as an Anti-Thesis in Selected Contemporary

American Novels

By

Amin Ata Zaki

Supervisor

Dr. Susanne Ramadan

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in English Literature and Criticism in the

Department of English Language and Literature,

Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan

December 2012

Dedication

To my family

To all my friends

III Acknowledgements

I am particularly indebted to my supervisor and teacher, Dr.

Susanne Ramadan, for her gentle support and meticulous comments that helped me complete my thesis. Undeniably, she has been a source of continuous insight and unforgettable charisma.

My gratitude also goes to my teacher Prof. Fadia Suyoufie for her invaluable feedback and great support, and also many thanks to

Dr. Thaer Al-Kadi for his constructive criticism and valuable feedback.

IV Table of Contents

Dedication III

Acknowledgements ...... IV

Table of Contents .... . V

Abstract (English) ....VI

Introduction to Religious, Communist, and Environmental Types of Terrorism: ....1

Chapter 1: Terrorism and the Decay of the Public Sphere in DeLillo's Mao II ....24

Chapter 2: Terrorism and the Clash of Civilizations in Updike's Terrorist ..55

Chapter 3: and Project Identity in Hansen's Wet Desert . 80

Conclusion ...... 110

Endnotes . .116

Works Cited . ....118

Abstract (Arabic) .126

V Abstract

This thesis explores the idea of terrorism as represented in three contemporary American novels. Communist, religious, and environmental models of terrorism are given to account for the never- ending struggle between the strong nation-states and the marginalized groups that use terrorism as a way of resistance. Different methodologies that include cultural, civilizational, and psychoanalytical theories are used to describe the nature of terrorism in the selected novels. Don DeLillo's

Mao II (1992) is used along with Jurgen Habermas's theory of the public sphere to account for the Maoist terrorism. John Updike's Terrorist

(2007) is also applied to account for through Samuel

Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations. Gary Hansen's Wet Desert

(2007) was finally used to approach the environmental terrorism by applying Manuel Castells' The Power of Identity. The study finds that there is an inextricable relationship between the selected kinds of terrorism that manifest in the terrorists' struggle to undermine the power of their strong adversaries by creating an anti-thesis to reduce the hegemony of the provided theses. Terrorism is finally shown to be the result of various factors that shape the terrorists' identities.

Key Words: Terrorism, religion, environmentalism, , DeLillo,

Updike, Hansen.

VI Introduction to Religious, Communist, and Environmental

Types of Terrorism

Terrorism has become important nowadays with all the theories and controversies surrounding it. The significance of terrorism has come to the surface after the September 11th attacks on the of

America, but the idea of terrorism dates back to ancient times. The

Mesopotamians, for example, used terrorism to gain power. Gerard

Chaliand argues in The : From Antiquity to Al Qaeda that "[t]he first Mesopotamian empire, that of Sargon of Akkad, was founded on " (vii). After killing the previous king of Mesopotamia, king Sargon invaded the Sumerian states, killing many innocent people to eliminate any attempts of rebellion against his rule. Many scholars have explored the concept of terrorism, but their opinions vary because some of them mark certain violent actions as terrorism, while others disagree.

To explain, some critics may consider king Sargon's conquests as terrorist attacks, while others may think of it as part of a legitimate war.

The word 'terrorism' itself is taken from the Latin "[t]errere [which] means 'to make tremble'" (Chaliland vii). The idea of terrorism has always been connected to fear because the main target of terrorism is to strike fear as it is the case in king Argon's killing of civilians, but the current concept of terrorism is ambiguous, since scholars differ in their

1 definitions of the notion of terrorism. On the one hand, Gerard Chaliand defines the terrorist acts as "certain kinds of violent actions carried out by individuals and groups rather than by states, and with events that take place in peacetime rather than as part of a conventional war" (16). Also in

A New Understanding of Terrorism, Meredith Patten and Amanda

Twilliger use the Federal Bureau of Investigation's description of terrorism which defines the terrorist act as "a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, in violation of the criminal laws of the United

States or of any state, to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof" (23). Obviously, both definitions avoid any reference to the acts of violence and genocide committed in traditional wars as acts of terrorism. On the other hand, Michael Fellman includes the aggressive acts that are part of any war in his understanding of terrorism; he defines terrorism in In the Name of God and Country:

Reconsidering Terrorism in American History as "the more primal form of warfare, the means of social domination to which states as well as non- state actors frequently revert" (2). Clearly, the problem with the definition lies in some critics' use of war as part of terrorism, which extends the idea of terrorism to include all the nation-states participating in any wars.

