Ondes de choc : de la colonisation à la guerre du Cachemire ou la compulsion de répétition dans Shalimar le clown de Salman Rushdie

Abstract

In his ninth novel, Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie constructs the narration around the individual destiny of characters who represent collective history. Thus, the trajectories of two young Kashmiris, Boonyi Kaul and Shalimar Noman, follow, reflect and exemplify the collective history of Kashmir. In the same way, the trajectories of Max Ophuls, United States ambassador to India, and his wife Margaret « Peggy » Rhodes, from war-ridden Europe to a torn, about-to-be partitioned India, follow, reflect and exemplify the worldwide geopolitical question of our time. However, Rushdie does not simply offer an allegory of historical reality with simplistic characters representing national, regional or religious realities. Through this characters, he engages in a profound reflexion on the destiny of nations and seems to defend the hypothesis of a collective compulsion to repeat that stretches from the First World War to decolonisation.