+

The nation-empire after 9/11

III

Ana Cristina Mendes

University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies

+Fahrenheit 9/11 – follow-up

Manufacturing Dissent (dir. Rick

Caine and Debbie Melnyk, 2007)

+God, Construction and Destruction (2002)

by Samira Makhmalbaf

+ God, Construction and Destruction (2002)

by Samira Makhmalbaf

Voice of a man: Hurry up! America wants to bombard Afghanistan. Let’s build a shelter. […]

Teacher: Come to class kids. You can’t stop atomic bombs with these bricks. […] Kids, important news. A big incident took place in the world. Who knows about it? […] One that could trigger World War III. They may drop the atomic bomb and we’ll all be killed. In America, in New York City two airplanes hit the World Trade Center towers. [….] Now that you know what a tower is which one of you knows who destroyed those towers?

A few days after 9/11. Iran,

desert.

+ God, Construction and Destruction (2002)

by Samira Makhmalbaf

Esmat: Can I say it teacher? God destroyed them.

Agheleh: No, God didn’t destroy them. God only destroys humans. No way. God has no airplanes.

Hassan: God hits with his fingernail like this and people die.

Agheleh: God’s not insane to kill people.

Esmat: Well, God kills people so He can create new people.

Agheleh: Why doesn’t He keep the old people?

Esmat: He wants to make new people. It’s none of your business. God is God and can do as He wants.

A few days after 9/11. Iran,

desert.

+Layers to Mohsin Hamid’s

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Present

• Having a conversation (?) with an American in a Lahore cafe

The Past

• Moving to America to work for Underwood Samson and Co.

+The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Major Themes

1. Empire

2. Nostalgia

3. Homeland

4. Foreignness

+1. Empire

America is the empire that takes center stage in the

novel (as we have seen, scholars may debate America’s

empire status, but Hamid clearly accepts it)

Changez opines on America’s history of imperialism

“…Your country’s constant interference in the affairs of others

was insufferable. Vietnam, Korea, the straits of Taiwan, the

Middle East, and now Afghanistan: in each of the major

conflicts and standoffs that ringed my mother continent of Asia,

America played a central role.” (156)

+1. Empire

Erica is one of the symbols for the American empire (sexy,

creative, and has a magnetic, powerful effect on those with

whom she comes in contact; like a celebrity). --» Using

Erica’s decline, Hamid frames America’s eventual and

inevitable decline from its status as the world’s most

imposing superpower.

Changez does not need to be a more violent protester—the

kind of fundamentalist that the American media tends to

portray — because America does not need to be brought

down. Replacing Erica with America, the empire is bringing

itself down.

+1. Empire

America’s decline, Hamid implies, has begun with

the tragic events of 9/11. Rather than mourn and

move on, America transforms its grief into a

nostalgic and belligerent brand of patriotism.

America explodes—figuratively and literally. It

sends its energy of grief outwards, invading and

(the literal part) bombing Afghanistan.

+1. Empire

“A common strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that

was the advancement of a small coterie’s concept of American

interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism, which was

defined to refer only to the organized and politically motivated

killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of

solders … This, I reasoned, was why America felt justified in

bringing so many deaths to Afghanistan and Iraq, and why

America felt justified in risking so many more deaths by tacitly

using India to pressure Pakistan.” (178)

+2. Nostalgia

“I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was

immediately a New Yorker. What? My voice is rising? You are

right; I tend to become sentimental when I think of that city. It

still occupies a place of great fondness in my heart, which is

quite something, I must say, given the circumstances under

which, after only eighteen months of residence, I would later

depart.” (33)

“Think of the expressive beauty of the Empire State Building,

illuminated green for St. Patrick’s Day, or pale blue on the

evening of Frank Sinatra’s death. Surely, by night New York

must be one of the greatest sights in the world” (48).

+2. Nostalgia

“Some of my relatives held onto memories the way

homeless people hold onto lottery tickets. Nostalgia

was their crack cocaine, if you will, and my

childhood was littered with the consequences of

their addiction: unserviceable debts, squabbles over

inheritances, the odd alcoholic or suicide.” (70)

+2. Nostalgia

Nostalgia grips America after 9/11:

“… It seemed to me that America, too, was increasingly giving

itself over to a dangerous nostalgia at the time … I had always

thought of America as a nation that looked forward; for the first

time I was struck by its determination to look back. … What your

fellow countrymen longed for was unclear to me—a time of

unquestioned dominance? of safety? of moral certainty? I did not

know—but that they were scrambling to don the costumes of

another era was apparent. I felt treacherous for wondering

whether that era was fictitious, and whether—if it could indeed be

animated—it contained a part written for someone like me.” (115)

+3. Homeland

Changez’s “strong sense of home” is a clue to the strength of

his loyalty to Pakistan and the inevitability of his return there.

