PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM

Narratives of Terrorism in Post-9/11 Film, Television and Literature

Fien Veldman 5881323

University of Amsterdam Thesis rMA Literary Studies Supervisor: Dr. Jaap Kooijman Second Reader: Dr. Esther Peeren 7 July 2015 Word Count: 23.000 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2

Introduction: Orientalism, Precarity, Terrorism 3 Edward Said’s Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism 3 Post-9/11 Precarity: Ettlinger, Butler, and Berlant 6 Case Studies and the Structure of this Work 8

1 Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper: Imagined Dichotomies and the Benevolence of the War on Terror 10 1.1 Imagined Dichotomies and the Illusion of Benevolence in The War on Terror 11 1.2 The Economy of Emotion in American Sniper 16 1.3 Levinas’ Face of the Other and Post-9/11 Precarity in American Sniper 20 1.4 American Sniper in the Genre of Post-9/11 Culture 24

2 Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa’s Homeland: Post-9/11 Orientalism and Precarity in “The Drone War” 26 2.1 Background, Reception, Criticism: Homeland’s Place in Post-9/11 Culture 27 2.2 “Us” and “Them”, Islam, the War on Terror and Post-9/11 Orientalism 30 2.3 The Drone War: Knowledge, Power and Technology in Homeland 36 2.4 Levinas’ Face of the Other, Drone Warfare and Dimensions of Post-9/11 39 Precarity

3 Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Resisting the “Us Versus Them” Narrative 43 3.1 “Us” and “Them” After the Attacks 44 3.2 Your Country, My Country: Identity and Culture 49 3.3 Post-9/11 Precarity in The Reluctant Fundamentalist 53 3.4 Pushing the Limits of Post-9/11 Culture 56

Conclusion 60

Works Cited 63 List of Homeland Episodes 66

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 3

INTRODUCTION: ORIENTALISM, PRECARITY, TERRORISM

In an interview with The New York Times, filmmaker Mira Nair talks about the financial difficulties of her 2012 film adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. She recounts that a prospective investor offered to invest two millon U.S. dollar in the film, to which she replied the budget had to be much higher. The investor stated: “You have a Muslim as protagonist. Two million is all it’s worth” (Kaplan). This reaction to a Muslim protagonist sums up quite succinctly Hollywood’s position in the genre of post-9/11 fiction, a genre that came into existence after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. There is barely space for a Muslim lead character in Hollywood films, though Nair followed through with her work and tried to create this space by adapting Hamid’s story about a conversation between a Pakistani and an American in a Lahore café. However, whereas the novel focuses on the life story of Changez Khan and his experiences as a Pakistani man in the U.S. after 9/11, the film turns his narrative into a political thriller where CIA officers try to capture Khan: they see him as a (potential) terrorist. Hollywood simplifies Hamid’s subtle storytelling and turns it into a portrayal of the good versus the bad, with Khan as an anti- American manipulator and his American conversation partner as a fair-minded journalist. Nair’s version of The Reluctant Fundamentalist makes a suitable example of the uncritical way an orientalist “us versus them” narrative with regard to the East and the West is laid out in many post-9/11 works, which will be thoroughly analysed in this thesis.

Edward Said’s Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism

In the following, I will argue that after 9/11, a new variation of Edward Said’s concept of orientalism emerged in film, television, and literature. This can be called post-9/11 orientalism, and has been influenced by the use of an “us versus them” narrative with regards to the aftermath of 9/11, especially concerning the discourse on terrorism and the War on Terror. I argue that precarity is the basis for, and distinctive feature of these orientalist narratives in post-9/11 works of

4 INTRODUCTION fiction. To explore this subject, I analyse three of these works: a film (Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (2014)), a television series (Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon’s Homeland (2011-present)) and a novel (Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)). I have chosen to analyse multiple types of objects, because the genre of post-9/11 fiction spans a broad range of media. I analyse these works as texts. This is especially notable in the analysis of dialogue: naturally, cinematic elements will be considered as well, yet my main focus will be on conversations between characters. This focus corresponds with the questions and objectives of this research: in post-9/11 works, who decides what is told, and in what way are characters portrayed? As a consequence, my methodology will predominantly consist of close reading. This selection is furthermore a result of an extensive exploration of the genre of post-9/11 cultural objects, the result of which can be found as a supplement to this thesis1. These three works are relatively recent, Hamid’s 2007 novel being the “oldest” one, which is important to my analysis because of the ongoing developments regarding the post-9/11 genre. Furthermore, the reception of these works has been very positive: American Sniper was nominated for six Academy Awards (it won one), Homeland won two Golden Globes and one Emmy Award, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and was an international bestseller. The reception of these works is of value to one of the aims of this project, namely to tie the representation of terrorism in fiction to political and social developments in society. A postcolonial framework is an important one in this work, as I develop my arguments with Said’s works Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1994) as a starting point. I am aware of the critical debates Said’s work spurred, with reactions such as Bernard Lewis’ conviction that the study of Islam does not relate to imperialist power structures (Islam and the West (1993)); James Clifford’s and Homi Bhabha’s critique of Said’s use of Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse (respectively The Predicament of Culture (1988) and The Location of Culture (1994)); and to refer to a critique written after 9/11, Ibn Warraq’s rather

1 See: rMA Research Project Literary Studies: Annotated Bibliography of Post-9/11 Culture.

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 5

islamophobic work in which he tries to prove that, in contrast to the East, the West has always been forward-looking, by using the works of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare (among others) as examples of Western “rationalism” (Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said (2007)). Whereas Orientalism as well as Said’s other works are by no means flawless, the dichotomies Said identifies do provide a solid analytical framework with regards to post-9/11 fiction. However, an important theoretical angle in Said’s work is that the concept of orientalism is discussed in the light of European colonial domination (Said, Orientalism 41). Although the case studies Said employs mainly consist of nineteenth century literature, the “heyday of imperialist expansion” (Bertens 162), his concept of orientalism is a valuable tool in analysing post-9/11 works for two reasons. Firstly, as Said articulates in his later work Culture and Imperialism, his analysis of nineteenth century literature is highly relevant to this day:

Yet lest we think patronizingly of Conrad as the creature of his own time, we had better note that recent attitudes in Washington and among Western policymakers and intellectuals show little advance over his views. What Conrad discerned as the futility latent in imperialist philanthropy – whose intentions include such ideas as “making the world safe for democracy” – the United States government is still unable to perceive, as it tries to implement its wishes all over the globe, especially in the Middle East. (Said, Culture and Imperialism xix)

Said shows that the ideas about the relationship between East and West in Orientalism as well as Culture and Imperialism prove to be an appropriate point of departure to support an analysis of the representation of the War on Terror in fiction, as the United States government still “tries to implement its wishes all over the globe, especially in the Middle East” (xix). Secondly, in “Orientalism, Once More”, a 2003 lecture, he states that “Orientalism is very much tied to the tumultuous dynamics of contemporary history”, referring to “the events of September 11 and their aftermath in the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq” (Said, “Orientalism, Once More” 870). He compares the situation in Europe with that of the U.S., and states that with regards to the latter country, “the hardening of attitudes, the tightening of the grip of (…) triumphalist cliché, [and] the dominance of crude power” cause the Middle East to still be a site of a form of Western imperialism. The “illegal and unsanctioned imperial occupation of Iraq”

6 INTRODUCTION serves as an example (871). As Malreddy Pavan Kumar shows in his article “Orientalism(s) After 9/11” (2012), Said’s work is still immensely relevant, possibly especially with regards to 9/11 and its aftermath. Kumar distinguishes recent forms of orientalism of which “Military Orientalism” and “American Orientalism” (Kumar 235) are the two that pertain closest to the subject of this thesis. Military orientalism sees “war as a site of Orientalism” and concerns itself with “strategies of war; the construction of the ‘wild east’ by which western fears, identity and survival are constantly measured and reassessed” (Porter qtd in Kumar 235). American orientalism is “borne out of indirect colonial contact” and involves “multicultural anxieties” and “geopolitical interests in the Middle East” (235). Furthermore, Stephen Morton identifies a relationship between the discourse of terrorism and orientalism in “Terrorism, Orientalism and Imperialism” (2007). Morton states the narrative of counterterrorism corresponds with that of orientalism, which will be examined thoroughly in this work.

Post-9/11 Precarity: Ettlinger, Butler, and Berlant

These theories about, and forms of orientalism are all very useful with regards to the aim of this project. However, in this thesis, I hope to add a new element to the definitions of post-9/11 orientalism(s), namely the element of precarity as a basis for the orientalist “us versus them” narrative in post-9/11 works. Precarity can be defined as social or economic insecurity. As Nancy Ettlinger points out in “Precarity Unbound” (2007), it is often associated with economic vulnerability with regards to the casualization of labor and late capitalism in the U.S. (post- Fordism) and Europe (Ettlinger 320). This concept, however, has been used as well with regards to a heightened state of vulnerability after the fall of the World Trade Center, which generated a sense of everything and everyone being open to (a terrorist) attack (321). To understand this concept and its implications, Ettlinger’s article is a useful point of departure. She writes:

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 7

Terrorism itself (…) can be expanded if we interpret it broadly as physical and nonphysical violence that invokes fear. From this vantage point, while feelings of vulnerability may be new to many privileged people in the United States, they are old news to disadvantaged minorities in the United States and around the world who live under formal and informal constraints imposed by the majority (…). Precarity lies in the unpredictability of terror, which can emanate from a wide range of contexts (…). Precarity spares no one, haunting even privileged persons, who, like everyone else, cannot escape the terror of disease. (322)

Ettlinger makes clear that after 9/11, the scope of precarity is broadened. Whereas in a post-Fordist society, only the economically vulnerable experience a sense of precarity, in a post-9/11 society, everyone shares this vulnerability. She furthermore highlights that precarity is “old news to disadvantaged minorities in the United States and around the world”: even though I acknowledge her assertions, I will argue that after 9/11 the precarious situation of minorities is extremely intensified. Judith Butler’s work Precarious Life (2004) is a collection of essays that are written “in response to conditions of heightened vulnerability and aggression that followed from [the] events [of 9/11]” (Butler xi). In Frames of War (2009) she argues that war is framed in such a way to keep a distinct difference between grievable, fully human, lives, and non-grievable, unimportant ones. Both these works provide a critical framework with regards to post-9/11 precarity and the War on Terror which is very useful to this research. Butler’s reference to Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of ethics has furthermore opened up a space in this thesis for a philosophical inquiry on the structures of humanization and dehumanization in the War on Terror. Another work that has been very influential to this research is Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism. “[C]ruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing” (Berlant 1). Berlant argues that people still try to achieve “the good life”, whereas these “fantasies” of “upward mobility, job security, political and social equality” are fraying in this era (3). Precarity has taken the place of these earlier fantasies. With regards to critical discourse, I adhere to Berlant’s standpoint that argues to “mov[e] away from the discourse of trauma (…) when describing what happens to persons and populations as an effect of catastrophic impacts” (9), such as, in this work, the attacks of September 11. She writes that

8 INTRODUCTION

in critical theory and mass society generally, “trauma” has become the primary genre of the last eighty years for describing the historical present as the scene of an exception that has just shattered some ongoing, uneventful ordinary life that was supposed just to keep going on and with respect to which people felt solid and confident. (10)

I agree with Berlant’s assertion that “[c]risis is not exceptional to history or consciousness but a process embedded in the ordinary that unfolds in stories about navigating what’s overwhelming” (10). This navigation of crisis – and thus the reaction to a state of precarity – leads, as I will show in this research, to a sharp binarism and clear use of orientalist dichotomies in a post-9/11 discourse. In the following chapter, I do not often refer to Berlant’s work directly, but as shown above, it has provided a philosophical and theoretical substructure of great importance to my research.

Case Studies and the Structure of this Work

This thesis consists of three case studies which are analyses of, as earlier mentioned, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon’s Homeland, and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. In these objects, the “us versus them” narrative plays a significant part in framing the East and the West. Furthermore, the concept of precarity is foregrounded in different ways, dependent on the object. In American Sniper, precarity is made visible through the American protagonist’s anxiety. In Homeland, a heightened sense of vulnerability is shown with regards to the United States as well as to Pakistan. Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is the only work in this thesis that has a non-American narrative standpoint. In this novel, the Pakistani protagonist’s viewpoint is not just foregrounded, but portrayed to the exclusion of other narratives. It highlights the precarious situation that non-Americans (in the U.S.) find themselves in after 9/11. With regards to the “narratives of terrorism” that I examine, they occur in these objects in different ways. In American Sniper, the protagonist serves in Iraq to fight terrorism: remarkably, the search for weapons of mass destruction and even the name of Saddam Hussein are never mentioned in the film. The Iraq War,

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 9

then, is portrayed as part of the War on Terror. Homeland concerns itself with this war very straightforwardly, as its main character deals with counterterrorism. The Reluctant Fundamentalist does not show this war or terrorism directly, but considers the “breeding ground” for terrorism, as its protagonist ultimately becomes a “reluctant fundamentalist”. “Terrorism” itself is a debatable term: my denomination of terrorism in this work is wholly based on the use of the term in the objects I analyse. The geographical area of Pakistan is a focal point in the second and last chapter: this materialized quite naturally, as many post-9/11 works deal with Pakistan and/or Pakistani. Moreover, Pakistan is a region that challenges orientalist assumptions of “us” and “them” with regards to the West and the East: Pakistan is an ally of the U.S. while at the same time Al-Qaeda’s leadership was or still is located “somewhere along the Pakistani tribal belt”, as Isaac Kfir writes in “Pakistan and the Challenge of Islamist Terror” (2008). In this region, a dichotomy is then fortified through terrorist organizations, but challenged at the same time by global political structures. Furthermore, this emphasis on Pakistan has helped to retain a manageable framework with regards to the analysis of terrorism. In the following, I will examine what role precarity plays in post-9/11 culture and what implications this precarity has concerning the use of orientalist stereotypes. Which dichotomies are reinforced, which ones are challenged, and how? How does precarity relate to post-9/11 binarism? In the arrangement of the case studies, I have chosen to start with an object that shows these stereotypes quite rigidly, to follow up with an analysis that demonstrates how these dichotomies can be challenged, and finally, to end with an analysis of a work that acknowledges yet withstands this orientalist narrative.

