Rethinking Failure: A Decolonial Reassessment of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, College of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

2 Assistant Professor of English Literature, Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, College of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

This article reconceptualizes the concept of failure through a decolonial lens, arguing that failure is not a deficit or lack, but a form of resistance against colonial, capitalist, racial and patriarchal systems. Rethinking failure by adopting theories of Jack Halberstam, decolonial theories of Walter Mignolo and Ramon Grosfoguel, and the key concepts of Critical Race Theory, this paper presents a comparative reading of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1947) and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997). Both novels resist dominant narratives of success and visibility through characters whose failed form of being disrupts the rigid societal hierarchies rooted in class, race, and gender. The unnamed narrator of Invisible Man embraces invisibility as an agentive act of nonconformism, while the decolonial love of Ammu and Velutha undermines the caste-oriented, patriarchal norms. Through these narratives, this study aims to reveal how literary failure can be employed as a strategy to delink from the colonial system of values and a new form of being, or re-existence. Integrating African American and postcolonial narratives, this article argues for a decolonial comparative literature that privileges relationality over universalism and makes space for subaltern ways of being and knowing.

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History

  • Receive Date: 01 September 2025
  • Revise Date: 02 October 2025
  • Accept Date: 14 November 2025

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