The purpose of this paper is to discuss selected aspects of Salman Rushdie’s depiction of human corporeality in his novel Midnight’s Children within the framework of new materialistic Posthumanism.
1. Political changes and global events are mirrored by physical phenomena in the bodies of the human actors in the novel. Rushdie illustrates a close correspondence between the material and the immaterial and shows how the world is created by meaningful ‘intra-actions’ between human beings and their surroundings: each act of perception or performance the protagonist carries out is already involved in giving shape and visible expression to the world. The novel’s macro-theme is the one of a profound connection between an individual and a collective. Personal history does not only intersect with political history, but it mirrors it with uncanny accuracy: Saleem’s grandparents fall in love at the same time when I World War ends, his grandmother ends her three years of silence, lashing out at her husband the very day that America drops the atomic bomb on Japan etc. Rushdie shows how the global political events intermingle and overlap with experiences of individual humans, suggesting that it is not a matter of coincidence but the result of some sort of intelligent plan being implemented or a pre-planned story unfolding. That translatability of the macro scale to the micro scale and the other way round is characteristic of Karen Barad’s theory of agentive materialism where the same phenomena take place on different levels of organisation of matter, from the subatomic to the biosphere. When regarded from that point of view, there is no radical difference between what happens to an individual, to a whole country and to an atom as all of them undergo similar changes throughout the time of their existence: they experience breakup, are attracted by somebody or something, develop new function or modify their identity and contribute importantly to the shape and meaning of the world. The impotence of the narrator towards the end of the novel – caused by forced sterilisation – in a way mirror the impotence of the country to be fully independent and to gain the much wanted stability.
Saleem, who stands for India in the novel, is biologically the son of a British citizen raised by Indian parents. His very person illustrates complexity and fluidity of human identity and the identity of the nation he belongs to. Both are ‘products’ of plethora of factors, including physical (biological), cultural and ideological elements of various origins. What is more, both the structure of the protagonist’s body and his personality as well as the “structure” of India’s geography and its culture are extremely multifaceted and dynamic. Biological bonds between people do not seem to be most important in the novel and the bond between people appears to be placed on a much deeper level. What is particularly odd is that although Saleem is not Aadam Aziz’s biological grandson, he has nevertheless inherited his huge cucumber like nose and blue eyes – as if there was not a borderline between biological and cultural relatedness; a sort of ‘spiritual’ relationship between the two men manifests itself physically. The son of the protagonist is also not his biological son, and yet he appears to have inherited Saleem’s propensity to mirror the political events taking place in his country.
2. Born at the stroke of midnight, the very moment when India gains independence from the British rule, the protagonist of the novel, Saleem Sinai, perceives himself as an equivalent of India. His connection to India is established before he is even born, when a fortune teller tells his mother that her son would never be older or younger than his country. The protagonist is deeply conscious of his own corporeality and keeps interrupting his story with constant remarks on the condition of his body; he even spots cracks in it, which are invisible for physicians. He perceives his body as a phenomenon which transcends the boundaries of an individual human self. Confessing that his body is likely to fall into 630 mln pieces, he points to the fact of his body is a temporary collection of particles which are in themselves eternal and belong to a far greater entity. The novel brims with descriptions of different physical shapes and various bodily functions, especially within the community of the midnight’s children, presenting them as not only the mirror image of the complexity of the Indian society, but more importantly, as a corporeal manifestation of the inherent creativity of matter.
The protagonist’s body is presented as a plastic material which can be formed and reshaped. That is particularly well visible when Parvati-the-witch uses her magical powers to correct Saleem’s appearance by straightening his legs, restoring his hair and erasing the birthmarks on his face. But the human body turns very plastic in a very gruesome way as well. The forced sterilisation performed on people, and in an especially aggressive way on the midnight’s children contains, apart from painful historical and political issues, also crucial anthropological motives: oppression of the body, modelling it according to a given agenda, depriving it of its creative (reproductive) power, transforming it into a passive object. Interestingly, with the loss of their reproductive organs the midnight children’s magical powers disappear as well, which stresses a close connection between the physical and the spiritual dimensions of reality. Mutilation of the human body is the main theme of the war atrocities depicted by Rushdie. Among these, the scene showing the body of Shaheed, the protagonist’s companion, which after being split in two by a bomb, is devoured by ants seems the most appalling. Iconoclastic as it might appear, the body is consistently presented as an integral part of the material world, an uncanny place where the very many aspects and potentialities of matter – its ‘spiritual’ dimension included – manifest themselves.