10 CLINT EASTWOOD’S AMERICAN SNIPER

1. CLINT EASTWOOD’S AMERICAN SNIPER: IMAGINED DICHOTOMIES AND THE

BENEVOLENCE OF THE WAR ON TERROR

Clint Eastwood’s film American Sniper (2014) is based on the book by the same name, written by U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. The biographical narrative revolves around Kyle’s responsibilities and struggles as a sniper, serving in Iraq during the War on Terror. The film portrays his heroic status – with a tangible patriotic sentiment – as a result of his successful career in the army. However, it also shows the bleak effects of war by portraying soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other war injuries. Its protagonist is the most lethal sniper in U.S. history, as the film’s tagline states. Kyle has a rather black-and-white view on good (America) and bad (Iraq) and thus performs his job without questioning the war he is part of. In his adaptation of Chris Kyle’s story, Eastwood adds a layer of contemplation on the effects of war to Kyle’s own, rather simplistic war narrative. In this chapter, the binary oppositions that are used to portray the War on Terror are analysed in light of Edward Said’s works Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1994). In the latter, Said defines culture in the following way:

[T]o see yourself, your people, society, and tradition in their best lights. In time, culture comes to be associated, often aggressively, with the nation or the state; this differentiates “us” from “them,” almost always with some degree of xenophobia. Culture in this sense is a source of identity, and a rather combative one at that (…). (Said, Culture and Imperialism xiii)

This aggressive differentiation of “us” and “them” is eminently visible in Eastwood’s work. America is titled “the greatest country on earth” (American Sniper 16.16), whereas Iraq is “dirt” (1.00.55) filled with “savages” (56.51). As Said notes: “[t]he one idea that has scarcely varied is that there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them,’ each quite settled, clear, unassailably self-evident. As I discuss it in Orientalism, the division goes back to Greek thought about barbarians” (Said, Culture and Imperialism xxv). The methodological aspect of this creation of culture lies in the structuring of narratives, as Said states: “The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 11

culture (…)” (xiii). This power to narrate – and, more specifically, who is in possession of this power – is particularly relevant to Eastwood’s work. The American perspective of patriotism is laid out in this film, whereas the representation of Iraq and its inhabitants is offered no subtlety or nuance. It shows Hollywood’s power to narrate the War on Terror and touches upon other narratives, such as that of the soldier suffering from PTSD, but ultimately keeps the critical, painful or distressing ones from forming. Said’s notion of culture as a combative source of identity is used to examine American Sniper’s relationship to dichotomies between East and West, “us” and “them”, and their effects. First of all, these dichotomies in American Sniper will be located and examined, in order to be able to examine them and identify their effects on the narrative of the War on Terror and especially the prevailing idea of benevolence regarding this war. Secondly, American Sniper’s recurring motif of “us versus them” and the associated notion of patriotism is discussed in the light of Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective economies. Ahmed describes how emotions are not based in the psychology of the individual, but exist between the individual and the collective. In this part, Said’s notion of orientalism is elaborated upon through an analysis of the underlying emotions that constitute, in the case of Chris Kyle, a patriotic perspective. Thirdly, the concept of post-9/11 precarity will be discussed as theorized by Judith Butler and Nancy Ettlinger, taking into account Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of the face of the Other. It will be argued that this precarity is why a clear-cut, orientalist “us versus them” narrative is reinforced in American Sniper, in order to hold off the sense of anxiety and vulnerability generated by the 9/11 attacks. Finally, American Sniper’s place in the genre of post-9/11 fiction will be addressed and evaluated.

1.1 Imagined Dichotomies and the Illusion of Benevolence in The War on Terror

Before Chris Kyle joins the U.S. army, American Sniper’s protagonist is a rodeo rider: a cowboy. In the portrayal of Kyle’s Texan roots, the epitome of a conventionalized image of American culture is put forward: he is a patriotic, masculine, religious family man whose chief values are abridged by his motto

12 CLINT EASTWOOD’S AMERICAN SNIPER

“God, country, family” (1.00.15). The film shows that Kyle’s “all-American” attitude constitutes the basis of his personal justification for participating in war. First of all, his religion justifies the act of killing, as he points out in a conversation with a counsellor after his last tour in Iraq, and the therapist asks him about the high number of people he put to death. Kyle responds: “I’m willing to meet my creator and answer for every shot that I took” (1.56.55). Secondly, his patriotism, “country”, is why he joins the army, as will be discussed in more detail later. Thirdly, his family is the reason he is convinced the War on Terror needs to take place: he tells his wife he “[does] it to protect [her]” (1.31.53), which will be elaborated later upon as well. What is important to note at this stage, is that American culture, signified by “God”, “country”, and “family”, is a consequential basis of the viewpoint American Sniper represents. With regards to specifically American culture and imperialism, Said states that

[m]uch of the rhetoric of the “New World Order” promulgated by the American Government since the end of the Cold War – with its redolent self- congratulation, its unconcealed triumphalism, its grave proclamations of responsibility – might have been scripted by Conrad’s Holroyd: we are number one, we are bound to lead, we stand for freedom and order, and so on. (xvii)

These “proclamations of responsibility,” as Said puts it, are markedly present in Kyle’s objectives. He decides to join the army when he sees a news report on attacks on the American embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. The reporter states: “Those explosions, set to go off at the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, were clearly a part of someone’s war against the United States. More than eighty dead, more than seventeen hundred injured in two bomb blasts (…)” (09.50, emphasis mine). Even though “most of the dead and injured are not Americans”, as the reporter states, Kyle responds to this news item by addressing his brother Jeff while saying: “Look what they did to us” (10.01, emphasis mine). This remark, with its distinction between “they” and “us”, is crucial, because it is a key element in American Sniper’s representation of and justification for the War on Terror. The Americans are portrayed as virtuous heroes, with Kyle, “The Legend”, as their representative, whereas the Iraqis are savages, with the figure of “The Butcher” as the epitome of barbaric evil, which

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 13

will be discussed in more detail in the following. With regards to the news item, “they” are members of Al-Qaeda, as this item refers to the (non-fictional) 1998 bombings of these U.S. embassies. However, that is not known to Kyle at this point: the identity of the other party remains unclear and is only defined by the term “someone’s” war. In the same sense, “us”, referring to the group Kyle belongs to, would be the Americans, even though the victims of the attack are mainly non-American. What becomes clear is that these attackers do not have an established identity. The terrorist remains unknown, incomprehensible and inhuman, which makes it easer to hate and fear them. The other party is constituted as Other through an ontological instability of, as Said states, the East as well as the West: the “Orient (…) has been made and re-made countless times by power acting through an expedient form of knowledge” (Said, “Once More” 871). But whereas in American Sniper American cultural tropes are reinforced, the Iraqi remains unintelligible. This unclear identity – in the sense that there is no recognizable or relatable individuality to the Iraqi characters – establishes the core of all representation of the Other. Because the Iraqis in American Sniper are not regarded as individuals, they are subject to drastic stereotyping, which will be discussed later in this chapter as well. This stereotyping is done exhaustively, and the resulting dichotomy between “us and them” is prevalent, even if it is a mythical one, such as the one in the news item about the attack, where the American “us” is highlighted even though there are many non-American victims, and “they” are seen as evil even though their identity is unknown. This imagined dichotomy, then, serves for Kyle as a reason to pay a visit to the Armed Forces Career Center. The dialogue with the man working there is as follows:

Moore: So, you’re from Texas. Kyle: Yes sir. Moore: You’re a patriot. Kyle: Yes sir. Moore: And you’re pissed off. Kyle: I’m looking to be of service. (10.21)

Kyle wants to be of service to his country because he feels a responsibility towards the United States and his fellow Americans, as he confirms he is a

14 CLINT EASTWOOD’S AMERICAN SNIPER patriot. However, whereas the employee of the Career Center is quite rigourous in assuming Kyle’s motivation is anger (“you’re pissed off”), Kyle phrases his career move as an act of assistance (he wants to be “of service”), not resistance. Kyle’s incentive is patriotic as well as personal. As Sally Haslanger writes in “Gender, Patriotism and the Events of 9/11” (2003), “[t]he patriot puts country before self (so much that death in battle, or even in a suicide attack, is honorable), the nation before the individual” (Haslanger 459). She furthermore defines the patriot as “the nation’s good son, the protector and inheritor of father-right” (460). In the opening scenes of American Sniper, Kyle is seen as a young boy, killing a deer. His father remarks: “That was a hell of a shot, son. You got a gift. You’re gonna make a fine hunter someday” (American Sniper 04.12). It immediately becomes clear Kyle’s father has a significant influence on his life, and his approval is of pivotal importance to Kyle. Haslanger ties the concept of masculinity to patriotism, arguing that nations are masculine entities (Haslanger 459). This becomes clear in American Sniper, where the figure of the son grows into the father-figure, which in turn becomes the patriot who takes responsibility for his country. Patriotism is then coupled with nationalism, which is the basis of a (conservative) political perspective as well. However, Kyle’s motivation is, as earlier mentioned, personal too. Just before his leaves for his fourth tour in Iraq, his wife Taya objects to him leaving. He tells her, as is earlier (partly) cited: “Babe, I do it for you, you know that. I do it to protect you” (American Sniper 1.31.51). She responds by saying “I’m here. Your children are here” (1.31.57). Kyle then reverts back to his patriotic motive: “I have to serve my country” (1.32.02). This protection of his family as justification for going to war brings back Kyle’s essential principles of God, country, and family. Kyle has a nobler way of stating his motives than his colleagues – a fellow trainee in the SEAL drilling, for example, says: “I came here to kill terrorists” (11.25). The protagonist’s grounds are framed in a more subtle and general way. What the motivations of Kyle as well as his colleague have in common, though, is a basis in what Said calls an “illusion of benevolence” (xvii). Said states, as a follow-up to the aforementioned citation about America’s “New World Order” rhetoric: “No American has been immune from this structure of feeling (…) the

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 15

rhetoric of power all too easily produces an illusion of benevolence when deployed in an imperial setting” (xvii). This idea of benevolence already is recognizable in the general way of phrasing an enlistment in the army: Kyle does not say he wants to enlist, he wants to fight, or he wants to engage in conflict, but, as is common, he states he wants to serve his country. Implied is a certain type of benevolence: he wants to help, assist, and be beneficial to his country. The feeling of benevolence, in Kyle’s case, only pertains to his own country: he wants to protect America from harm by going to Iraq. The Iraqis, from Kyle’s perspective “savages” and thus inhuman, are indirectly deemed as unworthy of protection. His fellow trainee would reason that they are terrorists and need to be killed. In the political rhetoric of the War on Terror, this “illusion of benevolence” is eminently present as well, although it applies to America as well as Iraq, which is illustrated by former President of the United States George W. Bush’s speech on waging war in Iraq in March 2003: “[H]elping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment,” he states, ending his speech: “We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others. And we will prevail” (Ehrenberg et al. 114). In these fragments, what Said calls “grave proclamations of responsibility” are shown in Bush’s mention of “help” and “bringing freedom.” An “unconcealed triumphalism” is made visible in the final sentence, “we will prevail.” It is demonstrated that this idea of benevolence that helps to set this war in motion works on two levels: the first level pertains to the U.S. and is that of the American citizen (Kyle) who joins the army under the assumption he is serving his country; the second level concerns peace in general (or “freedom to others”) and is made up of the American government, and thus the army, convinced they are “helping Iraqis” when waging a war on distant soil. This “illusion of benevolence” is consequently an important component of the narrative of the War on Terror in Eastwood’s film. This political benevolence is sustained by a conviction of personally doing the right thing, as American Sniper stresses. At the funeral of Marc “Biggles” Lee, Kyle’s friend, Lee’s mother reads a letter her son wrote, critical of the war:

Glory. Something some men chase, and others find themselves stumbling upon, not expecting to find it. Either way it is a noble gesture that one finds bestowed upon them. My question is, when does glory fade away and become the wrongful

16 CLINT EASTWOOD’S AMERICAN SNIPER

crusade? Or an unjustified means by which… consumes one completely, I… I’ve seen war, and I’ve seen death. (1.27.24)

Lee juxtaposes “glory” and the “wrongful crusade,” making known to his mother that he does not support the war he participates in. When asked by his wife Taya what he thinks about the letter, Kyle states that Lee’s loss of confidence with regards to the cause they are fighting for is what actually killed him. When they drive back from Lee’s funeral, the following conversation ensues:

Taya: Marc wrote that letter two weeks ago. Did he say any of that to you? Kyle: … Taya: Chris, I wanna know what you thought of his letter. Kyle: An AQI informant had called in a tip, and Biggles had just been shot. We were operating out of emotion and we just walked right into an ambush. But that’s not what killed him. That letter did. That letter killed Marc. He just… He let go and he paid the price for it. (1.29.23)

Next to the idea of benevolence with reference to the condition of one’s country, the strong conviction of personally doing the right thing is required, according to Kyle. This feeling of righteousness, the certitude of fighting for a cause, and the removal of any doubt are necessary in order to survive and in order to win the war: even admitting of thinking about the war as a “wrongful crusade” could end your life. Lee “let go” of these beliefs and “paid the price for it”, ergo: you call anything into question, you lose. Emotions, feelings and faith of the soldiers thus need to be aligned with the bigger political picture of a benevolent military intervention. With regards to the “us versus them” binary that constitutes for a great part the War on Terror narrative, it can be said that critique on the strucure you are a part of, in this case the army, immediately signifies you are not “one of us” anymore. As Kyle’s reaction to Lee’s letter shows, in this war, there is no space for doubt or nuance.

1.2 The Economy of Emotion in American Sniper

This idea of benevolence on a political level, then, incorporates the – necessary – idea of doing the right thing on a personal level, as Kyle’s reaction to his friend’s doubts show us. People that go into service need to be convinced they are

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 17

fighting for a good cause. This emotional component of Eastwood’s portrayal of Kyle’s character can be explored taking into account Sarah Ahmed’s theory on affect and the economy of emotions, which also pertains to the “us versus them” dichotomy and its underlying structures. In “Affective Economies”, Ahmed investigates how “emotions move between bodies” (117). She states that

emotions play a crucial role in the “surfacing” of individual and collective bodies through the way in which emotions circulate between bodies and signs. Such an argument clearly challenges any assumption that emotions are a private matter, that they simply belong to individuals, or even that they come from within and then move outward toward others. It suggests that emotions are not simply “within” or “without” but that they create the very effect of the surfaces or boundaries of bodies and worlds. (117)

Emotions thus do not exist or are established on merely a personal level, they are rather distributed, taken in, projected, readdressed, et cetera. They exist between the individual and the collective, and “between the psychic and the social” (119). Ahmed describes this circulation of emotion alluding to the works of Karl Marx: “[E]motions work as a form of capital: affect does not reside positively in the sign or commodity, but is produced only as an effect of its circulation” (120). She elaborates:

Another way to theorize this process would be to describe “feelings” via an analogy with “commodity fetishism”: feelings appear in objects, or indeed as objects with a life of their own, only by the concealment of how they are shaped by histories, including histories of production (…), as well as circulation or exchange. (121)

These feelings gain, as Ahmed puts it, “a life of their own”. They do not reside exclusively in the subject, as is commonly assumed, nor do they exist solely outside of the individual: affect is produced by the circulation of emotions. The more they circulate, “the more affective they become” (120). She states that the subject “is simply one nodal point in the economy [of emotion], rather than its origin and destination” (121). With regards to American Sniper, Kyle is part of this economy, which furthermore incorporates institutions like the army, the government, his fellow Navy SEALs, his family, and so forth. Ahmed sets out a theory of “economies of hate”, as she calls them, and shows that “figures of hate circulate, and (…) accumulate affective value,

18 CLINT EASTWOOD’S AMERICAN SNIPER precisely because they do not have a fixed referent” (123). This is shown in the representation of Iraqis in Eastwood’s work. A concept, rather than an individual or a group of individuals is hated: Ahmed uses the example of the “bogus asylum seeker”, but this could easily be replaced by an undefined Other. She states: “The impossibility of reducing hate to a particular body allows hate to circulate in an economic sense, working to differentiate some others from other others, a differentiation that is never ‘over,’ as it awaits for others who have not yet arrived” (123). When reflecting on the “us versus them” dichotomy, there is a clear parallel to draw between Ahmed’s theory of the economy of emotions and the orientalist, vague distinctions that make up the foundation of one’s sense of right and wrong, as are visible in an analysis of Kyle’s emotional motifs in American Sniper. Ahmed refers to “others who have not yet arrived”: this sounds akin to the earlier referred to scene in which Kyle sees a news report on a terrorist attack in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and tells his brother to pay attention: “Look what they did to us” (American Sniper 10.01). “They” are undefined, as the reporter states that it is unclear who is behind the attack, yet the differentiation of “some others from other others” works, as Kyle’s reaction shows. Ahmed’s example deals with the emotion of hate, though it is possible to broaden her theory to other emotions as well, for example that of nationalistic sentiment. This nationalism, taking the shape of – in different order, at different moments in the film – patriotism, xenophobia, and orientalism, constitutes emotions that circulate between the subject, Kyle, as well as institutions such as “the government”, “the news”, and “common knowledge”. A straightforward case of the circulation of emotions in American Sniper would be the fear of the (unknown) terrorist. This is shown when Kyle becomes emotional (angry) when watching the news; it is made visible in the way the news is reported and the attacks are carried out by an unknown evil. The circulation of emotions also becomes clear when the government decides a War on Terror is necessary to root out evil and suddenly in ordinary human interaction statements as “I came here to kill terrorists” or “being a pissed off patriot” are relatively normal motivations to join the army. These emotions are however complicated because they seem to stem from the same root – more or less definable as nationalism –

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 19

but “sprout” differently, to maintain the metaphor. For some this nationalism becomes patriotism, for others it manifests in an evident fear of the Other. Often it comes to be a combination of these things. However, what they share is the lack of a fixed referent. The terrorist, the evil, the Other: they are all ill-defined, and thus it is easy to hate them. Ahmed states:

The emotion of hate works to animate the ordinary subject (…), precisely by constituting the ordinary as in crisis, and the ordinary person as the real victim (…). The ordinary or normative subject is reproduced as the injured party: the one ‘hurt’ or even damaged by the ‘invasion’ of others. (Ahmed 118)

This is shown in the sequence of events of Kyle watching the Twin Towers fall down, seeing the news report on terrorist attacks in Africa, and ultimately telling his wife that he’s “doing it for [her]” (1.31.51), as was mentioned before. The invasion Ahmed brings up would then be the attack on Americans, the “ordinary in crisis” can be seen as personified in Kyle, the all-American cowboy, and his reaction to the news item: “Look what they did to us” (10.01). These emotions, then, are again based on the presupposed dichotomy of “us versus them”: victims versus perpetrators. This occurs on a broad scale with regards to political narratives, with George W. Bush’s speech on terrorism in 2001 as a prominent example: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” (20 Sept. 2001, CNN). Furthermore, it is seen in the recurring idea of benevolence with regards to policymaking and what Said calls an “unconcealed triumphalism”, which always need a “them” for “us” to triumph over. These emotions also materialize on the level of the subject. Iraqis are the “Other” and are inhuman; joining the army is a noble and benevolent gesture; and the “personal triumphalism” lies in almost nonchalant patriotism, with the U.S. being called “the greatest country in the world”, for example. In addition to these “real world examples” are Kyle’s “us versus them” remark; the Iraqis being portrayed as savages; the idea of joining a war far away to protect your own country; and the ending of American Sniper, with its documentary style and an extremely patriotic sentiment. The cultural phenomena of patriotism and nationalism (with a side effect of xenophobia) that result in this line of “thinking in dichotomy” then produces

20 CLINT EASTWOOD’S AMERICAN SNIPER emotions that are repeated and strenghtened by circulation between bodies on a macro- as well as a micro scale. These emotions, as a result, are perceived as valid and real by the subject: in the instance of American Sniper, Kyle.

1.3 Levinas’ Face of the Other and Post-9/11 Precarity in American Sniper

In Precarious Life, Judith Butler writes about Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of the face of the Other. This theory concerns itself with the way others make moral and ethical demands to us. Butler states that Levinas “gives us a way of thinking about the relationship between representation and humanization, a relationship that is not as straightforward as we might like to think” (140). Levinas writes that “[t]he face of the Other comes to me from outside, and interrupts [a] narcissistic circuit” (138). This is a useful angle of approach with regards to American Sniper, as it provides tools to analyse the “us versus them” dichotomy even further, broadening the scope of the question of representation (by the West, of the East) to a philosophical inquiry of what humanization and dehumanization entail. Butler writes that with regards to humanization, the common assumption is that “those who gain representation, especially self- representation, have a better chance of being humanized” (141). She adds, however, that the face can be used to give rise to dehumanization, by repeatedly showing this face in a specific (negative) context. She writes:

We may have to think of different ways that violence can happen: one is precisely through the production of the face, the face of Osama bin Laden, the face of Yasser Arafat, the face of Saddam Hussein (…) .These are media portraits that are often marshaled in the service of war, as if bin Laden’s face were the face of terror itself, as if Arafat were the face of deception, as if Hussein’s face were the face of contemporary tyranny. (141)

Hence, Butler argues that dehumanization can happen through the production of the face, as long as this is a face of “evil”. When considering the way the character of “The Butcher” is framed in Eastwood’s film, it is possible to distinguish this production of the face of, in this instance, brutal tyranny. This barbaric figure might stand for all “savages” in Iraq, with his drill as an ultimate weapon of barbarity and wickedness. That the viewer sees him torturing and eventually

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killing a child with this device, plays into this representational framework (American Sniper 48.44). In the same sense, Butler discusses Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, because, although “it is tempting to think that the images themselves establish the visual norm for the human,” (141) this is actually not the case with regards to Bin Laden or Hussein, according to Butler. In these instances, “the paradigmatically human is understood to reside outside the frame; this is the human face in its deformity and extremity, not the one with which you are asked to identify” (143). With this in mind, it could be said that the depiction of “The Butcher” is, as well, one that represents (inhuman) evil itself, precisely by showing the viewer his face. The portrayal of Kyle’s antagonist, the other (or Other) sniper, who is called Mustafa, offers a new perspective on Butler’s text. Butler identifies two ways violence can happen through the face of the Other: the first one being deprived of the chance to self-representation, the second one pertaining to the production of the face as evil. However, American Sniper’s portrayal of Mustafa creates a space for an immoral character on the verge of humanization. On the one hand, as is discussed earlier, he is an anonymous outlaw, easily definable as evil, for example because he has no lines and almost no name, which becomes clear when he becomes “target number one”:

Kyle: Is it Mustafa? Ranger One: Mu-who? Team mate: The sniper who shot our boy Biggles. Captain: He can be whoever the fuck you need him to be, we just want him dead. (1.36.40)

In this scene, just as in the one about this sniper earlier described, the antagonist does not get a name: he can be “whoever the fuck” the team, or the viewer, needs him to be. However, unexpectedly, this sniper does get a back story: apparently, he was a sniper in the Olympics, is originally Syrian, and has a family. Photographs of his accomplishments are shown, and he is filmed from up close. These images enable the viewer to scrutinize him thoroughly: it is a straightforward portrait of the face.

22 CLINT EASTWOOD’S AMERICAN SNIPER

Mustafa is unmistakably Kyle’s adversary, as is shown through mirroring images: when Kyle shoots somebody, he stretches his neck muscle by bowing down his head, which, opportunely, also is a motion of shame (1.36.20). When Mustafa shoots somebody, however, he holds his head up high, which can also be interpreted as a motion of pride or satisfaction (46.01). Kyle puts a baseball cap on backwards; Mustafa ties a scarf around his head when he goes sniping. The message conveyed would be that Mustafa is the “evil” version of Kyle: to take on this part, he needs to be given an identity, and thus a face. The combination of knowing (a selection of) his past and (having the feeling of) being near to him as a viewer results in the depiction of Mustafa as on the verge of humanization. Focusing on precarity and its relation with terrorism, Butler writes that after 9/11 “an unbearable vulnerability was exposed” (Butler xi). She continues:

That we can be injured, that others can be injured, that we are subject to death at the whim of another, are all reasons for both fear and grief. What is less certain, however, is whether the experiences of vulnerability and loss have to lead straightaway to military violence and retribution (…). One insight that injury affords is that there are others out there on whom my life depends, people I do not know and may never know (xii).

In this citation, Butler refers to the aftermath of 9/11, including the War on Terror. In American Sniper these “experiences of vulnerability” do lead to immediate retribution: after the Twin Towers are attacked, Kyle instantly wants to take action in the form of military violence. The concept of precarity is a useful one because it presents the basis of this urge for retribution. Precarity, which is mainly used to describe economic and social insecurity, in this case specifically stands for the sentiment of vulnerability instigated by terrorism: the feeling of everything and thus everyone being open to attack. This vulnerability is felt by Kyle, who is even under the assumption his family is in immediate danger, as he states he needs to protect them by going to war. However, with regards to possible remedies against this vulnerability, Butler writes that “no security measure will foreclose this dependency; no violent act of sovereignty will rid the world of this fact” (xii). In other words: this vulnerability never ceases to exist, and a War on Terror – a “violent act of sovereignty” – thus will not rehabilitate a sense of security. As Butler states, “no final control can be secured” (xiii).

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Butler furthermore criticizes the War on Terror by writing that “if national sovereignty is challenged, that does not mean it must be shored up at all costs”, especially not “if that results in suspending civil liberties and suppressing political dissent” (xii). This suppression of political dissent and its relation with the emotion of patriotism and thus a “protection” of national sovereignty is showed by Kyle’s perception of his friend Lee’s uncertainties regarding the war. In the process of precarity and its effects, a feeling of social and political insecurity is “tamed” with aggressive politics that do not leave space for any disagreement. It might become clear that this process works in different ways. First of all, on a micro-scale, it paralyses the individual that does not agree with the overarching political measurements that are taken, like Lee. On a greater scale, these measurements are grand gestures of retaliation, and there is only one side you can join. Again this echoes Bush’s speech: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” (20 Sept. 2001, CNN). There is thus no space for neutrality in the War on Terror. This way, these monumental policies that try to limit outpourings of terrorism provide a false sense of security or control. Nancy Ettlinger states in “Precarity Unbound” that “[r]eactions to 9/11 by the Bush administration represent a case in point of reflective denial of precarity through strategies that created illusions of certainty with deleterious results” (319). Broadening Butler’s scope, Ettlinger wishes “to present precarity as a condition of vulnerability relative to contingency and the inability to predict” (320). According to Ettlinger, precarity is a condition that is inherent to human existence, and as a reaction to this vulnerable condition humaine, people try to create clear-cut, but always illusory, narratives of certainty. On the false sense of control that is created, for example, by grand political strategies, Ettlinger states that “[a] part of the human condition is the essentialist urge to construct illusions of certainty amid uncertainty and vulnerability, precarity” (320). She illustrates her point by using the War on Terror, and more specifically, the invasion of Iraq, as an example of the search for certainty:

Why did Bush, together with Cheney and a few advisors, decide to respond to Al- Qaeda’s terrorist action by waging war on Saddam Hussein, who was unconnected to 9/11? (…) How could the source of 9/11 become spatially displaced to Iraq? (…) The decision by Bush and his closed circle of advocates to invade Iraq was a way to resolve conditions of extreme uncertainty. (328)

24 CLINT EASTWOOD’S AMERICAN SNIPER

Ettlinger thus states that, in the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq the main motive consisted of this creation of an illusory sense of control. In Ettlinger’s theory one sees resistance to post-9/11 precarity on a grand scale: that of world politics. In the earlier paragraphs of this chapter, this sense of control is created by dividing the world into good and bad, black and white, civilization and barbarism, and other dichotomies based on orientalist stereotypes that stem from aggressive patriotism. Precarity can thus be seen as the originator of binarism on different levels. The imagined dichotomies that make up a great part of the representation of Kyle’s enemies, then, can be seen as part of a greater narrative that provides a false sense of security. Firstly, the use of a simplified “us versus them” perspective presents the protagonist with a clear idea of right and wrong, and thus eliminates a great deal of uncertainty with regards to the underlying motives of the invasion of Iraq. Secondly, in this same fashion, any disagreement and thus any feeling of doubt is eradicated as soon as possible, by implying that this insecurity about the righteousness of the war can even end a soldier’s life. Arguably, this is what Ettlinger would call an “essentialist urge to construct illusions of certainty amid uncertainty and vulnerability” (320). In this reaction to Lee’s death, “it’s the letter that killed him”, Kyle is erroneously convinced of a remedy for precarity.

1.4 American Sniper in the Genre of Post-9/11 Fiction

A couple of recurring elements of post-9/11 cinema can be discerned when analysing this film. During the opening credits, the viewer hears a call for prayer, presumably coming from a mosque in Iraq, even though the town where the opening sequence takes place mainly consists of debris. This aligns with opening scenes in other post-9/11 cinematographic works, wherein, for example, a call for prayer is heard, a verse from the Qur’an is read in Arabic, or a song in Urdu is sung2, all without translation.

2 See, respectively, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (2015), Paul Greengrass’ United 93 (2006), and Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012).

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 25

Furthermore, the Middle Eastern opponent – in this particular case, the Iraqi combatant – is described or depicted as barbaric or bestial, as becomes evident in the depiction (and the naming) of “The Butcher”. American Sniper shows the phenomenon of dehumanization quite directly by repeatedly referring to the Iraqi (enemies) as follows: “They’re savages. They’re fucking savages” (56.51). The animalistic aspect of this representation can be seen when Kyle’s SEAL team is on the back of an army truck, discussing their priority target. They drive over what is presumably a body, and Kyle’s colleague nonchalantly remarks: “Roadkill” (44.58). In the genre of post-9/11 cinema, the (often Middle Eastern) antagonist is in many instances described as animal-like or inhuman, as is here the case by referring to a person’s lifeless body as a dead animal. With regards to the cinematographic presentation of Iraq, the country is presented as uninhabited, deserted, and often dark: a space where human life is rare, as most buildings are empty (26.15). Another recurring element in this genre that is also present in American Sniper is the portrayal of torture. When Kyle’s team searches the house where they presume militant Iraqi men assemble, they find a dead man covered in blood and hanging from the ceiling in chains, and several decapitated heads in a storage room (01.09.10). Furthermore, several cinematographic elements of war films are to be found, such as the perspective from Kyle’s gun, as if the viewers look through the weapon’s sights to aim themselves. The textual indication of place, time, or other factual information at the beginning of a scene is another one of these elements, which is done in American Sniper by stating “Tour 1”, “Tour 2”, et cetera (25.01). Most importantly, however, the “us versus them” narrative that followed 9/11 and became consequential to the War on Terror discourse is reinforced in American Sniper, as the foregoing analysis has examined. A clear distinction is made between the West and the (Middle) East, by way of the portrayal of ideological binarisms and stereotypical characters. The feeling of vulnerability that the attacks of 9/11 evoke with regards to Kyle, who immediately feels unsafe, can be understood as an essential feature of post-9/11 precarity, which is a recurring element in the post-9/11 genre as well: in the next chapters, this will be discussed in more detail.

26 ALEX GANSA & HOWARD GORDON’S HOMELAND

2. HOWARD GORDON AND ALEX GANSA’S HOMELAND: POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM AND

PRECARITY IN “THE DRONE WAR”

Homeland (2011-present), created by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, is an American television series in which CIA agent Carrie Mathison is responsible for the prevention of terrorist attacks. Homeland is based on the Israeli series Hatufim (2009-2012). When Marine Sergeant and prisoner of war Nicholas Brody is freed from the hands of Al-Qaeda in Iraq by American soldiers, Carrie3 suspects he has turned and is actually planning a terrorist attack with his former kidnappers. A lot has been written about the first and second season, albeit in non- academic publications. The following case study, however, will focus on Homeland‘s fourth and most recent season (2014). In this season, after Brody’s death, Carrie decides she is not able to care for her newborn daughter, and takes a job in Kabul, Afghanistan. After the assassination of a colleague, who is beaten to death by an angry mob – a scene which will be examined later – she relocates to Islamabad, Pakistan. In a 2014 New York Post article by Jamie Schram, Pakistani officials have protested the depiction of their country as “a grimy hellhole and war zone”, and called out the lack of research regarding the use of language, as the Urdu accent is incorrect: “A little research would have gone a long way”, a spokesman of the Pakistani Embassy said (Schram). The question then becomes: how exactly is Pakistan portrayed, and what implications does this portrayal have? The accusations of orientalism and islamophobia in Homeland – that will be discussed in the following paragraph – remain relevant in this season: how do these orientalist narratives come forth? What effects do they have? This chapter will first view Homeland’s position in the genre of post-9/11 fiction, taking into account the first seasons as well. Secondly, the “us versus them” narrative will be discussed with regards to Muslims, Islam and the War on

3 In this work, I use the character names that are most frequently used in the episodes. For example, Carrie Mathison is predominantly called by her first name, whereas Peter Quinn is mostly referred to as Quinn. As a result, I will refer to them as “Carrie” and “Quinn”, respectively. This is also the case for chapter 3, as the protagonist’s first name is more prominent in the novel. With regards to the first object, I have chosen to use the protagonist’s last name throughout the chapter, as is standard.

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Terror, and it will be examined how (and when) this narrative is interrogated. It will demonstrate how, in the representation of the War on Terror, an orientalist narrative is reinforced and transformed, resulting in post-9/11 orientalism. It will also discuss how this specific orientalism differs from Said’s conception of the notion. Thirdly, it will focus on the foundation of Edwards Said’s works, the relationship between knowledge and power, and how knowledge is represented by technology in Homeland. Finally, the approach to warfare will be discussed, taking into account Levinas’ theory in ethics, and post-9/11 precarity, as precarity plays a significant part in the presentation of and motivation for (counter)terrorism. This form of precarity is considered as theorized by Judith Butler and Nancy Ettlinger.

2.1 Background, Reception, Criticism: Homeland’s Place in Post-9/11 Fiction

To define Homeland’s place in the genre of post-9/11 fiction, it is useful to introduce its main themes by analysing the opening season, in which the series’ principal subjects are put forward. As earlier mentioned, Homeland is based on the Israeli series Hatufim, loosely translated to Prisoners of War. In the opening seasons, both television series handle the subject of prisoners of war returning home. Gideon Raff, creator of Hatufim and executive producer of Homeland, compares the two in a 2012 interview with The Guardian: “In Hatufim, I wanted to show broken soldiers, broken masculinity; whereas in Homeland, Brody comes back buffer, a poster boy” (Raff). In Hatufim, the central conflict is that of Israel and Palestine. Homeland is a distinctly American representation of the War on Terror and as a consequence the events mainly take place in the CIA offices in Langley, Virginia, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. An American post-9/11 sensitivity has to be taken into account, which limits the space of criticism regarding the U.S. army. That is why Brody comes back “a poster boy”: the eventual disintegration of the heroic soldier has to be presented gradually and carefully. In the analysis of the depiction of terrorism, this (im)possibility of critique on the War on Terror will be elaborated upon. With regards to the genre of post-9/11 fiction, elements of this genre

28 ALEX GANSA & HOWARD GORDON’S HOMELAND recur throughout the series. The “us versus them” narrative that is pointed out in the previous chapter is upheld in Homeland, and a distance is created especially between Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, the public opinion with regards to Brody when he returns is a thoroughly positive one: he is welcomed as a war hero. Carrie is the only one who dares to doubt his intentions. However, when it becomes clear he is a Muslim, her suspicion is shared by those who are informed about his newfound religion. In the first episode of the second season, The Smile, his wife Jessica Brody finds out he has been praying in the garage every day for months. She takes his Quran and cries: “These are the people who tortured you!” (“The Smile” 36.55). She continues by saying that “these people” would stone their daughter to death “in a soccer stadium” when they would find out she has been having sex before marriage (36.59). Islam is portrayed as a frightening and barbaric religion, and the idea of a white, Anglo-Saxon Muslim is intolerable. However, there are characters in Homeland whose depiction resists this binarism. This dichotomy between Muslims and non-Muslims and the opposition to this binarism will be further discussed in 2.2. Furthermore, considering recurring components of the post-9/11 genre, the element of torture is decidedly present in Homeland: it is frequently used by the CIA as well as its opponents as a means of retrieving information, for instance shown in the series’ second season when Carrie and Quinn interrogate Brody, and Quinn stabs Brody in the hand (“Q&A” 19.40). With regards to terrorism, a consequential subject matter in post-9/11 fiction, Islam is not only connected to, but almost equated with terrorism. Most Muslim characters are terrorists or involved in a terrorist network. All terrorists are Muslims. Especially converts or seemingly well-adjusted Islamic American citizens are, in Homeland’s universe, portrayed as severe threats to peace. In the first season, the greatest danger comes from within: Nicholas Brody is planning to carry out a terrorist attack on the Vice President; Roya Hammad, an American-Palestinian television journalist working in the White House, is part of an Al-Qaeda network; professor at Bryden University in Washington D.C., Raqim Faisel, is an Al-Qaeda operative; and his wife Aileen, converted to Islam after having spent time in Saudi-Arabia, assists him in the planning of a terrorist attack. As a result, Homeland met a lot of criticism, stating the show was

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 29

islamophobic and orientalist. However, the main reception of the series has been positive: it has won the 2012 Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, the 2011 and 2012 Golden Globe for Best Television Series (Drama), and in 2012 Claire Danes and Damian Lewis both won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress and Actor, respectively. As for Homeland’s place in post-9/11 fiction, it is demonstrated that a lot of genre motifs can be seen in the series. Its subject matter, perspective and popularity makes it furthermore a cultural object that can be viewed as central to the genre of post-9/11 fiction. The fourth season of Homeland mainly takes place in Pakistan, which is an important location for many post-9/11 works, as will be discussed as well in chapter 3. In this season, the sequence that shows the opening credits has changed according to its new subject matter, namely that of the War on Terror in Pakistan. During this sequence images of drones, women in burqa’s, anti- American propaganda, and an image of Osama bin Laden against a map of Pakistan is shown, while a reporter says that “U.S. forces found and killed Bin Laden outside of Pakistan” (“Iron in the Fire” 02.24). Homeland very much engages with current political affairs, which is made clear by another audio fragment during the opening credits, one of the voice of former U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, saying “you can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors” (02.35). This citation is a fragment of a speech she gave about Pakistan and Afghanistan during a news conference in Islamabad in the fall of 2011. In this conference, Clinton referred to the Haqqani network, a guerilla insurgent group that operates on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and fights against NATO forces and Afghanistan’s government. The Haqqani network would be the “snakes”, Afghanistan is then Pakistan’s “backyard”. Consequently, it is to be presumed that the main storyline of Homeland’s fourth season consists of the hunt for a terrorist leader with the last name of Haqqani because it wants to give the impression of being closely connected to actual U.S. foreign policy. Another instance of this use of historical footage is the image of John Kerry – Clinton’s successor – and the sound bite of him stating “there are things that the Pakistani’s have done, as complicated as the relationship has been” (02.41). This refers to Kerry’s acknowledgement of Pakistan’s aid in the capturing of Osama

30 ALEX GANSA & HOWARD GORDON’S HOMELAND bin Laden in 2011, though he praises Pakistan without failing to mention the difficulties in U.S.-Pakistan relations. Because of this “complicated relationship”, Pakistan is an interesting region to zoom in on with regards to an orientalist depiction of the (Middle) East. It is often portrayed as a distant, indistinct country, known for its political unrest. In Homeland, Islamabad is often presented as disorderly and overpopulated: in a scene shot from a bird’s eye view it is shown that Islamabad’s streets are crowded, no one keeps to traffic rules and drivers are aggressive, as becomes clear when a man screams at Carrie, though what he says is not translated (“Shalwar Kameez” 04.55). Furthermore, the viewer is often disoriented by characters moving rapidly through alleyways, back doors, hidden passageways or crowded markets, resulting in a chaotic representation of the city. Said sharply criticizes similar depictions: “Orientals cannot walk on either a road or a pavement (their disordered minds fail to understand what the clever European grasps immediately, that roads and pavements are made for walking)” (Said, Orientalism 39). Pakistan is thus portrayed as an oriental location, and the Pakistani as Other, but at the same time, it is an ally of the U.S. that assists the American government in the War on Terror. Homeland shows that it is a region that exists between “us” and “them”, as its government is officially not a hostile party towards the U.S., but their intentions are never wholly trusted.

2.2 “Us” and “Them”, Islam, the War on Terror and Post-9/11 Orientalism

With regards to an “us versus them” narrative, Homeland portrays this dichotomy, but calls it into question at the same time. Oriental stereotypes are reinforced by the depiction of the Pakistani locals as irrational and barbaric – as will be discussed in more detail in 2.3 – and, at the same time, there are Pakistani characters who have a mediating function between “us” and “them”, such as the young student Ayaan and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agent Aasar Khan, who both are of help to Carrie. However, they have conflicting interests as well, as Ayaan’s uncle is the CIA’s most wanted terrorist, and the ISI agent’s supervisor is a terrorists’ ally. In Homeland, the world is still made up of good and bad, which is made clear through a straightforward war discourse of “us” versus “the

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terrorists”, which will be shown in the following parts of this chapter. However, in this black-and-white universe, a person’s position can still be ambiguous. In the war discourse, the distinction between the U.S. government’s counterterrorism actions and the Taliban or Al-Qaeda terrorists hiding in Pakistan is uncomplicated (it is the good guys versus the bad guys), but on a smaller scale, in the form of an individual level, this distinction is challenged. In the latter part of the season’s opening, which consists of two episodes, CIA director Andrew Lockhart comments on a news video of Ayaan, a Pakistani young man whose family was killed in a drone attack on a wedding party. Ayaan equates the U.S. drone strikes with the killing of Sandy Bachman, which will be discussed later. He states: “The Americans, they murder us, okay. But what we did to that man, how is that any different?” (“Trylon & Perisphere” 56.09). About this comment of Ayaan, the director of the CIA says to Carrie: “He’s not a foaming-at-the-mouth jihadist, he’s reasonable. Can you believe it?” (56.34). The representation of the East as emotional and irrational is reverts back to orientalist narratives regarding the Eastern Other as unreasonable: “The Oriental is irrational (…) thus the European is rational” (Said, Orientalism 40). In this case, the dichotomy can be broadened from Europe to the West in general, and so with regards to Homeland it becomes: the Pakistani is irrational, thus the American is rational. As a consequence, a “reasonable” Pakistani, as an exception to the rule of Pakistani’s being irrational, demands a reaction of incredulity: “can you believe it?” The figure of Ayaan Ibrahim is one that challenges a clear-cut “us versus them” narrative. He decides to help Carrie in exchange for the possibility of a future in England, and does not see the Americans as an enemy. He rather acknowledges the conflicting interests of the U.S. and his uncle Haissam Haqqani, the leader of a terrorist network, without taking a straightforward stance. His position is one of friction: he is portrayed as morally correct and ethical, being both an ally to Carrie as well as loyal to his family, as he provides medicine for Haqqani. The sides of “us” and “them” seem to merge in Ayaan’s portrayal. A similar mediating figure is Aasar Khan, an ISI agent who comes to Carrie’s aid in one of her most vulnerable moments, as she is hallucinating on the streets of Islamabad. Khan can be viewed as a representative of the formal Pakistani

32 ALEX GANSA & HOWARD GORDON’S HOMELAND government’s standpoint, namely that Pakistan is America’s ally. On a political and official scale, then, the dichotomy between Pakistan and the U.S. is challenged: they should have similar objectives. However, Homeland shows most Pakistani officials as collaborating with terrorist organizations, with Aasar Khan as an exception to the rule. Stereotypes that are the result of an “us versus them” dichotomy are thus reinforced by portraying almost all non-Western characters as (potential) terrorists, but these stereotypes are called into question as well by the depiction of Ayaan and Aasar as mediating figures. In the case of Homeland’s representation of Islam and Muslims, this dichotomy still prevails: most, but not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. One of the few non-terrorist Muslims in Homeland’s fourth season is Fara Sherazi, who is earlier introduced to the series as a suspicious CIA analyst because she wears a hijab. In this season, when she is interrogated by terrorist leader Haissam Haqqani, the dialogue is as follows:

Haqqani: You are Muslim, yes? Fara: Yes. Haqqani: Yet, you kill Muslims. Does your family know what you’re doing here? What you’ve done? Fara: They know. (“Thirteen Hours in Islamabad” 10.46)

Her identity is entwined with her religion, and a Muslim who does not support terrorist organizations such as the Taliban is presented as anomaly. Haqqani assumes that her (Muslim) family members disapprove of her work, which would mean he thus presupposes every Muslim to be anti-American and supportive of terrorist networks. Homeland’s depiction of the oriental Other and Muslims interacts with Said’s theory – for example in the portrayal of Khan and Ayaan – but adds to the concept of orientalism as well, especially in scenes like these: the Muslim Other is not just irrational and emotional, but also specifically anti-Western. “They” are not just mad, but mad at the West, which eventually results in terrorism. This is also what senator Andrew Lockhart refers to when he says it is surprising that Ayaan is no “foaming-at-the-mouth-jihadist” (56.34, emphasis mine). Lockhart assumes every Muslim to be antagonistic. This aspect of Homeland’s orientalist discourse can be called post-9/11 orientalism, which is tightly related to the War

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on Terror and its narratives. It must be acknowledged, however, that Homeland maintains an ambiguous position within an orientalist framework. The Other is often portrayed as part of a greater structure such as a terrorist organization, the Pakistani government, or an aggressive group of locals (which will be discussed in the next paragraph). This structure is often anti-Western, but individuals within this structure – such as Ayaan and Aasar – can still choose to deviate from this pattern, or even contradict it. Homeland brings forth the War on Terror discourse in multi-faceted ways. The implications of this narrative and the critique it generates is examined by Stephen Morton in “Terrorism, Orientalism and Imperialism” (2007). He writes that “the contemporary postcolonial terrorist is often invoked as the cause of the expansion of US and British military power in the twenty-first century”, referring to the war in Afghanistan, the military occupation of Iraq and the support of Israel’s presence in the West Bank (Morton 36). However, cause and effect seem to be mixed up, in this invocation, as he explains: “[S]uch a causal logic conceals the fact that the threat of terrorism is an (…) effect of colonial discourse that is presented as a cause” (36). Terrorism is thus presented as an excuse for Western military action, whereas Morton argues it is actually a result of colonial discourse. Morton furthermore describes how, in the years after 9/11, Said questions “the way in which the discourse of terrorism is used by the United States and its allies to describe violent acts of resistance to imperial occupation rather than addressing the violence of imperial occupation itself” (36). The presence of the U.S. in the Middle East is thus called an occupation. With regards to these narratives of the War on Terror, Said writes in “Orientalism, Once More”, “[w]ithout the well-organized sense that these people over there were not like ‘us’ and didn’t appreciate ‘our’ values – the very core of traditional Orientalist dogma – there would have been no war” (Said, “Orientalism, Once More” 872). Thus, the discourse of the War on Terror is criticized by Said and Morton on three interrelated grounds: the first one being the inaccurate claim that this war is justified because of terrorist attacks (such as 9/11), while it actually breeds them (mainly in the region itself); the second one consisting of a focus on terrorism as resistance to occupation instead of concentrating on the occupation

34 ALEX GANSA & HOWARD GORDON’S HOMELAND itself; and finally the orientalist notion of an unbridgeable difference between “us” and “them”. These three aspects of War on Terror discourse in Homeland will be discussed in inverted order. Firstly, the “us versus them” narrative is constantly reinforced, for example when Saul refuses to be a bargaining chip in a prisoner exchange, and he would rather die at the hands of Haqqani’s suicide bomber, who is a young boy. Carrie asks him: “What about the boy?” (“There’s Something Else Going On” 37.18). When it seems Saul is willing to let the boy die as well, Carrie emphasizes he’s a child. Saul however remains convinced his option is better than freeing the Taliban prisoners in exchange for his own release:

Saul: They put the vest on him, not us. Carrie: So that makes it okay? Do you know who you sound like? Saul: … Carrie: Them. (37.41)

Carrie continues by telling Saul: “This is not who we are” (38.04). Here, identity, “who we are” (emphasis mine), is interweaved with how war is fought. “They” are people who are willing to sacrifice a child’s life; the Americans would never, is the implication. Brutality and primitive ways of violence are placed on the other side, whereas “humane” violence, if there would be such a thing, is represented by the American distant, non-bodily, and technological “drone war”, which will be discussed further in 2.3. Secondly, terrorism is seen as resistance to occupation, whereas the occupation itself is only questioned by the terrorists or their supporters, as becomes clear when Tasneem Qurashi, a Pakistani ISI agent who collaborates with the Taliban decides the Americans should “get a dose of their own medicine”, because they “have insinuated themselves long enough into our business” (“Thirteen Hours in Islamabad” 05.44). She takes a stand against American involvement in Pakistan as well when the Americans decide to leave Pakistan after an attack on their embassy: “Washington has repeatedly exploited Pakistan and interfered in our affairs”, she states in a news broadcast (“Long Time Coming” 06.05). “No self-respecting state can accept such dictates, not even from a superpower” (06.18). Tasneem might be seen as the most determined antagonist in Homeland’s fourth season. Her position of power in the ISI provides

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her with a strong hold on the Pakistani army – who is supposed to aid the Americans – and thus she has a highly strategic position to support Haqqani, which is unknown to the CIA. Her actions are at the bottom of Haqqani’s ultimate victory: the invasion of the U.S. embassy and the Americans leaving Pakistan. As a consequence, she is the quintessential opponent, and thus her comments on the American “dictates” and “interference” in Pakistan provide for the viewer merely an antagonist’s perspective. Wat constitutes this narrative of terrorism in the third place, and what is criticized by Said and Morton as well, is the notion of terrorism as a justification for the invasion of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and, in this case, the exertion of power in Pakistan. In Homeland, this becomes clear in a scene between Saul and Haqqani:

Saul: So many years at war. Aren’t you tired of it? I know I am. Haqqani: Well you could’ve just left us alone, you know. Saul: After you hit us on 9/11? I don’t think so. Haqqani: Please. By all means speak freely, but also honestly. We did not fly those planes into the World Trade Center; Al-Qaeda did. Saul: You gave Al-Qaeda sanctuary. You harbored Osama bin Laden. Haqqani: Bin Laden was a Saudi. Fifteen of the hijackers were also Saudis. I don’t see you invading that country (“Redux” 30.56)

After Haqqani mentions the Americans “could have just left” Pakistan “alone”, Saul immediately makes clear that the War on Terror was necessary because of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11. Haqqani then criticizes the war for taking place in Pakistan whereas the 9/11 terrorists were predominantly Saudi-Arabian. The reason given for the War on Terror is the event of 9/11, as Saul communicates. The only person openly questioning this justification is this season’s dominant terrorist, who is, apart from an immoral transgressor, also not a “rational actor”, as Saul later states (“Thirteen Hours in Islamabad” 13.01). This third aspect of the narrative of the War on Terror thus closely aligns with the second one, that the presence of the U.S. in the Middle East is only questioned or criticized by terrorists or supporters of terrorism. Considering Morton and Said’s viewpoints, it seems that their perspectives are mainly represented by the terrorists in Homeland, who are, as one might guess, not a desirable ally.

36 ALEX GANSA & HOWARD GORDON’S HOMELAND

This impossibility of criticism on the War on Terror because of its implicit alignment with terrorism is described as follows by Judith Butler in Precarious Life:

Intellectual positions that are considered “relativistic” or “post-” of any kind are considered either complicitous with terrorism or as constituting a “weak link” in the fight against it (…). In a strong sense, the binarism that Bush proposes in which only two positions are possible – “Either you are with us or you’re with the terrorists” – makes it untenable to hold a position in which one opposes both and queries the terms in which the opposition is framed. (Butler, Precarious Life 2)

This binarism that is expressed in former president of the United States George W. Bush’s quotation shows the foundation of post-9/11 orientalism: the dichotomies of East and West, “us” and “them” and their affiliated stereotypes that are put forward in Said’s Orientalism are sharpened as a result of the War on Terror discourse. This War on Terror discourse is furthermore characterized by the “us versus them” dichotomy, wherein “they” are terrorists resisting Western imperialist politics (or occupation), without this imperialism being acknowledged by the West: the West justifies its imperialist politics by invoking 9/11 as the starting point of this war. Because this conflict strengthens the binaries Said mentions – “us versus them” becomes, in Homeland, “the U.S. versus the terrorists” – a new form of orientalism, which can be called post-9/11 orientalism, comes into view.

2.3 The Drone War: Knowledge, Power and Technology in Homeland

In the opening episode of this season, CIA officer Carrie is called “The Drone Queen”, a title she reluctantly accepts (“The Drone Queen” 06.15). She is stationed in Afghanistan and sends a drone to bomb a building where main target Haissam Haqqani presumably hides. It turns out many civilians are killed, as a wedding party was actually taking place. The CIA office from where the orders are given is a site of advanced technology: information about the people on the screen, their background, and their location, is merely a few clicks away. At the wedding party somewhere in rural Pakistan, men and women celebrate the festivities separately, and people are dressed in traditional garments. The

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Western intelligence service is portrayed as modern; the Eastern crowd as traditional and conservative. Two separate worlds are outlined and a distinction between the Western subjects of the series, the ones the viewer identifies with (“us”), and the Oriental other (“them”) is promptly made. This dichotomy is closely related to the depiction of technology as a metaphor for knowledge. Later in this episode, CIA chief of station Sandy Bachman is brutally killed by an angry mob of men (who are simply called “locals”) after the Pakistani public learns he can be held accountable for the attack on the wedding. The scene in which he is dragged out of the car and is violently beaten to death portrays the ordinary Pakistani man, the “local”, as a vindictive, violent and brutal murderer (42.47). In this episode, it becomes clear that Pakistan is portrayed as an anti-Western, thuggish, terrorist hotbed, where suicide attacks happen on a daily basis, as Carrie discusses with her sister (08.38), and any male citizen is a potential murderer. This portrayal of Pakistan invokes Said’s Orientalism, in which he describes how Western distorted knowledge of the East resulted in an ideological creation of the Orient. Drawing on the works Michel Foucault4, Said’s theoretical point of departure is that knowledge and power are closely tied: the East is represented by Western scholarly and literary works, and these texts construct the Orient

through imaginative representations (in for instance novels), through seemingly factual descriptions (in journalistic reports and travel writing) and through claims to knowledge about Oriental history and culture (histories, anthropological writings, academic studies). (Bertens 163)

Because of these Western works on the East, and especially the Islamic Middle

4 It is to be noted that whereas this connection between power and knowledge is underscribed by both Foucault and Said, their conceptions of power differ, which Karlis Racevskis points out in “Edward Said and Michel Foucault: Affinities and Dissonances” (2005). Said sees power as “something someone possesses and there is always an intention or a will using, exploiting, abusing power relations”, whereas for Foucault, power “is not a thing, but a relation no one controls. It is (…) an interplay of strategies in which a subject’s involvement is predicated on the position it occupies in the field of power and, more specifically, of power/knowledge relations” (Racevskis 92). These relations between power and knowledge are nevertheless acknowledged by Said, and they constitute the “Foucauldian” basis of his work.

38 ALEX GANSA & HOWARD GORDON’S HOMELAND

East, Said writes, “the Oriental is contained and represented by dominating frameworks” (Said, Orientalism 40, emphasis in original). The knowledge about the East in the form of fictional and non-fictional representations, in combination with the West’s powerful position, then forms the basis of an oriental image of the (Middle) East that remains reinforced to this day, as the depiction of Pakistan in Homeland demonstrates. In this series, the relation between power and knowledge and its consequences for an East and West dichotomy is mediated through technology. The technology the CIA uses to undertake military action can be understood as not only a means to information, and thus knowledge, but a metaphor for knowledge as well. Digital technology is viewed as intelligent – often called “smart” – because it makes possible those skills that humans are not capable of. The surveillance technology in the CIA office can be seen as a symbol of the knowledge the United States government possesses, with the use of drones, and consequently the War on Terror being named a “drone war”, as its ultimate emblem. This (information) technology then symbolizes not only the U.S. knowledge, but its position of power as well. The weaker Pakistani government, let alone terrorist organizations, do not make use of drones or other exceptional technologies in Homeland: they use common technological inventions such as guns and cellphones, though at times operate knives and payphones instead. The most advanced technology – which leads to information, which in turn leads to power – has the upper hand. Reflecting on Said’s theoretical framework, it becomes clear that in Homeland, the relationship between knowledge and power operates through information technology. The aforementioned scene in which Sandy Bachman is dragged out of a car and beaten to death in the street is one of the first scenes in which the opposition between Western use of technology and Pakistani lack of technological means is shown directly. Carrie and her colleague Peter Quinn are in this car as well, whereas the crowd of “maybe a hundred locals” is on foot (“The Drone Queen” 43.04). They try to drive away, but the Pakistani men make that impossible by lifting the car an inch or two from the ground. Quinn carries a gun and tells Carrie there is another one under the seat which turns out to be incorrect. Meanwhile, the hostile group of men is hitting the car with sticks and

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one of them manages to break the car window with his bare hands. Next, they pull Sandy out of the car by resorting to physical strength, while Quinn shoots them. The physicality of the Pakistani’s actions seen in the use of sticks, the lifting of the car and the corporeal violence, is in stark contrast with the American use of technology, such as the reliance on the car as a means of transportation and the use of guns – technological violence – to kill people. This contrast can also be seen in the way both sides engage in war: the use of drones by the U.S. creates a distance generated by technology, whereas the terrorist organizations resort to physical violence. As Mark Coeckelbergh states in “Drones, Information Technology, and Distance: Mapping the Moral Epistemology of Remote Fighting” (2013), this use of drones “implies the disappearance of the vulnerable face and body of the opponent” (Coeckelbergh 87). Not only does the use of technology create a Western position of knowledgeability, it also fuels a sense of modernity – which is commonly understood as a positive feature – on the American side, juxtaposing the use of drones with a “barbarism” of physical violence and thus backwardness on the Pakistani side. Whereas in the CIA operating room, the use of information technology designates a position of power for the United States, on the streets of Islamabad, their powerful position quickly deteriorates. The relationship between knowledge, technology and power can be seen in, for example, Sandy’s phonecall to the CIA station demanding assistance, as well (“The Drone Queen” 43.01). However, the insufficiency regarding technological equipment (the malfunctioning of the car, the missing gun, the belated call for assistance) and consequently the collapse of the power hierarchy, forms the cornerstone of this season’s first crisis, Sandy Bachman’s death. As Homeland portrays, the War on Terror discourse makes use of the same knowledge-power-relationship Said puts forth, however, in the twenty-first century, this relationship is mediated by technology.

2.4 Levinas’ Face of the Other, Drone Warfare and Dimensions of Post-9/11 Precarity

40 ALEX GANSA & HOWARD GORDON’S HOMELAND

The CIA’s use of drones in the armed conflict in Homeland brings us back to Levinas’ theory of the face of the Other, which is discussed as well in the previous chapter. In American Sniper, the face is used to dehumanize terrorists precisely by showing their brutal tyranny, in the depiction of “The Butcher” or, to almost humanize, in a more subtle way, the oriental sniper Mustafa. With regards to Levinas’ theory, it can be argued that in Homeland, the opponent is first dehumanized by distancing them through drone technology, and subsequently “given a face” because of information technology and its capability to identify the combatants on the screen. Coeckelbergh’s analysis of the epistemology of remote fighting is a useful source to draw on in this respect. He writes that weapons are “distancing technologies” (Coeckelbergh 90), which becomes clear when analysing Quinn’s use of a gun as opposed to the Pakistani locals’ sticks. As a consequence, “[d]rone bombing (…) then appears to be the ultimate military distancing technology” (90). Levinas states in his collection of essays Entre Nous: On Thinking of the Other (1998) that “[t]o be in relation with the other face to face – is to be unable to kill” (Levinas 10). But, as Coeckelbergh writes, “because of the new technological practice, you cannot see the face of the other” (Coeckelbergh 89) and thus, because of this moral and physical distance made possible by drones “it becomes easier to kill” (92). When Carrie receives a birthday cake with “The Drone Queen” written on it in icing, it implies she has morally distanced herself from the casualties her drone warfare is responsible for; her discomposed reaction, however, shows that her moral sense has not fully disappeared (“The Drone Queen” 06.04). However, another related aspect of Homeland’s representation of the War on Terror is the technological possibility of identifying targets by drone cameras. Coeckelbergh states that “the technology changes in such a way that the screenfighters get ‘closer’ to those they are supposed to monitor and perhaps kill” (95, emphasis in original). It seems that these technologies now create “a kind of epistemic bridge that somewhat mitigates the distancing effects that were morally problematic” (95). The face of the other is shown through camera technology: however, the face of the CIA’s screen fighter remains concealed to a potential victim. What remains problematic then is the fact that the use of drones

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and their distancing capacities make for an unbalanced fight. As a consequence, this highlights Homeland’s post-9/11 precarity with regards to the Pakistani population. As Coeckelbergh writes,

[t]he problem with regard to fairness in the case of drones is not only or not so much the unequal power of the parties on the ‘attack’ side but the unequal vulnerability on the ‘defence’ side. The first party does not commit his life to the fight (…); nothing is at stake for the drone fighter – at least not in terms of human lives. (92)

Because of the distance drones create, an inequality comes into existence within this fight: the drone fighter is not in immediate danger, but his target is. This danger results in a position of vulnerability for the target: the Pakistani’s precarity is thus foregrounded. Bearing in mind Judith Butler’s earlier mentioned aspect of post-9/11 precarity, “that we are subject to death at the whim of another” (Butler xii), it becomes clear that the War on Terror shows precarity from solely regarding the American population (and terrorism being the main threat) to include the Pakistani population (and drone warfare constituting this risk). In Frames of War, Butler writes about “specific mechanisms of power through which life is produced” (Butler, Frames of War 1). She states that “[s]ubjects are constituted through norms which, in their reiteration, produce and shift the terms through which subjects are recognized” (4). Examining drone warfare then, leads to the question of how the subject is recognized. Drone fighting creates a physical distance, which, in turn, generates a moral one. However, when targets are first identified by cameras, and their faces become visible, the ethical responsibility that comes with killing is reintroduced. What remains is a severe inequality between drone fighter who is located in a safe space such as the CIA office, and the “ground fighter” who is highly vulnerable and subject to drone technology: this leaves the contestant on the ground in a precarious position. In Homeland, post-9/11 precarity plays a significant part as well for the Western subjects. As Saul makes clear to Haqqani, the attacks of 9/11 are seen as the origin of the War on Terror: the U.S. had to take action and could not “just leave [the Middle East] alone”, as Haqqani wanted (“Redux” 30.56). Instead of leaving the Middle East alone, the region had to be controlled, Homeland shows.

42 ALEX GANSA & HOWARD GORDON’S HOMELAND

The director of the CIA tells Carrie: “You told me you were gonna get this place under control” (“Halfway to a Donut” 16.47). What is shown in terms of precarity, is that the attacks of 9/11 have created a sense of insecurity and unsafety with regards to the possibility of another terrorist attack, and this precarity provoked a reaction of creating “illusions of certainty amid uncertainty” as Ettlinger has stated (Ettlinger 320). These illusions of certainty are then to be seen discerned in Homeland’s depiction of authority, power and control over the region of Pakistan. In conclusion, Homeland foregrounds two aspects of post-9/11 precarity. The first one is a precarious position of the Pakistani subject. His position becomes more vulnerable after 9/11 because a specific kind of orientalism as discussed in 2.2 portrays him as a potential terrorist, which, in turn, makes him a possible victim of a drone attack. The exposure to this technological violence then brings forth a highly precarious situation. The second form of post-9/11 precarity is to be located in the American subject. To withstand the anxiety and insecurity the attacks on 9/11 induced, a false sense of control is created by, in this case, exercising military power through technology, over people who are framed as potential terrorists. In American Sniper, a form of post-9/11 orientalism closely tied to the War on Terror discourse was predominantly present in binary structures of “us” and “them”, as the portrayal of the Iraqi Other has shown. In this film, precarity pertains primarily to the American protagonist. In Homeland, post-9/11 precarity affects both the American characters as well as the Pakistani Other. Furthermore, post-9/11 orientalism is shown through the War on Terror discourse as well as through an “us versus them” narrative. However, this narrative is challenged and questioned through figures (such as Ayaan) that exist “between” the opposition of West and East.

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3. MOHSIN HAMID’S THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST: RESISTING THE “US VERSUS

THEM” NARRATIVE

In Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez Khan tells the story of his experiences in New York to his American conversation partner in a Lahore café. The American’s identity is unknown to the reader and presumably to Changez as well, as he repeatedly asks his companion to disclose information about himself, and the American refrains from answering. Changez’ account is a monologue – the anonymous man sitting opposite of him is given a voice only through Changez’ narrative, and thus indirectly. Already, a deviation from many other post-9/11 works can be discerned by analysing this aspect of Hamid’s novel: in this genre, stories of American protagonists often predominate, whereas in The Reluctant Fundamentalist the American is almost silenced. It is the other (or the Other’s) side of the story that is being told. The novel’s form is that of a frame story, a literary form M. H. Abrams describes as “a preliminary narrative within which one or more of the characters proceeds to tell a series of short narratives” (Ambrams 332): in this case, Changez gives an account of a few years of his life, and does so in chapter-like structures. Given the story’s theme, which concentrates on the relationship between a Pakistani and his time spent in the United States, or, in general between the East and the West, it is a consequential form: as Abrams writes, “[t]his device was widespread in the oral and written literature of the East and Middle East” (332). As an example of a frame story, Abrams mentions One Thousand and One Nights (also known as The Arabian Nights), a now canonical collection of North-African and West-, Central-, and South-Asian folk tales. In this way, the novel’s form interacts with its subject matter by being a reference to the – conventionalized – cultural heritage of its narrator. The main frame story is that of Changez and the American sharing a table in the Lahore tea room, whereas the subsequent narrative consists of Changez’ recollection of his years in New York City, his arrival at Princeton University, the job he lands at the financial firm Underwood Samson, his love affair with a woman named Erica, and, ultimately, his personal and political development after 9/11 and its distinctive, and for Changez critical, aftermath.

44 MOHSIN HAMID’S THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST

The “us versus them” narrative that was accounted for earlier in this study is being called into question in this novel. The above mentioned aspects of this novel – the “Eastern” literary technique being used, as well as the reversal of the standard post-9/11 storyteller’s perspectives considering the roles of the American and the Pakistani – already show that Hamid, first of all, acknowledges the “us versus them” dichotomy and the stereotypes that are attached to this division, and, secondly, examines them, turns them around, operates them and criticizes them at the same time. By doing this, the continuity of these stereotypical and orientalist identities is being undermined. In this way, Hamid ultimately resists the “us versus them” narrative. This is also visible in the novel’s title, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which refers to the story’s narrator, Changez. Fundamentalism and reluctance are two conceptions that do not seem to be compatible: fundamentalism requires a strong conviction, whereas reluctance implies that such a persuasion is absent in Changez’ political standpoint. This chapter will argue that, in Hamid’s novel, the “us versus them” narrative is being protested against by deploying orientalist and essentialist stereotypes: Changez makes use of a form of strategic essentialism to acquire a voice, and thus to be able to be the narrator of his own story. He becomes an essentialist, or fundamentalist, though not out of choice, but because it is necessary in order to be heard: reluctantly. The following will give a more detailed account of the structures and elements of the novel that show in which ways its narrative takes a stand against a dichotomous portrayal of East and West, and how the notion of post-9/11 precarity plays into this framework.

3.1 “Us” and “Them” After the Attacks

“Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America” (Hamid 1). In the third line of Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist the distinction between the narrator and his conversation partner is made clear: the Pakistani Changez needs to reassure his unknown American companion that he poses no threat, even though he has a beard. His company seems to have an investigative position of employment, although this is on no account made explicit. When

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asked by Changez for the “purpose of his visit”, echoing the safety measures at United States airports after the attacks on the Word Trade Center (77), the American chooses to remain silent: a reassured position that would be unsustainable if the roles were reversed. Whereas this Western privilege reveals the dichotomous roles and power relations Changez and the American find themselves in, the posing of Changez’ question subtly shows his criticism of the American’s entitlement. Returning to the opening paragraph of the novel, it appears that Changez’ facial hair, a recurring identifying mark, might be a sign of endangerment, mainly because it has religious connotations that immediately imply he does not love America – it would not have been necessary to disclose his positive sentiment towards the country otherwise. The reader does not have knowledge of the American’s reaction: The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s narration is solely carried out by Changez. After this initial encouragement, the storyteller ask for the objectives of the American’s visit to the tea room they find themselves:

Surely, at this time of day, only one thing could have brought you to the district of Old Anarkali – named, as you may be aware, after a courtesan immured for loving a prince – and that is the quest for the perfect cup of tea. Have I guessed correctly? (2)

In this passage, a classic kind of orientalism is hinted at, by the mentioning of the origin of the district’s name: the Middle East and Central Asia are framed as mystic, lustful, spiritual, and non-rational by speaking of a story about a courtesan. This brings to mind the “place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences”, Said calls the (European invention of the) Orient in his introduction to Orientalism (Said, Orientalism 1). The allusion to the (romantic) tales of the East, such as One Thousand and One Nights, is made as well by referring to this love story between a courtesan and a prince. These “ideological suppositions, images, and fantasies about (…) the Orient”, as Said calls one of the domains of orientalism in “Orientalism Reconsidered”, are thus indirectly alluded to (Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered” 90). However, as Peter Morey writes in “’The Rules of the Game Have Changed’: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Post-9/11 Fiction”,

46 MOHSIN HAMID’S THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST this orientalist manner of describing his surroundings is for Changez rather calculated, as it is a way to draw attention to the structures of orientalism:

Changez’s accounts of the traditions and cuisine of Pakistan (…) come to seem more like variants of (…) “strategic exoticism”: those moments when the postcolonial writer knowingly includes exotic elements and descriptions, in a way that draws attention to the publishing and reading practices which recycle such essentially Orientalist images. (142)

Even though these orientalist images are introduced, the narrator does so with a kind of self-reflection: rather than reinforcing these stereotypes, he plays with them, feigning naivety. This strategic exoticism can be seen as a manifestation or transfiguration of what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak calls a “’strategic use of positivist essentialism’ that clearly signals its political agenda” (Spivak in Bertens 171). In her work “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak argues that we cannot speak for the subaltern if we want to take them seriously in their heterogeneity: they will be misrepresented if we do try to represent them, and thus, as Bertens writes, “[g]iven this perspective, (…) the conclusion [is] that our identity is without a fixed centre and inherently unstable” (171). As a consequence, all essentialist notions of the colonizer and colonized are thoroughly undermined in Spivak’s theory. Yet nations, cultures, and political movements “arguably need some sort of identity that does not immediately deconstruct itself”, because a “political platform that takes itself apart in public cannot be very effective” (171). This is where Spivak’s notion of strategic essentialism comes into play: a clear-cut – and thus invented – cultural or political identity is being used in order to be able to assert political power. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge the fictitiousness of this identity. This can be seen in the way Changez makes use of orientalist narratives and notions in order to criticize them at the same time. This narrative tone that “replicates th[e] site of struggle between East and West”, as Morey calls it, is also perceivable in the way Changez reacts to his American conversation partner feeling unsafe: “You prefer that seat, with your back so close to the wall? (…) And you will not remove your jacket? So formal!” (Hamid 3). Of course, whereas Changez frames the American’s decision to keep his jacket on as formal, the readers assumes he is aware that it is a safety measure from the American’s point of view. This supposition is later cemented

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when the man feels threatened by the waiter and Changez reacts to that by saying:

You seem worried. Do not be; this burly fellow is merely our waiter, and there is no need to reach under your jacket, I assume to grasp your wallet, as we will pay him later, when we are done. (5)

Changez’ trustfulness is too overtly carried out – declaring he assumes it is a wallet (and not a weapon) his conversation partner is reaching for – to remain convincing. He is indubitably aware of the American’s lack of trust, but decides to act as if he is ignorant of his companion’s suspicion. The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s tackling of orientalist stereotypes, such as attributing the possibility of danger to every bearded Pakistani, is diverse. Changez occassionally gives the appearance of acceptance or tolerance of the position he is put in, in the above-mentioned scene for example, in which he pretends to be naive, whereas at other times he explicitly describes to the American the process of “othering” or straightforward discrimination he encounters as a Pakistani man in the United States, especially after 9/11.

Once I was walking to my rental car in the parking lot of the cable company when I was approached by a man I did not know. He made a series of unintelligible noises – “akhala-malakhala,” perhaps, or “khalapal-khalapala” – and pressed his face alarmingly close to mine (…). I thought he might be mad, or drunk (…). “Fucking Arab,” he said. (117)

By giving the details of these sort of encounters, the increasing tension between Changez as a Pakistani and his American surroundings becomes clear. By showing the discrimination he is subjected to, Changez however does not only clarify the “us versus them” relationship, but stands up to it as well. As becomes evident in this citation, this relationship between “us” and “them”, “Americans” and “Arabs”, in this case, is problematized after 9/11. It seems Changez, as a Pakistani, is mistaken for being Arabic, and the position of Arabs has become increasingly vulnerable as the attack on the World Trade Center was carried out by Arabic men: this, thus, leads to various forms of racism toward Arabs, Muslims and, in the case of Changez, people who look “Middle Eastern”. About this tension after 9/11, Butler writes in Precarious Life that “[t]he United States was supposed to be the place that could not be attacked (…). We

48 MOHSIN HAMID’S THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST now see that the national border was more permeable than we thought” (39). On the (racially) discriminatory backlash this fear caused, such as the one Changez describes, Butler states:

Our general response is anxiety, rage; a radical desire for security, a shoring-up of the borders against what is perceived as alien; a heightened surveillance of Arab peoples and anyone who looks vaguely Arab in the dominant racial imaginary. (39)

She continues by giving an account of heightened “racial hysteria in which fear is directed anywhere and nowhere”, so that a source of terror can be freely imagined and identified (39). The above-mentioned scene shows this racial hysteria to which Changez is subjected. By giving this account, and narrating it in such an unembellished and neutral way, as to amplify its absurdity, Changez makes clear his defiance of this partisan societal tendency. The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the circumstances Changez finds himself in after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City show how a post-9/11 “phenomenon of an assumed unbridgeable cultural gulf” has emerged with regards to a “Western” and an “Eastern” culture, according to Morey (136). Changez narrates his experiences in the weeks after the attacks, referring to “the latter part of October”, in which he

had been avoiding the evening news, preferring not to watch the partisan and sports-event-like coverage given to the mismatch between the American bombers with their twenty-first century weaponry and the ill-equipped and ill- fed Afghan tribesmen below. On those rare occasions when I did find myself confronted by such programming (…) I was reminded of the film Terminator, but with the roles reversed so that the machines were cast as heroes. (99)

Whereas this partisan news coverage – although Changez tries to circumvent it – leaves him relatively uninvolved, he is affected by “a newscast with ghostly night-vision images of American troops dropping into Afghanistan” (100). The narrator is surprised by his reaction: “Afghanistan was Pakistan’s neighbor, our friend, and a fellow Muslim country besides,” Changez tells the American, “and the sight of what I took to be the beginning of its invasion by your countrymen caused me to tremble with fury” (100). It is noticeable that Changez makes a distinction between his own countrymen – Pakistani’s who are Afghanistan’s neigbors and friends – and the American’s, “your countrymen” (emphasis mine).

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In this way, he distances himself from any identification with the United States, whereas he states earlier he feels like a New Yorker. In this point in the story, Changez has already shown his changing stance towards the U.S.: whereas he is an enthousiastic undergraduate student at Princeton upon his arrival in America, he grows to be more critical of the country, and even catches himself – to his own confusion – smiling when he sees the Twin Towers collapse. This reaction exposes to the reader and himself an ambiguous stance in the conflict that then ensues. As he tries to explain later to the American, he is “not indifferent to the suffering of others” (72). However, he was “caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees” (73). The ambiguity then lies in the different perspectives of Changez, and the way he is able to switch between those viewpoints. On a personal level, he is anxious after the attacks because his friend Erica might have been harmed; on a more political level, he appreciates the downfall of the United States as the most powerful nation in the world. His perspective depends on the scale and context in which he places the events. These two perspectives intertwine throughout the novel. The view from “up close” gives a personal account of Changez’ time in the U.S. and explains why he is a “lover of America”, as he introduces himself (1). The more distant, and more political, point of view, in which Changez identifies as a Pakistani and distances himself from America, display his distrust and criticism of the country.

3.2 Your Country, My Country: Identity and Culture

The events of 9/11 and their aftermath of explicit American patriotism and the discrimination of Muslims make Changez decide to keep his beard, which, as mentioned earlier, is a motif recurring throughout the novel. “[D]espite my mother’s request, and my knowledge of the difficulties it could well present me at immigration, I had not shaved my two-week-old beard (130). His motivation is unclear, even to himself: “It was, perhaps, a form of protest on my part, a symbol of my identity” (130). The reactions his facial hair triggers are unforeseen:

It is remarkable, given its physical insignificance – it is only a hairstyle, after all –

50 MOHSIN HAMID’S THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST

the impact a beard worn by a man of my complexion has on your fellow countrymen. More than once, traveling on the subway – where I always had the feeling of seamlessly blending in – I was subjected to verbal abuse by complete strangers, and at Underwood Samson I seemed to become overnight a subject of whispers and stares. Wainwright tries to offer me some friendly advice: “Look, man,” he said, “I don’t know what’s up with the beard, but I don’t think it’s making you Mister Popular around here.” “They are common where I come from,” I told him. “Jerk chicken is common where I come from,” he replied, “but I don’t smear it all over my face (…)”. (131)

As Changez tries to explain to his colleague and friend Wainwright, growing a beard is part of his cultural heritage. After the attacks, however, this heritage is not one that is appreciated in the United States. Mahmood Mamdani refers to “culture talk” to describe and to take a stand against the process of culture becoming a dominant dividing subject after 9/11:

Culture talk assumes that every culture has a tangible essence that defines it, and then explains politics as a consequence of that essence. Culture talk after 9/11 (…) explained the practice of “terrorism” as “Islamic”. “Islamic Terrorism” is thus offered as both description and explanation of the events of 9/11. It is (…) culture (modernity) that is said to be the dividing line between those in favour of a peaceful, civic existence and those inclined to terror. (Mamdani qtd in Morey 136)

Cultural heritage thus plays a significant role in the creation of a dichotomy between “those in favour of a peaceful existence”, and “those inclined to terror”. According to Mamdani, terrorism is seen as part of (a Middle Eastern or Islamic) culture. Changez’ beard is also part of this cultural heritage, and as a result, his beard is seen as signifying danger. In “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: A Political Perspective on Culture and Terrorism”, Mamdani elaborates on this concept of “culture talk”, stating that religious experience is made into a political category, “differentiating ‘good Muslims’ from ‘bad Muslims’, rather that terrorists from civilians” (766). Culture talk takes no notice of a historical context, but sees political events – such as 9/11 – as a result of a “cultural essence”. In case of 9/11, this type of argument would be for example that “the terrorist link is (…) with a very literal interpretation of (…) Islam” (766). The dichotomy between the modern and the premodern, the West and the rest, is intensified in order to be able to hold a specific cultural disposition responsible for political actions such as 9/11. The idea of a specific cultural essence and the notion of modernity play a big part in framing terrorism. Terrorism is seen as a way of waging war that is

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done by cultures that are “underdeveloped” or “backwards”: as was shown earlier in the comparison with The Terminator, “modern” cultures make use of technological warfare – they operate drones, or use other machinery, whereas “premodern” cultures resort to forms of violence such as terrorism. Changez, as a Pakistani, thus finds himself being (seen as) non-American. When he moves to New York, he states he was “immediately a New Yorker” (33), and he instantly identifies with the narrative of the American Dream when accepted in to an Ivy League university: “Princeton inspired me in the feeling that my life was a film in which I was the star and everything was possible” (3). This changes after 9/11, when culture, as the earlier mentioned passage of Said’s Culture and Imperialism delineates, becomes more noticeably “associated with the nation or the state”, which differentiates “us” from “them”, and when culture is considered more explicitly “a source of identity, and a rather combative one at that” (Said xiii). About this post-9/11 cultural change, Changez states:

Possibly this was due to my state of mind, but it seemed to me that America, too, was increasingly giving itself over to a dangerous nostalgia at that time. There was something undeniably retro about the flags and uniforms, about generals addressing cameras in war rooms and newspaper headlines featuring such words as duty and honor. I had always thought of America as a nation that looked forward; for the first time I was struck by its determination to look back.

Considering the orientalist tradition of framing the West as modern and enlightened, and the East as backwards and primitive, it is striking how, in this passage, these ideas are turned around. Changez says he “always thought of America as a nation that looked forward”. Conservatism, patriotism and militarism after 9/11 transform his view on this matter. Here, The Reluctant Fundamentalist shows its opposition to the orientalist dichotomies of the West as modern, and the East as classical: for once, the West is framed as being backward. Again, Changez first acknowledges the existing dichotomies between East and West, examines them, and consequently dismisses them. Changez speculates about the motives that are behind this patriotism and conservatism:

What your fellow countrymen longed for was unclear to me – a time of unquestioned dominance? of safety? of moral certainty? I did not know – but

52 MOHSIN HAMID’S THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST

that they were scrambling to don the costumes of another era was apparent. I felt treacherous for wondering whether that era was fictitious, and whether – if it could indeed be animated – it contained a part written for someone like me. (115)

Changez states he does not know what “your fellow countrymen longed for”, but feels that he cannot share in this longing, because it might not contain “a part written for someone like me”, by which he presumably means: a non-American; a Pakistani. The longing for an era that is in all likelihood “fictitious” and a fantasy again reverses the “rational” role the West often is ascribed. Furthermore, the use of the possessive adjective “your” indicates his distance from the American subject. It is not Changez’ country anymore, it is the American’s country. Post-9/11 patriotism is expressed in many ways, with public flag waving as a very visible one: “Your country’s flag invaded New York after the attacks; it was everywhere” (79). Again, Changez makes clear the flag is not his, but very much the American’s. This nationalism is described and at the same time questioned and criticized by Changez:

Small flags stuck on toothpicks featured in the shrines; stickers of flags adorned windshields and windows; large flags fluttered from buildings. They all seemed to proclaim: We are America (…), the mightiest civilization the world has ever known; you have slighted us; beware our wrath. (79)

The combative source of identity that culture is, according to Said, becomes visible: flags do not only stand for pride or nationalism, but, in Changez’ interpretation, for revenge as well, as he mentions the possibility of retaliation. The “us versus them” narrative is strengthened and sharpened because of the attacks. From the American side the distinction between Americans and others is made quite directly by the “invasion” of the flag, whereas from Changez’ perspective his identification with his Pakistani roots grows more gradually. His initial reaction to the falling of the Twin Towers surprises him, and at the same time makes him question his position: “I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees” (73). When his conversation partner reacts with “displeasure”, as Changez puts it, he states:

I was not at war with America. Far from it: I was the product of an American university; I was earning a lucrative American salary; I was infatuated with an American woman. So why did part of me desire to see America harmed? I did not know (…). (73)

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With this nuance, Changez immediately resists taking a side in the “us versus them” portrayal of Americans versus “anti-Americans”: he is not a dangerous outsider that wishes harm on his enemies, he is, in fact, an insider who is surprisingly content with the attack on his host country. Changez makes it hard for the reader to “pick sides”: his narrative implies there is no such thing as an “us” and a “them”, but that it is possible to not only switch sides, but to be both the us and the them at once. Changez is a New Yorker, a Pakistani, a lover of America as well as a severe critic of the country, all at the same time. The novel’s title is relevant again, in the sense that Changez becomes a “fundamentalist” because of strategic reasons, as earlier mentioned, but a reluctant one: this reluctance can be ascribed to his love for America and his identification as a Pakistani as well as a New Yorker. The protagonist’s name, Changez Khan, is of symbolic importance as well, as his standpoint is constantly developing and “changing”. Its resemblance with the name of the founder of the Mongol Empire Genghis Khan could point to Changez’ resolute decision to return to Pakistan5. What becomes clear, is that Hamid proves to be able to resist the dichotomy and create a space for a nuanced position of the novel’s protagonist.

3.3 Post-9/11 Precarity in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Reluctant Fundamentalist reflects on the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center from the perspective of an insider-turned-outsider. Whereas Changez is a succesful Princeton alumnus and trainee at the financial firm Underwood Samson, his position, and with it his worldview, changes significantly after 9/11. In this novel, the protagonist’s economic insecurity and societal vulnerability increase after 9/11: the threat of a terrorist attack produces a collective sentiment of vulnerability, whereas an economic insecurity arises after the collapse of the financial market in the wake of September 11. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, it is made clear that a change of attitude with

5 Many of the names in Hamid’s novel can be interpreted as symbolic. The financial firm Changez works for is called Underwood Samson (U.S), the woman he in love with is called Erica (Am-Erica).

54 MOHSIN HAMID’S THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST regards to Muslims or Middle Eastern-looking people emerges as well after the attacks. After 9/11, Changez states:

Pakistani cabdrivers were being beaten to within an inch of their lives; the FBI was raiding mosques, shops, and even people’s houses; Muslim men were disappearing, perhaps into shadowy detention centers for questioning or worse. I reasoned that these stories were mostly untrue; the few with some basis in fact were almost certainly being exaggerated; and besides, those rare cases of abuse that regrettably did transpire were unlikely ever to affect me because such things invariably happened, in America as in all countries, to the hapless poor, not to Princeton graduates earning eighty thousand dollars a year. (Hamid 95)

The distinction between “us” and “them”, between Muslims and non-Muslims, Pakistani- and other Americans, is sharpened. Most notably, another aspect of post-9/11 precarity is foregrounded, namely that the position of Pakistani’s and Muslims becomes highly vulnerable; open to physical violence in the case of the cabdrivers, and open to state violence in the case of Muslims disappearing into detention centers. Butler writes about this manifestation of precarity in Frames of War:

Precarity designates that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death (…). Precarity also characterizes that politically induced condition of maximized precariousness for populations exposed to arbitrary state violence who often have no other option than to appeal to the very state from which they need protection. (Frames of War 26)

It is important to note a difference between precarity and precariousness: whereas precarity is a political condition, precariousness is an existential concept, which refers to “living socially, that is, the fact that one’s life is always in some sense in the hands of the other”, as Butler states (Frames of War 14). Her definition of precarity as a politically induced condition, then, resonates with Changez’ account of the vulnerability of the Muslim population in the United States. Muslims in general have become a vulnerable group within society after 9/11, whereas Changez still believes that this endangered position can only be taken in by the poor, not to “Princeton graduates earning eighty thousand dollars a year”. He values the economic division between rich and poor higher than the racial, religious or national distinction that is foregrounded in this scene. As a

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consequence, he is convinced he is not part of the group that constitutes the vulnerable, precarious Other. However, Changez’ ideas regarding economic vulnerability – only experienced by the “hapless poor” – seem to be outdated. In the United States, a post-Fordist (economic) precarity which is, as Ettlinger describes it, “understood with reference to the casualization of labor”, is replaced by a post-9/11 precarity. This recent form of precarity has an economic feature as well, but is mainly tied to the unpredictability of terror and the anxiety it envokes (Ettlinger 322). This anxiety leads to the violence towards Muslims and Pakistani’s that Changez recounts: the possibility of a terrorist attack is blindly merged with Islam, which makes any, or every, Muslim a suspect. In Precarious Life, Butler writes about this post-9/11 precarity and includes the effects of the War on Terror, for example that the political sphere in the U.S. reverted to

the same binarism that returns us to an anachronistic division between “East” and “West” and which, in its sloshy metonymy, returns us to the invidious distinction between civilization (our own) and barbarism (now coded as ‘Islam’ itself). (Butler, Precarious Life 2)

This binarism thus leads to a strong resurrection of the “us versus them” narrative after 9/11, as is shown earlier in 3.1. The use of this narrative can be viewed as a reaction to the anxiety and insecurity that post-9/11 precarity invokes. By dividing society into clear categories, a false sense of security is created. This is also why Changez strategically needs to become a fundamentalist: he needs to adopt a clear standpoint in order for his voice to be heard. In the post-9/11 genre, orientalist dichotomies (of East and West, Muslim and non-Muslim) are often used to create a clear-cut portrayal of the “good guy” and the “bad guy” in an attempt to hold off this sense of precarity. However, in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, this binarism is being questioned: Changez is both the good and the bad. He is not per se an Other, but becomes one after 9/11. This “becoming of the Other”, then, is merely possible because of the state of post- 9/11 precarity that Changez finds himself in: even for a Princeton graduate, earning thousands of dollars a year, the ramifications of post-9/11 precarity are to be felt. He becomes an Other, because the distinction between being American

56 MOHSIN HAMID’S THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST and being Pakistani grows to be of critical consequence after the attacks. Changez resists the post-9/11 dichotomies by giving a nuanced account of his position in and towards the United States, but interacts with orientalist stereotypes on a strategic level, so that his story will be heard. Post-9/11 precarity can be viewed as a starting point in this respect: the insecurity and anxiety this phenomenon envokes, result in the need for a comprehensible narrative. Conventionalized images of East and West provide a sense of security that Changez decides to participate in, in order to be able to tell his story.

3.4 Pushing the Limits of Post-9/11 Fiction

When taking into account the genre of the post-9/11 novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist finds its place in this category, while also pushing the limits of it. In this genre, a recurring element earlier mentioned in chapter 1 is that of the Middle Eastern character reciting a verse from the Qur’an or singing a song, without translation. An encounter with the waiter shows how, in this novel, this practice is being challenged in The Reluctant Fundamentalist:

Is he praying, you ask? No sir, not at all! His recitation – rhythmic, formulaic, from memory, and so, I will concede, not unlike a prayer – is in actuality an attempt to transmit orally our menu, much as in your country one is told the specials. (109)

Not only does Hamid explicitly mention this element of prayer and the reaction it provokes, which is one of fear for the unknown (religion), he also brings up the fact that there is a similarity between this Pakistani waiter and those in the United States, when waiters present the customer with the restaurant’s specials. It might even be said that this fragment is parodying those works that do include a mysterious and unknowable prayer as part of the depiction of an oriental Other. With Changez’ comparison to American waiters, the image of the Lahore waiter mentioning the menu is contextualized through his position of employment – it does not matter whether the waiter is Pakistani or American, the menu has to be told – instead of his religion. Hamid shows how easily the oriental Other is created as a consequence of a lack of information, in this case, a lack of knowledge of the language.

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Considering The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s place in the genre, it is relevant to mention that Pakistan and (American) Pakistani play a significant role in numerous post-9/11 works. With regards to novels, a selection of these would be H. M. Naqvi’s Home Boy, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, and Amy Waldman’s The Submission6. They either have narrators of Pakistani descent or include important Pakistani characters. In Home Boy – to select an example that relates closely to Hamid’s novel – three young, successful Pakistani men in New York City find themselves in a changed America after the fall of the Twin Towers, and all of a sudden become terrorist suspects after trying to visit a friend. Their post-9/11 position as Pakistani young men in the United States, just as Changez’, is significantly more vulnerable than their place in society was before the terrorist attacks. What is important to note with regards to genre, is that Pakistani men are seen as threats to American safety and Pakistan is regarded as a breeding ground for terrorism, which has also been shown in the analysis of Homeland. In this sense, Hamid’s novel interacts with this genre feature: his narrator is Pakistani, and the novel takes place in Pakistan. However, whereas in many of this genre’s works – especially in film and television – Pakistan is described from an American protagonist’s viewpoint, in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and through Changez’ monologue, Lahore becomes a corporeal and comprehensible place, as opposed to a chaotic and unknown terrorist den. As Morey states, against the backdrop of the post-9/11 genre, Hamid’s novel “represents a sly intervention that destabilizes the dominant categories of the post-9/11 novel” (136). These categories, according to Morey, mainly consist of “trauma narratives”, such as Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, or “semi-fictionalized ‘Muslim misery memoirs’ which often served to underscore the injustices of Islamic rule and justify neoconservative interventionism”, such as Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (136). Morey states that Hamid’s novel, however, undercuts

the impulse to national normalization through the experience of its protagonist, Changez, and his journey from fully interpellated capitalist ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘post-political’ transnational subject to racially profiled object of suspicion and finally anti-American firebrand. (137)

6 See also: rMA Research Project Literary Studies: Annotated Bibliography of Post-9/11 Culture.

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It is especially this journey and Changez’ strong character development that make Hamid’s protagonist and his intentions open to debate. The ambiguity of Changez’ position towards the United States – because whether he really is a radical, is a question that remains to be answered – underscores the resistance of post-9/11 dichotomies in The Reluctant Fundamentalist and indeed the placing of the novel in a specific category as well: it is no trauma narrative nor a “Muslim misery memoir”, as Morey puts it, as its remarkable structure, that of a monologue, defies these classifications. The resistance of an “us and them” narrative provides the opportunity to place Hamid’s novel in a postcolonial perspective. As Margaret Scanlan states in her article “Migrating from Terror: The Postcolonial Novel after September 11” (2010), Hamid, as a postcolonial writer, “finds [himself] on the treacherous fault- line between the binaries of terrorist discourse, between, say, native and alien, or between Islam and the secular West” (Scanlan 267). What Scanlan calls this “fault-line” resembles the resistance of the “us” and “them” dichotomy that becomes clearly visible in Hamid’s novel. As Scanlan puts it, the novel is an example

of the “voyage in”; that is, they revise the West’s vision of itself as a haven for the oppressed, a fortress of secular reason besieged by a fanatical Orient, whose latest representatives are migrants bearing bombs and contagion. (267)

Indeed, The Reluctant Fundamentalist does revise ideas about the West and the East, though it does not straightforwardly prove them wrong and corrects them – it cross-examines them and turns them around without providing a clear answer to the questions of identity and belonging. Whereas these kinds of questions are raised in other post-9/11 works, Hamid’s novel takes in a distinctive position within the genre, because of the way this theme is dealt with. “Identity” proves to be an ever-changing concept, as the first name – an important marker of identity – of the narrator already implies. One’s identity is not stable, and especially not for Changez. In addition, the fact that his American conversation partner remains silent throughout the novel is a consequential approach with regards to The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s place in post-9/11 fiction. This means that the theme of identity entirely revolves around

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Changez’ identity; the Pakistani’s identity. By focusing on the Other and creating a space for his monologue while ruthlessly cutting off the American voice, Hamid pushes the limits of the genre and therefore broadens it. Taking the genre of post-9/11 literary fiction into account, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is not a novel about American protagonists versus Middle Eastern antagonists, nor does it reinforce (orientalist) stereotypes about either region or its inhabitants. It is a work of fiction that engages in these features, criticizes them and adds to them, instead of giving in to them. With regards to the previous two chapters, it can be said that Hamid’s novel challenges the stereotypes, dichotomies and binaries that constitute post- 9/11 orientalism. Whereas in American Sniper, the “us versus them” narrative is very much reinforced in the War on Terror discourse, Homeland already shows some resistance towards the clear-cut dichotomy between the Western hero and the Eastern antagonist. The Reluctant Fundamentalist acknowledges the existence of these narratives, but strongly opposes them through the use of what can be called a “strategic orientalism”.

60 CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION

In Mira Nair’s film adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the Pakistani protagonist Changez is questioned by the American journalist Bobby Lincoln about the abduction of an American professor in Pakistan. Because the film opens with the kidnapping of this professor, it positions itself as a thriller. In this story – which differs from the novel’s narrative to a great extent – there is limited space for an exploration of post-9/11 orientalism, which is one of the novel’s principal themes. Nair’s film relies on archetypal thriller genre conventions to tell Changez’ life story. As a consequence, an important revised feature is that Changez is not the only narrator of the story anymore. The novel’s strongest element of resistance – that Changez decides which story is told, and how it is narrated – is lost in the film. As a result, the simplistic portrayal of Americans and Pakistanis in the film gives room to the dichotomies and binaries that, in the novel, are challenged by Changez’ strategic orientalism. The case studies examined in this work – that show an increasing resistance towards post-9/11 orientalism – are thus not to be interpreted as part of a larger tendency of an opposition of this binarism. There is no chronological order to these chapters, as Hamid’s novel was published in 2007, and American Sniper as well as the film The Reluctant Fundamentalist are more recent and yet more orientalist. However, the order of these case studies is not arbitrary, as they increasingly show a refusal to accept the dichotomies of post-9/11 orientalism, especially with regards to the discourse of the War on Terror and terrorism. In Eastwood’s American Sniper, the “us versus them” binary is rather simplistic, with the Americans (such as Kyle) as war heroes, and the Iraqis as terrorist, inhuman savages. American Sniper’s representation of Kyle’s antagonist, Mustafa, however, slightly opens up a space for a more subtle representation of the Other, as Mustafa is portrayed as being on the verge of humanization. Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon’s Homeland reinforces the dichotomies of this narrative, but questions them at the same time. Almost all Muslims are terrorists in this television series, and all terrorists are Muslims. However, the figures of Ayaan Ibrahim and ISI agent Aasar Khan complicate the

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 61

“us versus them” dichotomy that constitutes a great part of the War on Terror discourse. This dichotomy becomes more fragile: the Other is shown as human, although the only people openly criticizing the war are still, without exception, terrorists. However, in the representation of the War on Terror and especially the use of distancing technologies such as drones, Homeland poses a question of ethics, for example when its protagonist Carrie hestitantly accept the title of “Drone Queen”. Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist ultimately opposes the “us versus them” narrative, as its protagonist is Pakistani, but identifies as American, and is a “lover of America”, but smiles when he sees the Twin Towers collapse. Changez is everything at the same time. The “us versus them” narrative is resisted, and Changez only adheres to orientalist stereotypes as a form of strategic essentialism. As a consequence, Hamid’s novel can be seen as pushing the boundaries of the post-9/11 genre. In all of these works, precarity serves as a basis for the use of this orientalist “us versus them” narrative. In Eastwood’s work, a sense of precarity and anxiety is the reason for Kyle to go to war: he wants to protect his country from the possibility of another attack. In Homeland, the attacks of 9/11 and the vulnerability they envoked are excuses for retaliation and “counterterrorism”, with The War on Terror as the main example. In Hamid’s novel, post-9/11 precarity leads to racism and bigotry towards the protagonist, Changez. Because of this intolerance, he becomes incapable of telling his side of the story, which is why he reverts to strategic orientalism. This way, he acquires a voice. As a consequence of this strategy, however, Changez is compelled to become a (reluctant) fundamentalist. What these case studies show, is that this recent form of orientalism is frequently reinforced with regards to the War on Terror and other narratives of terrorism, as these narratives thrive on clear-cut dichotomies between East and West, good and bad, and human and inhuman, to name a few. Furthermore, this array of cultural objects shows different ways to deal with this post-9/11 orientalism: it can be reinforced and practised uncritically, as is demonstrated in American Sniper, but it can also be criticized and denounced, as Hamid’s novel shows.

62 CONCLUSION

Because the genre of post-9/11 fiction is growing rapidly7, this research provides an apt framework to analyse works of this genre. Whereas Morton and “Military Orientalism”-theorists connected Said’s orientalism and terrorism, and Butler, Berlant, and Ettlinger showed a strong link between post-9/11 precarity and terrorism, this research has made clear that the concept of precarity and recent forms of Said’s orientalism are even more closely connected, precisely through these narratives of terrorism. The study of the representation of terrorism will, in all likelihood, remain relevant in the future, especially with regards to global developments of political and religious violence. Further research might pertain to these recent developments and their representation in fiction, as well as their methods of self-representation, for example through the use of social media. A somewhat more philosophical examination of the concept of precarity might be a fruitful research subject as well. What this research has shown, is that with regards to post-9/11 narratives of terrorism, Said’s conceptualization of orientalism is still a highly relevant framework to analyse works regarding (the aftermath of) the attacks on September 11. Discriminatory dichotomies and stereotypes are reinforced in many cultural objects that are part of the expanding post-9/11 genre. This research has not only identified precarity as the basis of this post-9/11 orientalism, but has pointed to forms of resistance of this “us versus them” narrative – which, for example, can be seen in The Reluctant Fundamentalist – as well.

7 See, for example, television series Tyrant (2014), about a Westernized son of a Middle Eastern tyrant (created by Gideon Raff, maker of Homeland), and American Odyssey (2015), about a U.S. company’s funding of Islamist terror groups. See also: rMA Research Project Literary Studies: Annotated Bibliography of Post-9/11 Culture.

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 63

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LIST OF HOMELAND EPISODES

“The Smile.” Homeland. Writ. Alex Gansa & Howard Gordon. Dir. Michael Cuesta. Showtime 2012. Television.

“Q&A.” Homeland. Writ. Henri Bromell. Dir. Lesli Linka Glatter. Showtime 2012. Television.

“The Drone Queen.” Homeland. Writ. Alex Gansa. Dir. Lesli Linka Glatter. Showtime 2014. Television.

“Trylon and Perisphere.” Homeland. Writ. Chip Johannessen. Dir. Keith Gordon. Showtime 2014. Television.

“Shalwar Kameez.” Homeland. Writ. Alexander Cary. Dir. Lesli Linka Glatter. Showtime 2014. Television.

“Iron in the Fire.” Homeland. Writ. Patrick Harbinson. Dir. Michael Offer. Showtime 2014. Television.

“About a Boy.” Homeland. Writ. Meredith Stiehm. Dir. Charlotte Sieling. Showtime 2014. Television.

“From A to B and Back Again.” Homeland. Writ. Chip Johannessen. Dir. Lesli Linka Glatter. Showtime 2014. Television.

“Redux.” Homeland. Writ. Alexander Cary. Dir. Carl Franklin. Showtime 2014. Television.

“Halfway to a Donut.” Homeland. Writ. Chip Johannessen. Dir. Alex Graves. Showtime 2014. Television.

PRECARITY AND POST-9/11 ORIENTALISM 67

“There’s Something Else Going On.” Homeland. Writ. Patrick Harbinson. Dir. Seith Mann. Showtime 2014. Television.

“Thirteen Hours in Islamabad.” Homeland. Writ. Alex Gansa & Howard Gordon. Dir. Dan Attias. Showtime 2014. Television.

“Krieg Nicht Lieb.” Homeland. Writ. Alexander Cary & Chip Johannessen. Dir. Clark Johnson. Showtime 2014. Television.

“Long Time Coming.” Homeland. Writ. Meredith Stiehm. Dir. Lesli Linka Glatter. Showtime 2014. Television.