Discerning Hyper Reality in Mohsin Hamid's Moth Smoke: A Postmodernist Reading

IntroductionMoth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid highlights a frayed world of incompatible and divergent identities that inculcate a feeling of distress and agitation among the individual in any particular society. Born in 1971, Mohsin Hamid spent most of time abroad. He called himself a mongrel that means that he is born of two opposite cultures and backgrounds. The novel portrays simulated world of deceptive and baffling identities, merging with the technological mediation of facts. Hamid's, Moth Smoke is about the decline of values, morality, identification of one's soul and self. In Postmodernity and its Discontents, Bauman (1997) explains, None of us is able to build the world of significations and meanings from scratch; each of us enters a 'prefabricated' world, in which certain things are important and others are (p.8). The myriad world of hyperreal technological facts, seem to occupy the individuals. People like Darashikoh and Changez feel to be so assure of themselves and their destinies. In the end, they find it painful to accept that they are already caught in the web of confusing perspectives. In POSTMODERNISM, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism it is stated that, Each Thought is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting whatever it realized as its Self to its own later proprietor (Jameson, F, 1991, p.193).Moth Smoke reverberates the story of the decline of Darashikoh and his insane struggle with the Baudrillardian world of simulation and mediation where he is in search of his identity. He is in continuous struggle with his fate. Here we can find a complete display of confusing signs that play a vital role in deciding a character's future prospects. In the very beginning of the novel the writer delineates this sharp contrast between these two friends. But here the difference in their social positions is not under discussion. Rather the outcome that technology brings with its wake and thus controls the characters, neglecting their individual personalities in a hyperreal society. What lies at the origin of technology is the vision of a society in which machines replace man, in which humans are unnecessary. We see this vision coming true ..., which have no outside (Clarke, Doel, Merrin and Smith, 2007, p.31).Media, that is, TV, press and other sources are not directly under attack here. On the other hand the way the lives of these characters is affected by developing a hyped atmosphere, becomes the real invisible force that brings unrest and clashes among the characters.Baudrillard tries to bring this point at home that modern society has lost its originality. Everything is fake and based on unreal and artificial scenario. Nothing is original, be it norms, values, relations, social and psychological behaviour and anything that is linked with the human actions and desires. He proclaimed that this artificial reality, that he called simulation, got such a strong hold that old meanings and explanations had vanished. Instead new meanings have emerged. For him sign, that was divided into signifier and signified, no longer held its duality. Signifiers were not in relation with the signifiers any longer, it meant the absence of reality with presence of a mixed and indivisible signifier that had no signified.The first glance at the theory of Baudrillard indicates that it is another vantage point of Jaques Derrida's deconstruction. Derrida's signifier comprised of vast meanings. It has multiple meanings. As a result to know them is entirely impossible. But in Baudrillard's theory the main issue is that signifier holds no meaning whatsoever. This emptiness creates hollowness. That bewilders the vision. In this way in comparison with Derrida's deconstruction, where signifier became dubious due to its multiple reference, quite contrary to that Baudrillard's signifier is void of meaning or any reference. This emptiness and hollowness becomes the main issue and it brings with it the problems in personality. …