Multiculturalism, Interculturalism, Transculturalism and The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The most influential theoristsof multiculturalism and interculturalism have attempteda rigorous re-examination oftheir proposals, asdemonstrated byrecent publicationssuch as“Interculturalism versus multiculturalism –The Cantle-Modood debate” (2015) and Multiculturalism and Interculturalism: Debating the Dividing Lines (2016). BothTed Cantle and Tariq Modood have acknowledgedthe need to revise the concepts of interculturalism and multiculturalism as a response to the rapidly changing circumstances of contemporary societies. This paper seeks to: briefly review recent assessments ofinterculturalism and multiculturalism; attemptto establish a dialogue between the interculturalism-multiculturalism debate and the preceptof transculturalism (Dagnino 2012, McLeod 2011); and exemplify theusefulness of the transcultural approach in the exegesis of literary fictions such as Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist(2007), a novel that because it operates at the level of both multicultural and intercultural encounters is able to richly contribute to these debates and discourses. The paper argues for the salience of critical terms such as“transnational writer”, “transnational literature”, “transculturality”and “transculturalism” as they offer a critical vocabulary particularly appropriate for the study of the movementsand migrations of people that are depicted with increasing regularity intwenty-first century literature in English