Towards a Worldly Post-9/11 American Novel: Transnational Disjunctures in Joseph O'Neill's Netherland (original) (raw)
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REAL- YEARBOOK OF RESEARCH IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, 2014
The general consensus among critics of contemporary US culture seems to be that the events of 9/11 have wrought far-reaching alterations in the nature of US state power with consequences that we have yet to fully comprehend. For instance, in his magisterial The New American Exceptionalism, Donald Pease argues that earlier versions of American exceptionalism revolved around a "structure of disavowal" that functioned as an ideological masking strategy, making citizen-subjects envision the nation through a fantastical lens that "eradicated the difference between the national ideal U.S. citizens wanted and the faulty nation they had, by representing America as having already achieved all that a nation could be." 1 Following the 9/11 attacks, however, the Bush administration inaugurated a "State of Exception" that "did not require this [earlier] structure of disavowal because it was its construction of itself as The Exception to the discursive norms of American exceptionalism that constituted the grounding authority of its power to rule" (180). This new exceptionalist regime openly revealed the US state's intentions as, in George Steinmetz's words, "domestically authoritarian and geopolitically imperialist." 2 In short, the policies of the US state after 9/11 are defined by a constrictive tightening of focus in the domestic arena as well as by an expansive engagement in maintaining global power. In Pease's suggestive comment, the US state's management of domestic populations in the post-9/11 climate took a deterritorializing turn as the state became "dissociated. .. from the territorially bound nation" and, instead, a geographically nebulous "homeland security state" with the same exceptionalist norms put in its place. This had the consequence of making US citizens "internal émigrés who migrated from the nation to the homeland." 3
This essay attempts to place I Am Legend (2007) in the context of American nationalism and aggressive enforcement of the immigration laws after 9/11. The apocalyptic world of I Am Legend reflects the post-9/11 American society that is driven by the urge to make America “one nation” and haunted by the fear of people who might harm the “unity.” The film tries to draw a clear boundary between “us” and “them” by completely othering the infected, but in the context of American homeland security after 9/11, it becomes a complex issue to decide where to draw the line. The shifty boundary between “us” and “them” reflects the post-9/11 American dilemma: the United States has to close its border while maintaining its identity as a nation of immigrants. This essay also discusses how geographical markers, instead of racial markers, are utilized to symbolize the infected as the stateless people within the United States.
The Global Homeland State: Bush's Biopolitical Settlement
boundary 2, 2003
The following remarks constitute an effort to interpret the Bush administration's alteration of the regulatory fictions through which government policymakers exercise normative control over the population. They are grounded in the assumption that the state's master fictions are freighted with metaphorical significance and possessed of performative force that characteristically separates ''what happened'' from the capacity to supply the representations through which what happened becomes meaningful. The mythological themes-''Virgin Land,'' ''Redeemer Nation,'' ''American Adam,'' ''Nature's Nation,'' ''Errand into the Wilderness''-sedimented within these master narratives supply the transformational grammar through which the state attempts to shape the public's understanding of contemporary political and historical events. The state's powers of governance depend in part on its recourse to this regulatory intertext that transmits a normative system of values and beliefs from generation to generation. After they subordinate historical events to these mythological themes, the government's policymakers are empowered to fashion imaginary resolutions of actual historical dilemmas. 1 1. This essay builds on but also significantly revises the afterword I contributed to the forthboundary 2 30:3, 2003.
Chapter 4: Imagined geographies, shifting borders
Imagined geographies, shifting borders This chapter argues that the 9/11 terrorist attacks have challenged the US’s belief that it was invulnerable to threats from those external to its geopolitical borders. The resultant escalating ambience of irrational fear has created the conditions for Giorgio Agamben’s state of exception to emerge both within and externally to US sovereign borders. In the context of this proposition this chapter examines the relationship between border and the nation-state, giving specific attention to Michel Foucault’s model of the discipline society. In his seminal text Discipline and Punish (1975) Foucault asserts that the prison has become the central form of discipline in modern society through the regulation of the behaviour of individuals in the social body. This has been done through the regulation of space and the borders that contain it. This chapter also explores a number of art practices that respond to Agamben’s notion of the state of exception. Briefly, Agamben’s state of exception empowers one state with the authority over others beyond the normal limits of traditional law. A state of exception may also occur within the borders of an existing sovereign state. In this investigation of the relationship of border to the nation-state, special attention is given to the transformations in society commencing from the mid-twentieth century that sees the borders of nation-states increasingly redefined and extended. It does so by applying Stephen Graham’s reading of Agamben’s states of exception. Graham proposes that these transformations mean that zones or ‘prisons’ are created that ignore the universal human rights of those seen as symbolically Other. These investigations support and illuminate the overall argument of this thesis. Elizabeth Anker observes that the events of 9/11 provided the opportunity for these states of exception to emerge external to US sovereignty. Anker proposes that the very idea of sovereignty was altered permanently following 9/11.
