Hegemony and power structures in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses

Abstract: Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Versesis one of the most controversial postcolonial novels, which among a plethora of themes seems to mainly focus on the notion of hegemonic power. The Satanic Verses can partly be read as a denunciation of the British hegemony in which social injustice, racial discrimination and violence, in its different forms, exerted upon marginalized and stigmatized people (such as non-European expatriates) are legitimized by the dominant group and understood as something conventional and normal by the subjugated people. Moreover, this novel encourages the readers to criticize religion as a political tool with the help of which the dominant group can make groups of people subservient to authority. This part of my essay is related to the criticism of hegemony as such. Employing Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony, this paper begins with an investigation of the relationship between the figure of a migrant, violence and cultural hegemony inRushdie’s Britain. In the second part, the link between dream scenes and the ways through which they contribute to the overall argument about hegemony is studied. Finally, the last part of this essay revolves around religious hegemony. Hence, what links all these three sections together is the concept of hegemony and the ways through which hegemonic power is achieved and implemented in this novel.