World Bank Language and Neoliberal Global Capitalism in Mohsin Hamid’s and Aravind Adiga’s ‘Literary Provocations’

Abstract

According to Amitava Kumar, editor of the volume World Bank Literature (2002), the eponymous term is meant to be a ‘provocation’ rather than a ‘distinct referent’: the contributors are a mix of economists and humanities scholars who raise questions about the role of literary narratives in exposing the contradictions of what is publicly promoted and what is materially practiced by the World Bank and other international financial institutions in developing countries. After elaborating on the relationship between the World Bank and Indian society and culture, and on a possible engagement of postcolonial studies with the economic and political texts of multinational corporations, I consider two acclaimed novels, Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013) and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008), focusing on the way they contribute to shaping counter-hegemonic narratives that participate in both constructing and reconstructing our understanding of global economic processes. Soon after the release of The White Tiger, Adiga declared that “provocation is one of the legitimate goals of literature”, and we understand this from the way he traces the transformation of the novel’s main character, Balram, his rise from rags to riches like the characters represented in official success stories of Rising Asia. However, the process of transformation exposes what is buried in the hegemonic discourse: violence and crime. While narrating his alleged success story in the form of a self-help book, Hamid’s unnamed character embodies a biting satire of the formation of neoliberal subjectivity. In both novels, I analyse how literary provocation is conveyed through the subversion and re-discussion of the neoliberal entrepreneur within the rhetoric of global capitalism.