Another problem with the definitions of terrorism lies in the assumption that the terrorists are mere evil and anarchist people. In Jihad vs. McWorld, Benjamin Barber addresses this problem by stating: "In his

2 address to Congress, President Bush was speaking to the world at large when he said. 'You are with us or you are with the terrorists.'

Americans appreciate the impulse to divide the world into good and evil" (20-21). Such an inclination to highlight the boundary between black and white is not only an American tendency; it is rather an archetypal drive in the heart of everyman since the dawn of humanity because "[r]igid boundaries instill competition and keep people and issues apart" (Bruhn 206). In order to understand the problem behind defining terrorism while having such a primal urge, the reader needs to be aware of Plato's theory of forms as discussed in The Republic, and the theory of relativism as the counter-argument to Plato's theory.

In The Republic, Plato attempts at locating the origin of all the things and emotions on Earth. Plato assumes that all objects and concepts that humans know are "only a kind of imitation and shadowy image[s] of a previous affection of the soul" (57). Hence, the earthly objects are mere imitations of the original concepts in the ideal realm that Plato calls

"ideas or forms" (238). For example, an earthly table is a mere copy of the idea of 'tableness'. The same principle applies to the earthly good and evil, as Plato considers them reflections of the absolute forms of Good and Evil. Applying Plato's theory to terrorism is apparently simple; the terrorists and their actions are basically distant from the pure form of

Good because they supposedly commit 'evil' against other people.

3 Still, many philosophers disagree with Plato regarding the theory of

Forms like the relativists. In A Companion to Relativism,1 Steven Hales defines relativism as "a form of conflict resolution. You and I dispute about whether the wind is hot or cold" (1). Relativism denies the existence of any forms against which actions may be measured, and some philosophical paradoxes prove relativism to be more realistic than the

Platonic forms. To give an example, a suicide bomber would be considered by the victims and their families to be an evil person. The measuring mechanism that the victims and their families would base their judgment on is the Platonic Form of Evil because, supposedly, a person who kills other people is evil. Such an interpretation is not good enough for the theorists of relativism because it lacks the terrorists' point of view regarding their actions. The same suicide bomber would be considered a hero by the people who share his/her ideals, as they would measure his action to the Form of Good rather than the Form of Evil because, for them, such a person is a fighter in the name of resistance. In Harry's

Game, Gerald Seymour summarizes this cultural paradox by stating that

"[o]ne man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" (61).

Hence, providing an absolute is a very difficult task, since the concept may or may not include the traditional wars, not to mention that the concept of a 'terrorist' is different from one culture to another. Still, a broad and tentative definition would be useful in

4 understanding an act of terrorism. Chaliland's definition of terrorism in this regard seems to be the closest description of today's terrorism. Thus,

I argue that terrorism in the modern sense, and as used in this thesis, is the use of violence in peacetime, usually through , to further the agendas of any movement or group whatsoever. An extensive definition excludes wars and personal perspectives from terrorism. A traditional war, then, is not to be considered as an act of terrorism.

Furthermore, the definition avoids the personal points of view regarding terrorism, since it considers the agenda-related violence as a terrorist act, aside from the adjacency of the violent act to the pure Forms of Good or

Evil.

According to Chaliland, the Sicarii represent "one of the first manifestations of organized terrorism" in the recorded history. The

Sicarii, a Jewish extreme group used terrorism to further their religious agendas (55). Due to the long history of terrorism with its multiple forms,

I will use next a simple triangle of terrorism that only includes examples from religious, communist, and environmentalist acts of terrorism.

The history of religious terrorism is quite extensive. Chaliland assumes that "the most notorious instances of contemporary [and ancient] terrorism have a religious dimension" (viii). Most, if not all religions, have used terrorism at one point of their history by the extremists who usually misinterpret their religion's principles.

