ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses (1988) and the following controversy known as the Rushdie affair to argue that this is an important moment in the history of Anglophone world literature, since it is through these events that one can trace the global reach of the canon. On the one hand, this chapter shows, the novel generated so much debate across unexpected fields that in effect it erased almost every other claim to world prominence; on the other hand, this prominence was gained at the expense of the diasporic groups, whom I call the “minor-subaltern.” Using Rushdie’s own formulation of an irreducible opposition between literature and religion, this chapter interrogates if the new Anglophone world literature is a secular category. This question is posed at the crossroads between colonial history and post-imperial British politics, and it traverses various archives, debates, and textual traditions of the past two centuries.