How United States’ Foreign Policy shaped the American National Identity after 9/11?
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed completely the role of the United States in the international perspective. Thereupon, George W. Bush’s Foreign Policy was modified dramatically after these attacks attempted against United States’ sovereignty. The super-power became unstable in its national security; a change in Foreign Policy was urgent, therefore, Bush’s cabinet started the “War on Terrorism” Policy. This war had the objective to eradicate terrorist groups, specially al-Qaeda who after a long and exhausting investigation became responsible of 9/11 attacks according to United States’ Intelligence Agency. In addition, the War on Terrorism had the purpose to strength US security through an unilateral Foreign Policy. The eradication of terrorist groups mainly in Southern Asia’s countries like Iraq and Afghanistan became the principal target of the US. However, in order to execute the unilateral American Foreign Policy, it was necessary the creation of a new national identity after the 9/11 terrorist attacks which attempted United States’ security, authority and jurisdiction. Thus, a prime representation of the traditional approach to national security can be illustrated through acknowledging the extremely securitized foreign policy initiatives undertaken by the United States after these events. For this reason, the use of media, political speeches and the execution of differentiating from the “other” were essential for the creation of an American National Identity through the Foreign Policy after the terrorist attacks. Furthermore, to understand how US Foreign Policy shaped the national identity after 9/11 events, it is necessary to define foreign policy and national identity, how these two aspects are linked and their effect in US population.
War Makes the State, but Not as It Pleases: Homeland Security and American Anti-Statism
Security Studies, 2006
The shock of war is thought to be closely associated with the growth of the state, in the United States and elsewhere. Yet each proposal to significantly expand state power in the United States since September 11 has been resisted, restrained, or even rejected outright. This outcome-theoretically unexpected and contrary to conventional wisdom-is the result of enduring aspects of America's domestic political structure: the separation of powers at the federal level between three co-equal and overlapping branches, the relative ease with which interest groups access the policy-making process, and the intensity with which executive-branch bureaucracies guard their organizational turf. These persistent aspects of U.S. political life, designed by the nation's founders to impede the concentration of state power, have substantially shaped the means by which contemporary guardians of the American state pursue "homeland security." War does make the state, but not as it pleases. Theoretical approaches to state building should recognize that domestic political institutions mediate between the international shock of war and domestic state building. Homeland Security and American Anti-Statism 227 to the detention of terrorist suspects, and from the organization of domestic intelligence to the surveillance of the U.S. citizenry. 4 This article will argue that this virtually uniform outcome is the result of enduring aspects of America's domestic political structure: the separation of power at the federal level between three co-equal and overlapping branches, the relative ease with which interest groups access the policy-making process, and the intensity with which executive-branch bureaucracies guard their organizational turf. Solely and in combination, these three persistent aspects of U.S. political life, designed by the nation's founders to impede the concentration of state power, have substantially shaped the contemporary state's pursuit of "homeland security." This argument will proceed in five sections. The first section will review the theoretical literature on the relationship between war and state building. The second will provide a method for measuring state power, finding that, contrary to conventional wisdom, state power has not significantly increased since the war on terrorism began. Next, a theoretical framework will be developed to explain the observed pattern of state building in post-September 11 America. Empirical support for this theory will come in three qualitative case studies: the detention of enemy combatants, cyber-security, and domestic intelligence. The concluding section will consider the implications of this argument for both theory and practice. We find that war makes the state, but not as it pleases. 5 Theoretical approaches to state building can usefully incorporate domestic political structure as an intervening variable that mediates between the shock of war and the growth of state power. In the policy realm, we argue that domestic political pressures may be leading the U.S. government to outsource the garrison state.
'DETERRITORIALIZATION' IN THE WASTED VIGIL BY NADEEM ASLAM
2017
Nadeem Aslam in his novel The Wasted Vigil is breaking the boundaries of trauma and loss raised around the 9/11 event by extending its tragic resonance across the globe. He traces the causes of the event by linking the separated and divided worlds of 'us' and 'them', by forcing readers to see the victims and the perpetrators exchanging their roles in the course of history to serve the vested interests of the political power players. Mostly 9/11 fiction revolves around the stories of the victims of the event domesticating the tragedy ignoring its global implications, while Aslam tries to trace the root cause of terrorism by questioning the role of the political power players in creating, funding and supporting the terrorists thus leading to the event that they are mourning over. The novel explores the destruction of Afghanistan because of Russian interest, American interference, creation of Taliban and post 9/11 war on terror. The paper will respond to two research questions: 1) How does The Wasted Vigil manipulate 'the discourses of nationalism' to connect global tragic experiences? 2) How does the text deterritorialize American exceptionalism that looks at this event in isolation? The discussion of the novel will explore its ability to deterritorialize American exceptionalism that looks at the event in isolation and relies on an 'us and them' binary.