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" Towards an ethics of post-9/11 fiction : "
Albala, Razan
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Latin Dissertation
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831175
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TLets625452
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Albala, Razan
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| Title & Author
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Towards an ethics of post-9/11 fiction :\ Albala, Razan
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| College
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Royal Holloway, University of London
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| Date
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2014
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2014
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Thesis (Ph.D.)
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| Abstract
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In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, might it be possible to consider that terror is terror whatever its source or purpose? Tracking such a question, this dissertation endeavours to identify an ethics of representing post-9/11. It reads Don DeLillo's Falling Man, Ian McEwan's Saturday, and Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist not simply as fictional works written or published in the aftermath of the attacks in an attempt to dramatize their repercussions. Rather, they are registered as a trend of fiction that works, in one way or another, against placing the terror of September 11 at the centre of their narratives. Seen individually, each of these novels engages with an especially vivid and instructive encounter with the question as to the effectiveness of facing terror with military retaliation fostered by the United States and its allies, including Britain and Pakistan. Examining the failure of such a violent response, they instantiate the agonizing necessity of envisioning an ethical alternative, in an attempt to encapsulate, even safeguard, a moral landscape in the aftermath of the attacks. As this thesis proceeds to suggest, as ways of representing post-9/11, the involved Anglo-American narratives need to be examined and tested more closely. Acutely aware of their own limitations, they take up the challenge to propose strategies to move beyond the 'war on terror' rhetoric, while simultaneously highlighting their failures, and in so doing, dismantle their ethical, social and political barriers. Equally, this thesis points to the stakes of such endeavour as being seized hold of by novels reinvigorated by the multiple underpinnings of the gaze of the 'Other.' Deeply imbued with histories of exclusion, of colonial oppression and imperialism, they have the potential to address issues of counter-terrorism, 'Otherness,' agency and resistance, and thereby, often provide a richer space for reading our conflict-ridden post-9/11 world.
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Royal Holloway, University of London
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