Location
Stewart Center 310
Session Number
Session 10: 9/11, SUBJECTIVITY, AND OTHERNESS: COMPARATIVE READINGS IN LITERATURE AND FILM
Start Date
9-9-2011 10:45 AM
End Date
9-9-2011 12:15 PM
Abstract
This essay explores the metaphoric construction of the terrorist Other in 9/11 scholarship and literature. While academics demand an ethical engagement with Arab and Muslim Americans, they unwittingly reify a binary distinction of Other-Same that triangulates terrorist identity through ordinary Arabs and Muslims. Looking at Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land and Walter’s The Zero, I suggest an alternative metaphor for terrorism not as a regional or religious population, but as an internal impulse that dwells within us all. Doing so more ethically and productively aligns terrorism with the threat to global security in the post-9/11 era.
Included in
Literature in English, North America Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons
Nationalism, Alterity, and Cognitive Studies in Mohsin Hamid, Laila Halaby, and Jess Walte
Stewart Center 310
This essay explores the metaphoric construction of the terrorist Other in 9/11 scholarship and literature. While academics demand an ethical engagement with Arab and Muslim Americans, they unwittingly reify a binary distinction of Other-Same that triangulates terrorist identity through ordinary Arabs and Muslims. Looking at Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land and Walter’s The Zero, I suggest an alternative metaphor for terrorism not as a regional or religious population, but as an internal impulse that dwells within us all. Doing so more ethically and productively aligns terrorism with the threat to global security in the post-9/11 era.