Neocolonial deterritorialization of Middle Easterners in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West and Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil and The Blind Man's Garden

Neocolonialism refers to the new exploitation methods performed by imperialists to maintain exploitation in Third World countries after the decolonization period. Having begun as the implementation of indirect methods through economic and logistic supports for the regimes controlled by the political Islam and fundamentalists in the Middle East during the Cold War, neocolonialism has transformed into an extreme form of exploitation through military invasions in the region after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The study argues that those policies have deterritorialized Middle Easterners through migrations and inland dislocations and offers discussions for associating their physical dislocations with the fluidity of identity. Utilizing Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of nomadic identity and defining those dislocations as neocolonial deterritorialization, the study explores the alterations Middle Easterners undergo due to their compulsion to directly experience the neocolonial spaces or the factors created by neocolonial policies. In this regard, this dissertation aims to analyse the deterritorializing impact of neocolonial policies through Mohsin Hamid's Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Nadem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil and The Blind Man' Garden.