5 The prevalence of atheism, especially in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, reduced religion's power over people, which made Friedrich

Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra proclaim the shocking proposition that "God is dead" (5) as a moving force in the hearts of many people.

The Nietzschean metaphorical death of God necessarily reduced religious terrorism,paving the way for other kinds of terrorism like the communist terrorism, which "predominated in the 1970s and 1980s" (Chaliland 6).

Secularism partially affected the Islamic world in the 20th century, since most of the resistance and terrorist movements were nationalistic, rather than religious. The 1980s witnessed a re-establishment of faith in God amongst the Muslims, which gave way to religious terrorism to come to the surface. "[T]he early phase of Palestinian terrorism," to give an example, "was essentially political and secular, only drifting into religiosity in the 1980s, following the Iranian " (Chaliland 6).

The concept of 'holy war' is important to the religious terrorists, since it is the alleged means to reach the eternal bliss that God assumingly promises those who kill in His name. In Investigating Religious

Terrorism and Ritualistic Crimes, Dawn Perlmutter analyzes the religious terrorist's mind; she assumes that, for the religious terrorists, "salvation cannot be achieved until there is an apocalyptic holy war between the forces of good and evil" (373). All the extremists in the Abrahamic religions believe in this story, and such a mentality is probably the main

6 reason for the existence of religious terrorism. Since religious terrorism is very wide, and cannot be contained in such a simple examination, the next review of religious terrorism will deal with selected Jewish,

Christian, and Islamic acts of terrorism.

The Sicarii sect, also known as the Zealots, is one of the first religious groups in history to use terrorism as a technique of resistance. Chaliland argues that the word Sicarii is "a generic Latin term derived from sicarius,

'dagger-man'" (55). The Zealots rebelled against the Roman Empire because it denied them the freedom to rule themselves2. Chaliland maintains that "[i]n modern terms, we might say that the Jews were caught up in the anti-colonial dynamic of a war of liberation" (56).

Terrorism in the name of God is not only reserved for Judaism, for

Christianity too has its share of religious terrorism. In For Love of the

Father, Ruth Stein argues that the "history of Christianity is bloodied by its inquisitional and colonial persecutions of outsiders" (136). There are many examples of throughout history that Chaliland summarizes in "the fifteenth-century Taborites of Bohemia, the sixteenth- century Anabaptists, and the active anti-Semitism of the first crusade in

1095, not to mention the excesses of the Inquisition" (3). Due to the variable examples of Christian terrorism, the next discussion will only focus on the First Crusade to the Holy Land as a paradigm of

Christianity's use of terrorism.

7 Although the First Crusade is a traditional war between two armies, the Crusaders and the Fatimid dynasty, it qualifies as an act of terrorism because of the anti-Semitic spirit of the Crusaders, which made them commit horrible and genocides against the Jews. The

Crusaders also massacred the Muslim community after the siege of

Jerusalem in 1099, but some may argue that the Muslims were engaged in a traditional war against the Crusaders, so their ultimate does not count as an act of terrorism. The Jewish community, on the other hand, received pure terrorist acts from the Crusaders because the Jews were not part of the war. In A History of Antisemitism: The Dark Side of the Church, Robert Michael claims that in the First Crusade, the Jewish people were more subject to brutal massacres than the Muslims were because "the Jews were guilty of a much more grievous injury to Christ than the Moslems, namely, his crucifixion" (68). The genocide committed against the Jews went with impunity as "[n]either Pope Urban II nor any pope acted to stop anti-Jewish pogroms during the First Crusade"

(Michael 67). 3

Similar to Christian terrorism, one may find many examples throughout history to account for Islam as part of religious terrorism. The modern identification of Islam with terrorism has its roots in the Middle

Ages, which indicates that is not a contemporary phenomenon. Sure, it is not as old as the Jewish or the Christian

8 terrorism, but it dates back to the 11th century Assassins and, after them, the Wahhabi movement of the 19th century, not to forget, the most famous of all the Muslim terrorist movements, Al-Qaida, in the 20th and the 21st centuries. As Al-Qaida with its former leader, Osama bin Laden, is part of the modern religious terrorism that will be thoroughly discussed in the second chapter of this study, the Assassins will be accounted for next, as the 11th century version of today's Al-Qaida.