The corporate world does more than give Changez a sense of

belonging in America; it changes his very identity: “On [that

first day at Underwood Samson], I did not think of myself as a

Pakistani, but as an Underwood Samson trainee, and my

firm’s impressive offices made me proud.” (34)

Underwood Samson is a symbol for America - becoming an

Underwood Samson trainee symbolically makes him an

“American trainee.”

+3. Homeland

All the while he has been in America, Changez has never fit

in completely and has been doubtful about his loyalties. The

post-9/11 atmosphere has only exacerbated his sense of not

belonging.

“There really could be no doubt; I was a modern-day janissary,

a servant of the American empire at a time when it was

invading a country with a kinship to mine and perhaps even

colluding to ensure that my country faced the threat of war … I

had thrown in my lot with the men of Underwood Samson, with

the officers of the empire, when all alone I was predisposed to

feel compassion for those, like Juan-Bautista, whose lives the

empire thought nothing of overturning for its own gain.” (152)

+3. Homeland

Changez states his loyalty:

“As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared

pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated

into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own

superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the

world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the

repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family … Such an

America had to be stopped in the interests not only of the rest

of humanity, but also in your own. I resolved to do so as best I

could. But first I had to depart.” (167-8)

+4. Foreignness

Almost every main character in The Reluctant

Fundamentalist is an outsider in some way.:

Changez is a Pakistani in America.

Wainwright is a black man in the corporate,

‘white’ world.

Jim’s childhood poverty made him feel like an

economic outsider.

Erica is emotionally detached from the world

around her.

Changez feels alternately like an insider and an

outsider in America.

+4. Foreignness

The World Trade Center attacks propel Changez

back into the position of outsider in a dual sense;

he begins to take issue with his corporate position

and he experiences prejudice because of his

appearance.

Rather than try to re-assimilate, Changez decides

to wear his foreignness like a badge by growing a

long beard, a symbol of defiance.

+In conclusion….

Hamid’s purposeful ambiguity forces the reader to

consider many viewpoints.

The extended metaphor of America/Erica

suggests that, like Erica, America will cause its own

decline from the position of world superpower.

Nostalgia can numb the pain of reality momentarily

by returning the nostalgic to a safer, happier time;

on the other hand, it can destroy relationships,

lives, and even empires.

+In conclusion…

Even though Changez makes America his home for a time,

when it comes down to it, his loyalty belongs to Pakistan.

In the title of his novel, Hamid questions the post-9/11

American concept of the word “fundamentalist.” He asks us to

challenge both the stereotypical terrorist-associated

definition of fundamentalism and our own perspectives and

biases.

+ Closing remarks: Mohsin Hamid in

interview

Q: Changez tells the American visitor that knowing history helps

put the present into perspective. […] How do you hope The

Reluctant Fundamentalist might influence readers’ perspectives

on the present state of American/Muslim relations?

A: I believe that the core skill of a novelist is empathy: the ability to

imagine what someone else might feel. And I believe that the world is

suffering from a deficit of empathy at the moment. The political

positions of both Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush are founded

on failures of empathy, failures of compassion toward people who

seem different. By taking readers inside a man who both loves and is

angered by America, and by allowing readers to feel what that man

feels, I hope to show that the world is more complicated than

politicians and newspapers usually make it seem. We need to stop

being so confused by the fear we are fed; A shared humanity should

unite us with people we are encouraged to think of as our enemies.

(http://www.harcourtbooks.com/Reluctant_Fundamentalist/interview.asp)

+

Images of 9/11-students’ selection

+

Ana Cristina Martins

+

Agnese Rudzite

+Marc Redfield's

The Rhetoric of Terror (2009)

“Consumer society understands the media representation that it

ravenously consumes as fundamentally violent, voyeuristic,

pornographic. The camera that records suffering provides a

supplemental violation, an obscene repetition of injury.” (30)

“…. the cameras and transmitters repeat the terroristic violation of

human dignity itself, reducing someone’s pain and death to an

image, stripping away the soul in capturing a representation of the

body.

The press manages this ambivalence by splitting itself into

reporting and entertainment, but for fundamental reasons,

documentary photographers […] can never operate at a guaranteed

distance from the paparazzi against who they […] define

themselves. This ambivalence was literally part of the spectacle of

September 11.” (31)

+

Jessica Arvela

+

Mirjam Henkens

+

Anete Sebre

+

Florent Chevalier