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mission of the British Raj and to the divided loyalties and
independence movements of colonial subjects. Writing about
independence movements in
A God in Every Stone
, however, Shamsie
does not retreat to extreme patriotism that she has criticized in
Burnt
Shadows
. Instead, when she challenges the global design of imperialism
from the subaltern perspective as Mignolo has called for, Shamsie
focuses more on internal changes within individual, societal and
national identities than on the exclusion of others.
As a dual national of both Britain and Pakistan, Shamsie in
A God
in Every Stone
revisits the shared history of British and Peshawari
women fighting against patriarchy, and thus brings her
cosmopolitanism to a third level, which is also the most critical one. In
advocating women’s rights beyond borders, the novel raises the
question of how feminists in different countries, from different
cultures or of different religions, may find common ground. In
criticizing Vivian for being a Western imperialist when she speaks as a
human rights advocate “on behalf of the women of the Peshawar
Valley” (Shamsie, 2014c: 273), the novel warns against the constraint
of rooted cosmopolitanism. There is a danger in rooted
cosmopolitanism that should be noted when well-intentioned but
misguided activists mistake their local experience and knowledge
rooted in a specific national context for a transnational experience
shared by people all over the world. A rooted cosmopolitan should
therefore reflexively problematize the self to create a world of
diversality.