“We’ve Tamed the World by Framing It”: Islam, ‘Justifiable Warfare,’ and Situational Responses to the War on Terror in Selected Post-9/11 Novels, Films and Television. A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Rhodes University by Philip Eric John Sulter December 2016 Supervisor: Dr Minesh Dass Co-Supervisor: Dr Deborah Seddon Abstract This thesis explores geopolitically diverse fictional responses to 9/11 and the War on Terror. Drawing on Judith Butler’s (2009) notion of the “frames of war,” Jacques Derrida’s (2005) conception of the ‘friend’/‘enemy’ binary, and Mahmood Mamdani’s (2004) critique of the ‘good’ Muslim, ‘bad’ Muslim dichotomy (delineated in 2001 by President George W. Bush) I examine how selected examples of contemporary literature, as well as a popular television series, depict the War on Terror; and analyse how these differently situated texts structure their respective depictions of Islam and Muslims. In the first chapter, I focus on how The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), a novel by the Pakistani author, Mohsin Hamid, problematises the ‘good’ Muslim, ‘bad’ Muslim binary, and argue that the protagonist’s decision to leave the United States in the wake of 9/11 represents an important political comment on global perceptions of American foreign policy and the human cost of millennial capitalism. Chapter 2 is an investigation of two novels: The Silent Minaret (2005) and I See You (2014), by the South African writer, Ishtiyaq Shukri. By situating his characters in a variety of geopolitical spaces and temporal realities, Shukri encourages the reader to discard the structuring frames of nation, race, and religion, and links the vulnerability and violence implicit in the War on Terror to a longer history of conquest, colonialism, and apartheid. In the process, Shukri illustrates the importance of understanding repressive local contexts as interwoven with global and historical power dynamics. Chapter 3 is a study of the popular American television series, Homeland (2011—), created by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, and focuses on the manner in which the Central Intelligence Agency’s “Overseas Contingency Operations” are portrayed by the show. I argue that Homeland initially problematises the ‘friend’/‘enemy’ binary, but subsequently collapses into a narrative in which these two polarities are construed by prevailing American attitudes towards Islam and the notion of the War on Terror as a necessity. This thesis concludes that texts that characterise the War on Terror as a global phenomenon, and situate it within a broad historical discourse, are able to subvert the singularity ascribed to the 9/11 attacks, as well as the epochal connotations of the ‘post-9/11 ’ literary genre. I argue that the novels I have chosen scrutinise the ways in which perceptions are framed by dominant forms of media, historiography, and political rhetoric, and not only offer unique insights on the repercussions of the global War on Terror but attempt to conceive of humanity in its totality, and therefore destabilise the ontological and reductive operation of the frame itself. Table of Contents Introduction: Narrating, Understanding, and Framing the War on Terror 1 Chapter 1: Fundamentalism, Finance, and Fractured Identities: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. 17 1.1 Mutually Assured Suspicion: The Narrative Framework of The Reluctant Fundamentalist 21 1.2 ‘Good’ Muslim, ‘Bad’ Muslim: Changez’s Impossible Desire for Singularity 24 1.3 A “Western-Educated Urbanite” or the “Dictator of an Islamic Republic” 27 1.4 The “Symbolism” of Atrocity: Changez’s Visual Experience of September 11 31 1.5 Nostalgia, Self-Righteousness, and New York’s New Character 34 1.6 Failing (Am)Erica and the Visible Pakistani 36 1.7 Machines as “Heroes”: The War on Terror through Changez’s Eyes 40 1.8 Lahore: The Reverberations of America’s War 44 1.9 “How I Left America”: Changez the (Ex) Janissary 46 1.10 Reluctant Fundamentalism as an Ethical Position 51 Chapter 2: “The Age of Interruption”: Cracking the Frames of Nation, Race, and Precarity in the Work of Ishtiyaq Shukri 52 2.1 Shukri’s “Trans-Global” Frame and the Global Deep State 54 2.2 Issa’s Challenge to the Metanarrative 59 2.3 “Trans-Cultural Exchange”: Frances, Katinka, and Karim 63 2.4 Watching the War: The Destruction and Detention of the ‘Enemy’ 70 2.5 Borders, Control, and “Islands of Interrogation” 74 2.6 “Beginning Are for Fools”: The Ceaseless Cycle of Violence in I See You 77 2.7 Tariq the Framer: Kasalia, ZARCorps, and the Deep State in South Africa 79 2.8 Our Terrorists and Yours: Israel, Palestine, and the War on Terror 85 2.9 Precarity and Immobility: Those Who Live in the “Shadow of the Wall” 87 2.10 “The Forbidden Horizon”: False Passports and the Limitations of Solidarity 92 2.11 A Call to the “Trans-Global” Recognition of Precarity 95 Chapter 3: Homeland: Intelligence, Espionage, and Making “Intelligible” the Contemporary War on Terror 97 3.1 The ‘Friend’ and the ‘Enemy’: A Matter of Political Perspective 100 3.2 Season One and Two: The ‘Enemy Within’ 105 3.3 Fictionalising Tragedy: The Lasting Legacy of 9/11 108 3.4 Season Three: A Familiar and Necessary ‘Enemy’ 111 3.5 Imagining Iran: Homeland Creates its Own Realities 115 3.6 Season Four: The Failing Status of the War on Terror 118 3.7 “The Drone Queen”: How Much Is a Pakistani Life Worth? 120 3.8 Diplomacy, Demagoguery, and Death 123 3.9 Season Five: “Speaking Truth to Power” in a Risky Take on the War on Terror128 3.10 The Islamic State: A New Type of Terror? 132 3.11 The Threat of T errorism Marches On 135 Conclusion: Have We “Tamed the World By Framing It?” 137 Works Cited 142 Introduction: Narrating, Understanding, and Framing the War on Terror As the wreckage of the World Trade Centre smouldered in downtown Manhattan on the evening of September 11, 2001, the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, addressed the American public from the White House: Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts [. .]. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining. Today, our nation saw evil - the very worst of human nature - and we responded with the best of America. [. .].This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world. (“9/11 Address to the Nation”) The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon killed 2,996 people. It was not simply the number of casualties that sent convulsions through the United States but the form of the attacks themselves. Al Qaeda had committed the most destructive act of non-state terrorism in living memory, and they did so with giant flying suicide bombs.1 W.J.T. Mitchell, in Cloning Terror (2011), notes that the attacks represented a “spectacle designed to traumatise a nation” (21), while Jean Baudrillard, in The Spirit o f Terrorism (2002), asserts that “the whole play of history and power” was “disrupted” by the televised images of al Qaeda’s deadly plan coming to fruition (4). Baudrillard goes on to say that the collapse of the World Trade Centre was a moment in which the world’s media saw the Twin Towers “responding to the suicide of the suicide-planes with their own suicide” - the perfect embodiment of an “absolute event” (7, 4). While Mitchell and Baudrillard’s observations underline the “symbolic violence” of what came to be known as 9/11, the latter suggests that it is important not to permit the perceived “singularity” of the attacks overwhelm one’s sensibilities (4, 29). Terrifying as they may have been, they did not occur in an historical vacuum, and cannot be understood without recourse to 1 W.J.T. Mitchell defines non-state terrorism as a form of “psychological warfare designed to breed anxiety and fear in a population,” adding that it is “not a direct military engagement like invasion, siege, or occupation, but the staging of relatively limited acts of violence, usually against symbolic targets, designed to demoralise a population, and incite a reaction (generally an overreaction) by the police and military apparatus of a nation-state” (21). 1 the history between the United States and the Muslim world.2 Judith Butler, in Precarious Life (2004), remarks: “That US boundaries were breached, that an unbearable vulnerability was exposed, that a terrible toll on human life was taken, were, and are, cause for fear and for mourning,” but she adds that the attacks were “also instigations for patient political reflection” (Precarious xi). The months after the fall of the Twin Towers held the potential for the United States to scrutinise its position in the global order, and to look to its historical relationship with the Muslim world for answers. According to William Blum, in America’s Deadliest Export (2013), rather than critically evaluating the context out of which 9/11 arose, however, American mainstream news media outlets3 - such as CNN and Fox News, as well as print publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times - retreated into the assumption that the attacks were the result of “an irrational hatred of the US and its way of life, based on religious and cultural misunderstandings and envy” (316).4 The role of the news media in framing the collective American experience of 9/11 cannot be understated.