Self-Othering: A Self-Orientalist Study of Khalid Hosseini’s The Kite Runner

Abstract

Self-Orientalism is the concept about representation of Orient from Oriental perspective, using Orientalist style. Self-Orientalism largely relies on the reverse process of representation, giving the stereotypical representation and clichés of the Orient in the Oriental discourses and envisaging the Orient as Other which is called Self-Othering. In the current research the researchers have opted Khalid Hosseini’s The Kite Runner as primary source to analyze the text from Self-Oriental perspective. The researcher used Self-Orientalism by Dirlik (1995) and Daura (1996) as a theoretical framework and the nature of the researcher is analytical using qualitative approach. The research shows that Khalid Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is full of the issues which have already been highlighted in those texts which have been produced by Orientalists. Similarly, the primary text is full stereotypical images of the Oriental people, and most importantly the research shows that Oriental people want to migrate to the western world to appropriate with the western world because the West is privilege and facilitating the Orient while the Orient in comparison as presented in the text is distorted and submissive. Therefore, the text is the very example of Self-Othering of the Orientals people from self-Orientalist perspective.

Keywords: Self-Orientalism, Self-Othering, Orientalism, Orient, Occident, The Kite Runner