Specific parts of the body gain importance in the novel. Powerful knees of Shiva, outstandingly big ears of Saleem’s son and, most importantly the protagonist’s and his grandfather’s big noses stand out as examples of the author’s attention being given to particular faculties of the human body. Aadam’s and Saleem’s noses act as independent and intelligent actants in the story. They function as radars of sorts, informing the characters of the upcoming events, detecting looming threat and even protecting them from imminent danger, as when Aadam can’t help sneezing which makes him fall down and thereby miss a bullet aimed in his direction. Both Aadam and Saleem experience constant itching in their noses which actively respond to the political events taking place in India . The novel conveys the concept of human physicality being intrinsically intelligent and even endowed with uncanny metaphysical properties. The body’s ability to detect and respond to the metaphysical (i.e. not yet explainable scientifically) aspects of reality is not something artificially ‘added’ to it, but its inherent feature, which is highlighted in the characters of Saleem and other characters with superhuman powers.
The sense of smell, associated with what is animal, primitive and material/physical, acquires a metaphysical dimension in the novel. After Saleem undergoes an operation which clears his sinuses he discovers that he can no longer connect to the other midnight’s children, which points to a peculiar connection between his physicality and telepathic powers. His superhuman abilities do not disappear entirely, however, as Saleem, who is happy being able to smell for the first time in his life, finds out that apart from regular smells, his nose can now detect emotions, feelings, and lies, making him able to smell his aunt Alia’s acrimony. Not only can Saleem smell her resentment in the food she cooks, but the dishes ultimately upset the stomachs of the people she holds a grudge against. Also when Saleem’s grandmother, referred to as ‘Reverend Mother’ throughout most of the novel, takes over Amina’s household her temperament permeates the food she cooks resulting in her daughter’s becoming stronger, more courageous and resourceful. Emotions and features of one’s personality are thus presented as parts of a person’s corporeal constitution, the aspects of one’s self which have a physical dimension, which can be sensed by others and affect them physically.
3. The agency of the natural world is stressed in the novel. In the opening scene it is the earth that hits Aadam’s nose, as if in retribution for his five years’ absence while on his medical studies in Germany. Aadam bumps his nose against the ground while praying which symbolically marks the transition from a purely spiritual perspective to a more materialistic one. It is the ‘flesh’ of the world that demands our attention. The writer’s focus on human sensual perception is given particular attention in an attempt to show how human ‘magical’ corporeality corresponds to the uncanny ‘corporeality’ of the world. The novel is permeated with metaphysical elements, which appear to be surprisingly harmonious with the physical dimension of the world. Magic is therefore presented as a component of reality, a tool matter uses to teach us something important, but also to mislead us sometimes and even occasionally to reveal the absurdity of our convictions, like when Aadam takes the ghost of Joseph D’Costa for God, or Saleem interprets the voices of the midnight’s children as the voices of angels. Rushdie apparently takes religion as a social institution with a pinch of salt, and thus often alludes to selected aspects of the dominant religions in a slightly ironic way. The author does not, however, ridicule the spiritual experience or denigrate its role in the life of humans. Quite the opposite, he presents religious experience – and more broadly, human spiritual life – as an important component of the identities of individuals and whole societies, one that can hardly be substituted by strict mechanical materialism. Notably, as the protagonist’s grandfather renunciates faith, a “hole” opens up inside of him which, despite his many attempts at trying to find a new belief of ideology, would not be entirely filled through his entire life.
