Arab Muslims in Pre 9/11 microscope of American Writing

2020

This essay explores the dominant rhetoric of American society in the wake of 9/11 as seen through fictional narratives by Muslim-American writers, it also delves into how that rhetoric was shaped by politicians and the media. The novels employed in this essay are The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Home Boy by H. M. Naqvi and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. The essay examines the temporality of the novel, in particular when it comes to historical fiction, and to what extent time is under the author's control. It looks into migration and the myth of return in immigrant writing and the power of nostalgia both in writing and politics, such as with Donald Trump's infamous slogan "Make America Great Again". Additionally, it analyses the attacks on September 11 as a national trauma that destroyed Americans' illusion of invulnerability and looks at how trauma can be translated in writing. It scrutinises the cultivation of fear both on a domestic and nationwide scale, in particular it focuses on the fear of the imagined 'other' cultivated by the American administration and media following 9/11. This leads into the legitimisation of war, principally the War on Terror; a war that has cost upwards of $6 trillion as of 2019. It discusses Americans' fear of Muslims and, the oft-forgotten other side of the coin, Muslim-Americans fear of American society at large. Throughout, it looks at how the novels at hand both translate and shape experience, arguing that fictional narratives have the potential power to bridge the gap between Muslim-American immigrants and the rest of American society and increase empathy for an ethnic minority that has, in past years, been painted as the 'radical enemy.'

The Muslim world has been plagued by imperial interests, cultural ravaging and plundering, unequal partnership with the West. However, since the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks, the Arab world has moved to the center of political and cultural debates and attracted the major number of representations in American writings. These writings form a new phenomenon called neoorientalism and revolve around a major theme: Muslim Arabs as victims of fundamentalist dogma. This study explores the ways in which neo-orientalism developed and was communicated to the reader in the United States after 9/11. The literature on this phenomenon is limited; therefore, there exists a need for the study of neo-orientalism through contemporary fictions that deal directly with Arab-American relationship. This study also investigates the assumption implicit in the conception that contemporary American novel is in solidarity with the state ignoring its imperial ambitions and its saturation with hegemonic practices. In response to the terrorist attacks, novel has been one of the most effective genres to represent the feelings of the nation and the concern of the country. This part of the study will refer to different attitudes and political orientations of novelists, which allow novel to follow the mainstream politics and do not grapple with the hegemonic interests.

STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES-INDIANA-, 2003

Present research aims to study the representation of Islam in post 9/11 English novels. To this aim 31 post 9/11 English novels were divided into eight categories based on the angles from which they had looked at 9/11 event, and one novel of each category, a better received one, was chosen through cluster sampling to be studied. As the study went on two categories were deleted for not being related to the subject. Thus six novels by Updike, DeLillo, Ferrigno, see, Halaby, and Kalfus were studied. Using representation theory and Foucault's discursive formation approach, the effort was taken to identify the latent and manifest discourses shaping and shaped by these texts as well as the characteristics attributed to Islam and Muslims. The results showed that the discourse shaping the texts (war against terrorism) and discourses shaped by the texts (Muslims are all the same, Muslims are violent and promote violence, and Zionists are innocent) are in line with the power discourse in four of the six novels; whereas, in the remaining two novels, the approach taken toward power discourse is quite subversive. This of course signifies the presence of a multiple voice in the American society although the weaker voice is not heard as well as the loud voice.

atelier s'intéressera aux oeuvres publiées (poésie, roman, théâtre, non-fiction, roman graphique) après le 11 septembre par des écrivains appartenant à la communauté arabo-américaine. Les attentats perpétrés contre les États-Unis dans ce ciel de septembre que la poétesse Lena Khalaf Tuffaha qualifie de « awash in the false comfort of blue » 1 ont propulsé les arabo-américains sur le devant de la scène -eux qui étaient considérés jusque-là comme une des minorités ethniques les moins visibles aux États-Unis, « la plus invisible » même selon Joana Kadi 2 -et en ont fait l'ennemie par excellence de la nation américaine. Qu'il s'agisse du poème viral « First Writing Since » de Suheir Hammad, de la poésie de Samuel Hazo ou D. H. Melhem, outre la condamnation des attentats et le deuil, c'est bien la peur des représailles contre la communauté arabe que trahit cette poésie.

World Literatures: Exploring the Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Exchange, 2018

This paper is a study of novels written by Arab American writers in an attempt to analyze how such works of fiction portray the life of Arab Americans in a post-9/11 America. The paper shows how Arab Americans deal with the consequences of 9/11, and it also reflects several other aspects that characterize Arab American writing as an emerging post-9/11 new voice. It investigates the role of Anglophone Arab fiction in paving the way for more intercultural understanding and attempting to de-orientalize the Arab. Some writers often try to negotiate with the American culture in order to arrive at an identity that incorporates multiple elements from both the culture of origin and the host culture. Hybrid and cosmopolitan in their approach, such writers also attempt to be cultural mediators, and they show growing concern about subverting the normative judgment and stereotypical images that have fixed the Arab American.

Miscelánea: A Journal of English and …, 2011

The Muslim world has been plagued by imperial interests, cultural ravaging and plundering, unequal partnership with the West. However, since the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks, the Arab world has moved to the center of political and cultural debates and attracted the major number of representations in American writings. These writings form a new phenomenon called neoorientalism and revolve around a major theme: Muslim Arabs as victims of fundamentalist dogma. This study explores the ways in which neo-orientalism developed and was communicated to the reader in the United States after 9/11. The literature on this phenomenon is limited; therefore, there exists a need for the study of neo-orientalism through contemporary fictions that deal directly with Arab-American relationship. This study also investigates the assumption implicit in the conception that contemporary American novel is in solidarity with the state ignoring its imperial ambitions and its saturation with hegemonic practices. In response to the terrorist attacks, novel has been one of the most effective genres to represent the feelings of the nation and the concern of the country. This part of the study will refer to different attitudes and political orientations of novelists, which allow novel to follow the mainstream politics and do not grapple with the hegemonic interests.

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

September 11, 2001 has been the most aggressive day in the history of modern America. The physical and psychological damages caused by the attacks left a unique experience of the day in the mind of American writers. Therefore, if literary and political orientations changed after the 9/11, novel's subject matter and themes changed too, because novel is a reflection of its social and political context. This study examines the assumption implicit in the dominant conceptions that novel serves the state's politics in its pursue of interests through representations and misrepresentations of other nations. This study examines how American novel expresses solidarity with the state and its politics, ignoring its imperial and hegemonic attitude towards other nations. Novel has become the most effective genres to represent the feelings of the nation and the concern of the country. Analysis will refer to two novels, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Falling man, which directly dea...