The brotherhood of "Assassins" was an Ismaili sect of Islam that used the form of terrorism to further its political-religious aims. 4

One of the sect's well-known terrorist acts is the assassination of the

Seljuk vizier Nizam Al-Mulk because he did not agree with the sect's actions. Gerard Chaliland compares the assassination of Nizam Al-Mulk to "the attacks of September 11, [when] the government s domestic police and intelligence services were caught napping despite efforts to ensure the effectiveness of its security sector" (Cindy Combs and Martin Slann

67).

Communist terrorism serves as the second kind of terrorism in this historical account. Communist terrorism is chiefly a state-sponsored terrorism, with the former and , among other communist countries, on top of its supporters. In her book, In the Name of Terrorism, Carol Winkler argues about the aims of the communist terrorists by stating: "[l]ikened to Hitler s fascists, Communists seek to

9 impose totalitarian rule on the objects of their triumphs as a necessary first step toward the ultimate goal of worldwide conquest" (24). Winkler's harsh comparison is probably due to 's complicated history with human rights. Still, communism's announced goals are not as terrible as the actual practices of communism. In , Maoism, and

Utopianism, Maurice Meisner maintains that communism "conveys the most powerful of utopian visions of the future [through] Marx's picture of the 'all round' communist man" (6-7).

Many branches of communism like Marxism, , Stalinism, and Maoism reflect the discrepancy between the utopian targets of communism and its horrific methods and results. Each of these branches has a history of terrorism against different movements and regimes to achieve the movement's targets, but communism's most famous nemesis that is probably the target of most of the terrorist acts is . The clash between communism and capitalism as manifested by the between the former Soviet Union and the United States respectively marked the most part of the twentieth century until the apparent triumph of capitalism in 1991, with the dissolution of the former Soviet Union.

Chaliland contends that:

The proliferation of armed conflicts over the course of the

twentieth century broadened access to weaponry of all sorts by

private armed groups. The collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991,

10 setting off a massive sale of weapons and technology overseas, and

to terrorists in particular, is the most recent instance of such

proliferation. (180)

The fall of communism's greatest pillar evidently weakened the movement, and the acts of terrorism committed in its name are much less that they used to be, but the proliferation of the Soviet weapons in the world encouraged other types of terrorism.

Of all the branches of communism, Maoism is particularly famous for many acts of terrorism. Based on the revolutionary strategy of guerrilla warfare, the Maoist groups seek to overthrow any system that does not promote communism as the of the state. The founder of

Maoism, , used the guerrilla warfare strategy, along with terrorism, in the that broke out in 1927 between the

Communist Party of China, with Zedong as its leader, and the Nationalist

Government of the Republic of China (Schram 23). The Maoists' way of fighting depends on "guerillas (or in modern parlance, insurgents or terrorists) [who] must swim like fish in the sea: they must be embraced by the general (impoverished) population and use that as a place to hide and sustain themselves" (Haberfeld and von Hassell 16). 5

The discussion has dealt so far with two kinds of terrorism: the religion-inspired terrorism, and the communism-instigated terrorism. At least one of the three discussed branches of religious terrorism aims at

11 deconstructing the capitalism-controlled West. Islam, of course, is the obvious religion to counteract the domination of the West in modern times through terrorism. Communism also seeks to assert its values over capitalism through terrorism, particularly through its extreme branches like Maoism. In the case of religious terrorism, the Sicarii movement no longer exists, and the anti-Semitic crusaders are long gone. Concerning the Assassins, they are viewed as today's version of Al-Qaeda, so of all the religious terrorism, the Islamic terrorism, which counteracts the West, is the clearest example. The communist terrorism is not an integral part of the contemporary world because of the fall of the Soviet Union, which used to be its main supporter.

The West itself has countercultural groups that occasionally use domestic terrorism to highlight their causes. One of the most renowned of these groups is the environmentalists. The intricate relationship between environmentalism and terrorism is usually referred to as environmental terrorism, eco-terrorism, or ecotage. On the one hand, the term 'ecotage' is clear and includes acts of mild vandalism against the man-made objects that hurt the environment. "Typical methods of ecotage employed by

Earth First!-ers include pulling up survey stakes, dumping sugar in the gas tanks of construction vehicles, and placing metal or ceramic in trees to deter logging" (Liddick 58). On the other hand, environmental terrorism and eco-terrorism are more complicated. Some experts argue

12 that environmental terrorism describes any terrorist act against the environment; whereas, eco-terrorism is a description of the environmentalists' acts of terrorism in the name of the environment. Still, other experts use the two terms as synonyms that concern any act of terrorism in the name of the environment. This study favors the second hypothesis, so the terms 'environmental terrorism' and eco-terrorism' will be used as synonyms.

