A Diasporic Reading of Radicalization, Citizenship, and Surveillance in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire

Abstract

Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire (2017), a contemporary reworking of Sophocles Antigone, is most often read within British political, feminist, and postcolonial frameworks. However, this article argues that the novel also offers a subtle but powerful critique of American national identity as constructed through post-9/11 security discourse, global surveillance regimes, and transnational counterterrorism ideologies. Although the narrative is geographically situated in the United Kingdom, its ideological terrain is unmistakably shaped by U.S. led “War on Terror” paradigms that extend beyond national borders. Drawing on Transnational American Studies, diaspora theory, and surveillance studies, this article examines how Home Fire exposes the global reach of American security logic and its effects on Muslim diasporic identities. By reading the novel through an American-inflected lens, this study expands the scope of American Studies beyond territorial boundaries and demonstrates how U.S. political imaginaries shape contemporary global fiction.

This expanded reading positions Home Fire as part of a growing body of transnational post-9/11 literature in which American power operates not through direct representation, but through diffuse ideological influence. The novel illustrates how American security discourse has become a global epistemology one that determines who is considered grievable, governable, and disposable. In doing so, Home Fire offers a critique not only of state violence but of the moral architecture underpinning contemporary liberal democracies shaped by U.S. hegemonic norms.