn from postcolonial scholarship on identity, by theorists such as Homi, k, Bhaba and Ashcroft. Bhabha’s concept of mimickery has been used to analyse both, Daru and Changez’s, ambiguous perusal of an identity which is overwhelmingly tainted by the neo-colonial impacts. Whereas Changez grows out of his fascination of the colonist, superiority and delusional sense of identity offered by its cosmopolitanism and returns to embrace his cultural origins in Pakistan. Daru, on the other hand, remains mesmerised by the elite Americanised culture of Lahore, a metaphorical representation of the supposed superior American culture within Pakistan. Both men in the process of ‘mimicking’ the foreign culture lose their sense of belonging, identity, home and even freedom. The comparative analysis of these two characters is significant as their journey of self-realisations, exposes the dilemma of young Pakistani men caught in the clutches of neo-colonialism. This paper highlights and questions the complexities of cultural assimilation and acculturation as well as its repercussions for an individual’s identity, caught at the cross roads of transcultural and increasingly globalised world of today.

Dr. Fariha Chaudhary, Dr. Zia Ahmed. (2019) Neo-colonial Perspectives on Identity: Comparative Analysis of Male Characters in Mohsin Hamid’s Novels Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Journal of Research ( Humanities), Vol LV, Issue 1.
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