Eastern/Western Place and Placelessness in Salman Rushdie’s “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers”

Abstract

Abstract Written in 1994, Salman Rushdie’s story “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers”, part of the volume suggestively entitled East, West, perfectly thematizes and predicts the East-West cultural conflict which would dominate most of 20th and 21st century politics, economy, and discourse. The story deliberately blurs the dividing line between real and fictional in a magical realist text which masterfully narrates Rushdie’s lifelong identity struggle. With much irony and wit, the multicultural author dwells on what he perceives as obvious shortcomings of both the Eastern and the Western culture. The cultural discourse is permanently intertwined with the one related to ethical versus immoral behavior, and our cultural conditioning which makes us have obviously biased views towards both, as well as with the importance of spatial and cultural paradigms and senses of belonging. Rushdie’s story transposes historical and cultural realities into the realm of the fictional, drawing heavily on nowadays’ global understanding of the terms “home” and “identity”, which have become painfully fluid concepts. Place and placelessness thus beome the central axes around which the story’s culturally tinged narrative evolves.