THE ULTIMATE OTHER OF THE 21ST CENTURY: THE MUSLIM TERRORIST IN THE MASS - MEDIA AND CONTEMPORARY FICTION (original) (raw)

2014, COMMUNICATION, CONTEXT, INTERDISCIPLINARITY

In an age of mass communication in which the boundaries between arts and media(ted) discourse have become effaced, literature attempts to translate contemporary societal issues, from the actual world, where they are met with silence, coercion, manipulation, etc. into an imaginary one in which truth(s) can conveniently pass as fiction. Thus emerges a (re)new(ed) type of realism, which adapts and fictionalises today’s media and political discourses, exploiting or disclosing their manipulation strategies and their imposing power structures. This paper aims at deconstructing Iain Banks’s novel Dead Air (2002) from this perspective of media discourse adaptation into fiction. Set against the background of the events of 9/11, and barely disguising the implied author’s political views behind the first person unreliable narrator Ken Nott, who voices major concerns of the twenty-first century, like terrorism, racism, antisemitism, sexism, Euro- scepticism, the novel unfolds as a commentary on historical and political issues of the present day society. An important aspect that will be dealt with is the extreme ‘othering’ of the Muslims after the attacks on World Trade Center, both in the media and in the literary work in focus. pp. 1299-1308 in the PDF.