Conference Day 2 (Friday 9/9/11)

Fictions of Counterinsurgency

Louise K. Barnett — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:15:00 PDT

My essay examines the disconnect between theory and practice in the American response to terrorism, primarily by comparing the policies advocated in the revised U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (2006) with actual military practice in Afghanistan and Iraq. I refer to the official policies as "fictions" because they cannot be put into practice in any meaningful way: they create the illusion that military initiatives can effectively combat terrorism when their usual result is to breed more terrorism.

Terrorism, Horrorism, and the Face of Italy

Elizabeth Leake — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:45:00 PDT

The Collaborative Film Work of Greengrass and Damon: a Stylistic State of Exception

Steven Peacock — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:30:00 PDT

The Trials of Cassandra: The Siege (1998)

Nick Cull — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:30:00 PDT

The Privilege of Ambivalence: Saturday’s Henry Perowne on the ‘War on Terror’

Jax Lee Gardner — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT

This essay considers the relation between personal privilege (class, race, nationality, sex) and political ambivalence toward the Iraq war as it manifests in the protagonist of Ian McEwan’s Saturday. Henry Perowne “feels culpable somehow, but helpless too” in his shifting opinions of the coming invasion. Throughout the text we are shown Henry’s multiple perspectives regarding Iraq. Such ambivalence is, in itself, a form of complicity in war. Henry neither tangibly opposes the actions of the government (as the protesters do), nor does he consider sacrificing any of his creature comforts in support of the war (as the soldiers do). I argue that this sort of complicity is even more dangerous than articulating a clear political opinion, as it takes no account of the consequences of a particular course of action. The war in Iraq will likely never be made personal to Perowne. This distance, born of privilege, grants Perowne the power to equivocate on his feelings depending upon the interlocutor with whom he is engaged. Such equivocation reveals an inability to command an opinion about the situation in Iraq, or to find peace in the personal and political consequences of an opinion. To further problematize Perowne’s ambivalence, I look at how other characters (Tony Blair, Jay Strauss, and Daisy Perowne) are juxtaposed to Henry. To this aim, I engage both criticism concerning Saturday and political science research regarding British attitudes toward the imminent invasion of Iraq in 2002-03.

Female (Em)Bodied Justice: Terrorism, Self-Sacrifice, and the Joint Primacy of Gender and Nationality

Renee Lee Gardner — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT

In The Terror Dream, Susan Faludi asserts that instead of processing the events of 9/11 – what they might reveal about our culture, how we might thoughtfully grieve them and respond to those who perpetrated them – Americans reverted to a 1950s style domesticity, with the media representing men as heroic rescuers and women as victims of terrorists, in need of rescuing. This is ironic in that the majority of that day’s casualties were men, and the attacks themselves were perpetrated within our commercial and governmental centers. Yet much of the literary fiction that has emerged from 9/11 can be said to echo this media revision in its focus on domestic narratives and disruption of the family. I will argue, though, that close examination of the female characters of an array of 9/11 novels reveals that while women are often submissive, they are so of their own accord. I will focus on acts not of victimization, then, but of self-destruction. Specifically, I will explore female characters in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Yasmina Khadra’s The Attack, and Ian McEwan’s Saturday in terms of a conflation of primary identifiers (gender and an always already gendered nationhood) governing identity. I claim that in each of these novels, because of this dual centrality of gender and citizenship, women repeatedly sacrifice themselves in ways that are tied to the political moves of their nation, that they participate willingly in such sacrifice, and that acknowledgment of this complicity subverts the Subaltern-like status normally attributed to submission, and the media-driven notion of women as the victims of terrorism.

Historicizing the Present in 9/11 Fiction

Todd Kuchta — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT

Reconfiguring the debate on the historical efficacy of postmodern fiction, novels inspired by 9/11 seek to view the present itself as history. McEwan’s Saturday, DeLillo’s Falling Man, and Hamid’s Reluctant Fundamentalist attempt to move beyond the view of history-as-text. Rather than evoking “the presence of the past,” they present characters trying to situate themselves in a new historical reality. Žižek’s account of Lacan illuminates DeLillo’s attempt to historicize the present, while McEwan gestures toward Foucault’s view of the present as exit. Only Hamid engages the historical potential of the present.

From New York City to Berlin to Baghdad: 9/11 in the Contemporary German Novel

Alexandra Hagen — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT

Terrorism as Communication in Gregor Schnitzler’s Was tun wenn’s brennt (2001) and Leander Scholz’s Rosenfest (2001)

Sandra Dillon — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT

This essay explores the connection of terrorism to communication, specifically to illocutionary and perlocutionary acts in Gregor Schnitzler’s Was tun wenn’s brennt and Leander Scholz’s novel Rosenfest. One cannot deny that violence plays an important role in German narratives about terrorism; however, the main focus of the works analyzed here is communication, which the narrative structure, the role of the spectator or reader and the main characters within the novel illustrate.

Health Care, Witches, and Terrorists in Juli Zeh’s Corpus Delicti (2009)

Waltraud Maierhofer — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT