Thesis Fienveldman 5881323
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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).