Saleem’s experiences while hiding in the jungle are as spiritual as they are physical. Ghosts and apparitions reveal some material features and the reader is confused as to whether what the protagonist experiences happens in his imagination only or in the real world. The division between the fantastical, and the factual is blurred calling into question the reliability of human rational thinking. The ambiguity of the protagonist’s experiences is voiced as well: a poisonous snake’s bite which makes him come terrifyingly close to death, at the same time brings back his memory. This is consistent with the global theme of the novel which is calling into question the existence of an ultimate truth and one definite meaning of things. The omnipresent sense of complexity and incredibleness of life oozes from the novel in which human history is tightly interwoven with the material history of the world and human flesh, being an integral component of the ‘flesh’ of the world, shares its uncanniness.
What has to be pointed out as well is the link between crude physicality and spirituality. Not only does Saleem discover his superhuman power of hearing other people’s thoughts while hiding in a basket of dirty clothes, but that is also connected with the moment when he witnesses his mother defecating. The silver spittoon, which occurs repeatedly throughout the story, serves as a particularly good example of that peculiar ambiguity, as its crude purpose – a container for saliva, which is universally perceived as a disgusting, defiling substance – coexists with the status of an heirloom, a bearer of the family history, which ennobles the object. It also reveals its agentive power of a kind when it hits the protagonist on his head during a bombing, thus causing his amnesia. When Saleem joins the army yet another dimension of his complexity is revealed. Having lost his memory, he delves more into metaphysical musings (and his Buddha-like pose accentuates that) and discovers his spirituality anew, however he is referred to by the army officers as “the man-dog”, which has an obvious depreciating and disdainful meaning. What can be thus observed here is a strange connection between the sacred and the profane, the metaphysical and the physical and, most importantly the spiritual and the corporeal. Both seem to be mysteriously interconnected and they form a structure of the protagonist’s interlaced experiences where the touch of a beautiful goddess is immediately followed by the sight of a human pyramid of dying bodies.
4. Variety of voices can be heard in the novel, and among them the human language, which although being the predominant one, often proves painfully ineffective. Allowing communication, it does not necessarily guarantee mutual understanding. The author describes a number of small-scale disagreements, mainly family arguments, as well as large-scale conflicts, such as protests against the British rule, ethnic riots, the atrocities of war between India and Pakistan and finally the government’s brutality towards India’s citizens, and linguistic competence does not provide humans with the necessary tools to solve the problems. Even the conference of the midnight’s children Saleem summons, which uses telepathic communication, does not protect the interlocutors from misunderstanding. Underneath the multitude of different voices, however, Saleem detects a purer, intelligible thought-form, which seems far greater than any language, and which transcends the barriers of language. When he discovers his ability to enter “the thoughts of strangers all across India, from movie stars and politicians to cab drivers and tourists”, he learns that people coming from different social or cultural backgrounds are inherently and intimately united by that pure thought-form, which runs deeper than social, cultural or religious identity. His experience refers to the concept of humanity united by every individual’s participation in the same material substance, a common material background, which might be a base for mutual understanding. Although the novel is an account of mainly the narrator’s adventures, Saleem’s ability to enter other people’s minds and see through their eyes, provides him with access to a multitude of individual points of view and thus he plays the role of a kaleidoscope of human experiences. The ability to see the world the way others see it makes him realize on the one hand that truth is always subjective and subject to interpretation and on the other that the ontological connection between all humans is as spiritual as it is material, physical, corporeal. The body as such exhibits metaphysical skills or functions and it in itself has access to the magical sphere of existence. The protagonist is a particularly gifted person, an individual endowed with superhuman powers, but at the same time he symbolically represents the whole nation and in that way he is also the ‘Everyman’, or rather ‘Everyhuman’. As such he is also deeply interconnected with the non-human beings, which do not provide mere background to his existence, but are equally important participants of the ongoing process of ‘mattering of matter’, that is matter constantly transforming and thus revealing its potential. There is a strong sense of history repeating itself or of similar motifs reoccurring in lives of consecutive generations. Saleem’s mother trains herself to love her second husband by focusing on particular parts of his body or personality, which reflects her parents’ experience of getting to know each other through a perforated sheet. Also Saleem’s sister performs from behind a sheet with only her lips visible through a hole in it. This further adds to the impression of humanity being a structure comprising of individuals united by common experience, in which world’s materiality, human corporeality and the omnipresent spirituality of existence intermingle, and it proves impossible to tell where the borders between them are and if they exist at all.