In Eco-Terrorism: Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation

Movements, Donald Liddick argues that the reason for eco-terrorism is that "some disaffected environmentalists and animal rights advocates have turned from political lobbying and lawful protest to direct action in the form of vandalism, theft, , and even violent attacks against people" (1). The environmental groups, like Earth First! and the Sierra

Club, evidently do not include terrorism as part of their announced agendas; they use the 'direct action' in order to protect the Planet. Liddick maintains that "human welfare is typically viewed as secondary to the health of the planet and its nonhuman inhabitants" in the environmentalists' mindset (2). Thus, terrorism is legitimate for the environmentalists when people comprise a threat to the natural resources of Earth. One of environmentalism's archenemies is capitalism with all the materialism it represents. Moreover, the American environmental

13 groups "advocate the overthrow of the American government" using many strategies including terrorism (2).

One example to explain the domestic terrorism in the United States of

America as presented by the environmental groups is the California biomedical research facilities bombings. In 2003, an environmental group, Animal Liberation Brigade, launched two bombing attacks against an animal testing corporation, Huntingdon Life Sciences. The alleged perpetrator of the bombings, Daniel Andreas San Diego, is one of the

FBI's most wanted terrorists because of his eco-terrorist acts which not only target property, but also humans. Although the HLS attacks targeted the laboratories of the corporation, these same attacks were "a clear attempt to murder first-responders" in the HLS (Liddick 40).

The discussion of the types of terrorism so far has focused on giving a historical account to explain the religious, communist, and environmental kinds of terrorism. This historical background is useful to the reader in the next three chapters, since the chapters will serve as an examination of terrorism in the contemporary American novel. The first chapter will investigate Don DeLillo's Mao II (1992) in which he explores Maoist terrorism. Jurgen Habermas's 'public sphere' will serve as the theoretical framework to understand communist terrorism. The second chapter is intended to explore religious terrorism through Islam. John Updike's

Terrorist (2007) will be used to discuss the Islamic terrorism, basing the

14 discussion on Samuel Huntington's social theory regarding the clash of civilizations. The third chapter will use Gary Hansen's Wet Desert (2007) to account for eco-terrorism. The theoretical framework of the chapter will be based on Manuel Castells' The Power of Identity. Areviewof related literature will be provided next to ensure the authenticity of this study.

The association of terrorism with capitalism and the nature of the crowds is a common subject to be discussed in Don DeLillo's Mao II.In

"Two's a Crowd: 'Mao II,' Coke II, and the Politics of Terrorism in Don

DeLillo," for example, Richard Hardack tackles the effect of capitalism on the Western people, as presented in DeLillo's Mao II. Hardack assumes that the novel dramatizes "an alienating mass identity by images of non-Western languages and religious and political leaders such as Mao" (374). For such a 'white' mass identity, xenophobia serves as the catalyst for most of the Western characters in the novel. Hardack identifies the knot that unites the consumerism-driven crowds and the terrorists through the writers by stating: "what is portrayed as a white mass American consciousness in crisis comes to rest on the sagging shoulders of the writer Bill Gray, who lives as if he were a terrorist"

(378).

The essay's discussion of the intricate relationship between the East and the West does not distinguish the writers, who represent the ideal

15 public sphere like Bill Gray, from the mass media that is represented as a device to control the crowds. Hardack suggests that Mao II is "a product of the mass media and can no longer even be used to critique that media without itself being implicated" (380). The logic of such a statement is undeniable, but what is really worth discussing in Mao II is probably the

'meta-novelization' itself, as Mao II dramatizes Bill Gray's rejection of the publication of his own novel because he does not want it to be a part of the media. Thus, one may argue that Bill represents DeLillo's alter ego.

