The fluidity of identity implied here means that Changez’s marginality is always to some extent recuperable for a Western audience who might have been alienated by actual confessions of terrorist activity or a sudden discovery of religious conviction. The fact that Changez ends up the figurehead for a broad coalition standing up against American meddling in South Asia and not a foaming Islamist militant allows for his critique to find its target audience—primarily liberal Westerners who are more likely to accept criticism that comes from within a narrative of secular nationalism. This is not to suggest that Hamid is being deliberately duplicitous or consciously tactical. Rather, being such a figurehead is an approved function of the Third World cultural representative, one whose sanctioned role is to speak from a place nominally “outside” hegemonic discourses and to present the hegemon with uncomfortable truths about itself.

DEFINE: Defines the 'approved function' of the Third World cultural representative who speaks from a nominally outside position.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 455