Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte and the Post-truth Condition

Abstract

The emergence of ‘post-truth’ has dramatically affected the contemporary socio-political discourses. The blurring of the distinctions between fact and fiction has become ostensible owing to the proliferation of social media and the pivotal role played by cyberspaces in creating volatile identities. The erosion of objectivity and the creation of a Baudrillardian ‘hyperreality’ have destabilized the position of truth irrevocably. The meteoric rise of far-right populist governments across the world with their jingoistic, xenophobic and parochial brand of politics, the erasure of subjective autonomy and invasion of privacy have pushed the world to the brink of moral anarchy, devoid of ethical values and veracity. Salman Rushdie’s latest work Quichotte (2019) is a postmodern rendering of Miguel De Cervantes’ picaresque novel Don Quixote. This paper attempts to critically analyse the novel vis-à-vis the ‘post-truth condition’. The evolution of the concept of truth is traced through the ideas of various philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, Jean Baudrillard and other philosophers in order to ascertain the origin and theoretical implications of ‘post-truth’. Rushdie has foregrounded the contemporary socio-political issues like the impending catastrophic consequences of climate change, the prevalent opioid crisis and the precarious position of immigrants who are often victims of racist violence. He has characteristically employed magic realism and narrative pyrotechnics in the novel. The various intertextual references, allusions to popular culture, and autobiographical traces in Quichotteare also to be explored.