Bill's refusal of the publication of his novel in this stance is clearly a literary manifestation of DeLillo's own desire not to publish Mao II, which he did probably for financial reasons.

Another critic that tackles the idea of terrorism as related to the clash between capitalism and communism in Mao II is Peter Knight. In "Mao II and the New World Order," Knight theorizes that "'new world order' was in fact merely business as usual, with America now as the sole remaining superpower able to spread its economic and military influence across the globe with little hindrance" (34). The assumed triumph of capitalism over its ideological archenemy, communism, after the end of the Cold War, established America as the most powerful country in the world, but what

America stands for did not bring any tranquility to the post- Cold War period. Knight assumes that "the emerging future at the end of the Cold

War is not the peaceful vision of world cooperation espoused by Bush,

16 but a depressing acceleration of the death of the individual with the rise of media-saturated terrorism and globalization" (34). Knight maintains that DeLillo's Mao II is a literary representation of how capitalism and terrorism are basically the reasons for the instability and disorder of the world, for they both "blur into one another" (35).

In "The Media Spectacle of Terrorism and Response-Able Literature,"

David Cockley analyzes the so-called 'infotainment' of the media to terrorism, and how literature refutes such an infotainment by providing a real description of terrorism. The media, Cockley argues, "relies on making the news entertaining for the audience instead of maintaining the responsibility of providing the most important information" (5). The writers, however, "resist media foreclosure by appropriating television news practices and confronting their totalizing discourse" (5). Cockley, thus, examines some novels that reflect the relationship between the media and the writers, including John Updike's Terrorist.

Cockley maintains, in the chapter entitled, "The American Hero of

Updike s Terrorist," that the 9/11 attacks defy the American masculinity because of "the phallic nature of two towers" that were destroyed by the terrorists (163). The media, Cockley assumes, encourages the image of an emasculated America and roots fear in the hearts of the white Americans.

By the recreation of the image of 'John Wayne' through many strong

American characters, Updike re-establishes the American hero who can

17 conquer all the difficulties, as Cockley supposes. Cockley concludes by stating that "Updike s resuscitation of masculinity in the face of fear and nostalgia forecloses the complexity of terrorism by positing the need for a return of the patriarch to save the day" (165).

Another critic who realizes the importance of the novel in defining the relationship between the West and the East is James Wood. In "Jihad and the Novel," Wood theorizes that Terrorist is "one area where novelistic explanation might be richer than its sociological or political rivals [because it draws] on the margin of irrational rationality that seems to lurk in the decision to blow up oneself and many others" (25).

For Wood, the combination of the irrationality of suicide with the rationality of dying for a higher purpose is what comprises the mentality of the Muslim extremists in their efforts to destroy the West. Wood gives a glimpse of the role of religion in forming the mentality of Ahmad, making him a symbol of Islam's clash with the West. He states that

Ahmad does not "listen to music, or use a cell phone, or lust after girls, or go to movies, or read any books. He is simply and only a block of

Islamic disgust" (26). Aside from Ahmad's observable attraction to

Joryleen, which negates his lack of lust toward girls in the previous statement, Wood seems to capture the essence of Ahmad's discretion with the objects and ideas related to the West. The clash between the West and

Islam is noticeably the landmark of Updike's novel.

18 Possibly due to the fact that Wet Desert is new, being published in

2007, one may find very few critical explorations to account for the environmental terrorism depicted in the novel. In "Summer Reading Suits

Every Taste," Jennie Hansen reviews Gary Hansen's Wet Desert.The bulk of this review summarizes Wet Desert, from a personal perspective.

The idea of environmental terrorism is virtually not discussed in this review except for the author's general statement that the novel "is a story of terrorism, where the terrorism is not as expected" (1).

Habermas's theory concerning the transformation of the public sphere in the modern era is discussed in Pauline Johnson's Habermas: Rescuing the Public Sphere. Pauline argues that Habermas's social theory as posited in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is important to account for the public life of the modern nation-state.

