NATIONAL ACTIVISM IN TRANSNATIONAL TIMES: A STUDY OF POST-9/11 SOUTH ASIAN AND SOUTH ASIAN AMERICAN WORKS By DHANASHREE THORAT A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2013 1 © 2013 Dhanashree Thorat 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to my committee chair, Dr. Malini Schueller, for her help and support in completing this project. She has encouraged me to strive for excellence in the scholarship I produce. I would also like to thank my other committee members, Dr. Anita Anantharam, and Dr. Amy Ongiri, for their advice and feedback as I worked on this project. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 3 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 7 Othering of Muslims in Post-9/11 America ................................................................ 7 Critique and Defense of Nationalism ...................................................................... 15 Re-Imagining the Nation-State ................................................................................ 22 2 LOCATING SITES OF RESISTANCE IN MOHSIN HAMID’S THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST AND WAJAHAT ALI’S THE DOMESTIC CRUSADERS ........ 37 Economic Fundamentalism and Popular Nationalism in The Reluctant Fundamentalist .................................................................................................... 38 Familiar Conflict and the Nation-State in The Domestic Crusaders ........................ 52 3 THE ACTIVIST AND THE TERRORIST: REIMAGINING THE NATION-STATE IN MY NAME IS KHAN AND NEW YORK .............................................................. 64 The Origin of the Terrorist Citizen after 9/11 ........................................................... 70 Claiming the Nation ................................................................................................ 75 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 90 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ............................................................................................ 95 4 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts NATIONAL ACTIVISM IN TRANSNATIONAL TIMES: A STUDY OF POST-9/11 SOUTH ASIAN AND SOUTH ASIAN AMERICAN WORKS By Dhanashree Thorat August 2013 Chair: Malini Johar Schueller Major: English The revitalized Orientalist discourse in a post-9/11 America has cast Muslims as threats to the American society and nation-state, spawned a domestic legacy of Muslim Othering, and buttressed a jingoistic nationalism. This project examines the American state’s Othering of South Asian Muslims, and those South Asian subjects interpellated as Muslims, as well as the response articulated to this Othering by South Asian Muslims in the context of the following four works: My Name is Khan (Bollywood film), New York (Bollywood film), The Domestic Crusaders (a play by Wajahat Ali), and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (a novel by Mohsin Hamid). I argue that these works not only challenge the hegemonic representational schema which has defined Muslims in the U.S., but more importantly, all four works present the nation-state as a viable site of citizenship, belonging, and resistance for minority subjects. The nation-state is posited as a protective site which can support minority rights de-privileged in the processes of globalization. Thus, subjects turn to a minority and popular nationalism to reinscribe their claims to the nation-state. This nationalistic move is accompanied by practices which hybridize the nation, and subjects 5 attempt this hybridizing through acts of civic, legal, and educational activism and radicalism to transform public space, institutional memory, and national culture. 6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Othering of Muslims in Post-9/11 America The attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2011 revitalized an Orientalist discourse in the United States, which enabled the Othering of Muslims living in the United States as threats to the society and security of the nation-state. This Othering was supported by and visible in state policies in the years after 9/11 and sustained an atmosphere of suspicion about Muslims, American citizens or otherwise, and broadly speaking, of Islam. The dramatic rise in anti-Muslim hate crime, a spike of almost 1,600%, reported by the FBI in the three weeks after the attacks was an early indicator that popular anger about the attacks was being displaced to the racialized bodies of Muslims as well as Arabs, South Asians and others who were racially and religiously misrecognized (Confronting Discrimination in the Post-9/11 Era 4). This popular anger was construed as a form of patriotism to the American nation, and a demonstration of fealty to the nation by way of targeting a block of citizens, residents or visitors now considered un-American, or even anti-American. The production of Muslims as cultural Others occurred alongside the racialization of Muslims, and these projects produced subjects who could be framed by state policy and popular imagination but were simultaneously placed outside the realm of citizenship and rights. State policies set the tenor for this cultural and racial Othering of Muslims after 9/11. Immediately after 9/11, the Federal Bureau of Investigation detained more than 1200 suspects, many deemed so because of their racial features. The Department of Justice stopped reporting the number of detainees after it topped 1200. The first troubling hints of human rights violation came with this round of detentions. Many 7 detainees were held without charges for months, denied counsel (in contravention of international and American laws), and eventually many “were deported for minor immigration violations” rather than on terrorism related charges (Immigration Policy – Targets of Suspicion 3). To counteract future terrorist attacks on American soil, the government soon implemented measures ranging from a new immigration policy to expanded judicial powers. 1Extensive research already exists on the state’s misuse of these new powers and policies, particularly via the 2USA PATRIOT Act, and NSEERS to track, interview, detain, and deport Muslim aliens in the United States suspected of terrorism. The various policy actions instituted under the PATRIOT Act constitute the domestic ‘war on terrorism,’ which finds its foreign counterpart in the jingoistic nationalism which led to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These domestic measures affected a disproportionate number of Muslim aliens living in the U.S., but did not remove American citizens from their purview. The wide ranging scope of these policies, thus, not only affected immigrants, but also citizens and communities. For instance, the open ended language of the NSEERS left even immigration lawyers baffled about who needed to comply with the special registration and interviews mandated for individuals from countries with large Muslim populations. Eventually, the government interviewed almost “100,000 people of Muslim, Arab, or South Asian origin, including citizens, permanent residents, applicants for permanent residency, individuals legally present in the country on student or work visas, and 1 A Penn State Symposium observes, for instance, that the special interest detentions “raised numerous human rights concerns ranging from prolonged arbitrary detention to interference with the right to counsel to unduly harsh conditions of confinement.” ( 9-11 Effect Immigration 8). 2 The term stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism 8 people who overstayed their visas” (Targets of Suspicion 2). Most of the immigrants detained under these policies were not charged with terrorism, but some were eventually deported for visa or immigration violations. Without going into specifics, I do want to note that some of these abuses of state power, and the discriminatory nature of these measures has been recognized not only by human rights organizations and researchers, but also by the government and 3legal system. Furthermore, this public production of racialized subjects and stereotypes has a direct import on private violence (like hate crime) against Muslims (Volpp 1582). Volpp argues that through the Orientalist tropes engendered by the rhetoric of the ‘war on terrorism,’ and especially, the racial construction of the terrorist figure, “the American public is being instructed that looking “Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim” equals “potential terrorist.”” (Volpp 1582). The impact of such measures and their consequences was dramatically felt in Muslim communities. Community members were targeted by state actions, and alienated by local institutions such as school systems, residential councils, and city councils. These institutions are typically charged with producing normative cultural behaviors and given the construction of Muslims as cultural Others, their policing of Muslim bodies is not unexpected. Land use has been a polarizing point in this discussion. The Department of Justice report, “Confronting Discrimination