ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.02.017
Negotiating Identity in the Third Space: A Postcolonial Reading of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
Weiran Chen
Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming 650051, Yunnan, China.
*Corresponding author: Weiran Chen
Published: February 28, 2026
Abstract
This paper reads Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children through Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of the Third Space, examining how postcolonial identity is negotiated within its narrative. Focusing on the novel’s linguistic hybridity, its representation of a telepathic collective, and the counter-narrative of history constructed through magical realism, this study traces how the protagonist Saleem Sinai’s liminal existence comes to materialize Bhabha’s concept. Saleem, born exactly at India’s independence with mixed heritage, physically embodies this in-between state where cultures collide. The analysis suggests that Rushdie enacts cultural negotiation not only thematically but also through narrative technique itself, framing postcolonial identity as an ongoing process rather than a static synthesis. Specifically, the “telepathic conference” represents a fragmented national voice that challenges official history, while magical realism allows Rushdie to blur truth and fiction. Ultimately, through its hybrid aesthetics and magical realist mode, the novel subverts both colonial discourse and official nationalist histories, gesturing toward what might be called prototypes of transnational identity—forms of belonging that resist essentialist closure and show identity is always changing.
Keyword
Midnight’s Children; Homi K. Bhabha; Third Space; postcolonial identity; cultural hybridity
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Copyright
© 2026 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
How to cite this paper
Negotiating Identity in the Third Space: A Postcolonial Reading of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
How to cite this paper: Weiran Chen. (2026) Negotiating Identity in the Third Space: A Postcolonial Reading of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 10(2), 212-217.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.02.017