The Politics of the Palimpsest in 'The Moor's Last Sigh'

I situate the novel as a `postcolonial palimpsest' one that addresses the `double time' of postcoloniality by marking the erasure and retention of the dominant narrative as well as one that challenges the linearity of such layering. I show that Rushdie's use of the palimpsest is constitutive of his apparent volte face in critiquing postmodernism, and that an analysis of this trope is crucial to identifying Rushdie's paradoxical political stance as both an apologist for and critic of cultural hybridity and pluralism.