Johnson states that "Habermas and others want to expose the 'lie' at the heart of neoliberalism's totalitarian ambition" (8). The lie, Johnson contends, is that the current perpetrators of the public sphere, who are referred to as the 'neoliberals' and the capitalists, control the world despite all their calls for democracy and the free-market. Johnson insists that the reason for the current decay of the public sphere is the lack of rationality in making decisions in the nation-state. "[I]n the present context,"

Johnson maintains, "the project of building a vital public sphere might well have 'the ring of an empty formula'" (10) because of capitalism's

19 marginalization of the so-called 'bourgeois public sphere' of rationality.

Despite her belief in many of Habermas's ideas, Johnson understandably criticizes him for being "too conservative, too interested in saving the severely compromised institutional achievements of liberal democracies, and too willing to let limited expectations legitimated by liberal supply the ideal of emancipation that underpins his " (15).

Another scholar, whose theories will be used in the second chapter, is

Samuel Huntington. In "Huntington and his Critics: the West and Islam,"

Glenn Perry analyzes Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations.

Perry argues that what makes Huntington innovative in the book is his

"stress on the importance of culture in politics". Huntington's division of the world to 'super tribes' striving to gain more power for their people is emphasized in the article. Perry maintains that one of the clashes described by Huntington is the clash of the West and Islam; "the dramatic events of Autumn 2001," Perry maintains, "indeed confirmed

Huntington's warning that the world seemed to be 'poised on the brink of a global intercivilizational battlefields and borders'" (31). Some critics condemn Huntington for "inciting intercivilizational conflict, particularly between the West and Islam," (32) like Edward Said, who called

Huntington's thesis, "Clash of Ignorance" (qtd. in Perry 33). Perry disagrees with Said and the anti-Huntingtonian critics; he believes Islam

20 is not the only hammered civilizations, for Huntington "also condemns the West's client regimes in general and his prognosis for them is particularly pessimistic" (34). Huntington is realistic in his analysis, and he does not favor any civilization over another, so he is constantly criticized by many scholars who have cultural biases.

The last theoretical framework, that will constitute the bulk of the last chapter, is Manuel Castells' The Power of Identity. In "Reflections on

Identity and the Roots of Prejudice," Rodger Cunningham interprets

Manuel Castells' types of identity as posited in The Power of Identity.

While Cunningham trivializes the first two types of identity, namely: the legitimizing and the resistance identities, for being at the "lowest level" in forming the individual's character, he emphasizes the project identity as, what he calls, the "identity politics" that is responsible for forming the political view of a particular group (74). Cunningham maintains that a

"project identity for ethnic and regional groups must be informed by a struggle against group prejudice in general" as it is the case of African-

Americans and their long history with slavery and racial prejudice in the

'White' America (74).

This study is an attempt at scrutinizing terrorism as represented in three selected contemporary novels. Don DeLillo's Mao II, John Updike's

Terrorist, and Gary Hansen's Wet Desert serve as the novels to be explored in order to understand the variety and paradoxicality that

21 surround terrorism. Different approaches that feature cultural, civilizational, political, and even psychological trends will be used in analyzing terrorism. These critical approaches will be discussed in details at the beginning of each chapter.

Jurgen Habermas's theory regarding the relationship between the bourgeois public sphere and capitalism and its reflection on terrorism in

Don DeLillo's Mao II will comprise the bulk of the first chapter which is entitled, "Terrorism and the Decay of the Public Sphere in DeLillo's Mao

II". The so-called rational-critical debate that Habermas identifies in The

Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere as the main pillar to any democratic public sphere will be dissected against the contemporary capitalist Western society, as represented in Don DeLillo's Mao II.The chapter will also investigate how such a conflict induces terrorism.

The second chapter, entitled "The Clash of Civilizations in Updike's

Terrorist," will utilize Samuel Huntington's theory concerning the clash of civilizations, especially the clash between the Western civilization and the Islamic one, in order to scrutinize the use of terrorism in John

Updike's Terrorist. Many issues, including terrorism as a way of God's revenge, and the Islamic modernization, will be thoroughly discussed within the chapter.

UsingGaryHansen'sWet Desert, I explore the environmental terrorism in the third chapter, which is entitled "Environmental Terrorism

22 in Hansen's Wet Desert". This chapter is in an attempt at understanding the underlying structure of the environmental identity through Manuel

Castells' The Power of Identity. The collective identity of the environmentalists will be chiefly addressed as a possible means that leads to extremism and terrorism.

23