She contends that marginality should not be construed exclusively as a basis for understanding Rushdie’s work, since a critical grounding in marginality will predictably involve a reproduction of the traditional postcolonial binaries of oppressor/oppressed and colonizer/colonized that the writer subverts.

Mendes argues that how a postcolonial author becomes personally and professionally enmeshed in the dealings of the cultural industries is of particular relevance at a time when the market is strictly regulated by a few multinational corporations. Mendes pays particular attention to Rushdie as a public performer across various creative platforms, not only as a novelist and short story writer, but also as a public intellectual, reviewer, and film critic. Taking up the roles that Salman Rushdie himself has assumed as a cultural broker, gatekeeper, and mediator in various spheres of public production, Ana Cristina Mendes situates his work in terms of the contemporary production, circulation, and consumption of postcolonial texts within the workings of the cultural industries. Ultimately, the third-person ' distancing ' of the memoir helps to highlight what it seeks to mitigate: a plurality of Rushdie's competing for public attention. My essay critiques this emphasis, suggesting that Rushdie's self-fashioning is out of step with his twenty-first-century political ideals and affiliations. This authorial self has deep roots in a narrative fashioned by Rushdie that has been abetted by some of his critics and the media since the fatwa.

Joseph Anton highlights Rushdie's exilic persona through direct comparisons to figures like Voltaire and Galileo, and attempts to privilege this position above his other authorial selves. I argue that Joseph Anton, published in 2012, exhibits evidence of Rushdie's attempt at authorial self-fashioning, and therefore the memoir represents an important part of his effort to shape the public narrative about him. This article examines some of the highlights, limitations, and contradictions of Rushdie's authorial personas that have been perpetuated and challenged by his critics and the mass media.

Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie