Migration, Subalternity, and Silence in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Admiring Silence and The Last Gift

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 MA Graduate in English Language and Literature, Department of English Language and Literature University of sistan and Baluchestan, Zahdan, Iran

2 Assistant professor in Department of English Language and Literature,, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahdan, Iran

Abstract

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Nobel Laureate in Literature (2021), explores postcolonial migration as central theme in his fiction to highlight how displacement reshapes voice, agency, and belonging. Focusing on Admiring Silence (1996) and The Last Gift (2011), this study examines the interrelation of migration, subalternity, and silence as prominent elements in the construction of migratory subjectivity. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s concept of the subaltern voice and Kevin Olson’s theory of subaltern silence, this article argues that migratory subalternity as a distinct condition generates silence that is a contextually responsive practice whose function changes across time, institutions, and generations. Through a chronological perspective, the two novels reveal an evolution in Gurnah’s view of migratory experience. In Admiring Silence, silence performs a strategic function by which the migrant narrator is allowed partial agency and narrative self-fashioning within the hegemony of the host culture. By contrast, The Last Gift presents the internalization and institutionalization of silence, shaped by shame, trauma, medical discourse, and post-9/11 securitization of immigration. Analysing silence through an intergenerational lens and as a form of postmemory, the article reveals how the protagonist embodies somatic muteness and epistemic erasure, while his children negotiate inherited silence through writing, anger, and demands for articulation. This study invites the reader to regard migratory subalternity as a re-formulating condition, distinct from colonial and postcolonial marginalization.

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History

  • Receive Date: 30 October 2025
  • Revise Date: 10 February 2026
  • Accept Date: 05 June 2026

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