Post-9/11 American neo-Orientalist representations pervade today's politics and journalism about the Arab World. Since the first emergence of the Middle East representation in American writings of the nineteenth century, one can assume that nothing has changed in representations of the Middle East in the US. This article explores a twenty-first century phenomenon called “neo-Orientalism,” a style of representation that, while indebted to classical Orientalism, focuses on “othering” the Arab world with the exclusion of some geographic parts, such as India and Turkey, from the classical map of Orientalism. Although neo-Orientalism represents a shift in the selection of its subject and locale, it nonetheless reproduces certain repetitions of and conceptual continuities with its precursor. Like classical Orientalism, neo-Orientalism is a monolithic discourse based on binarism between the superior American values and the inferior Arab culture.
Why would a group of writers act in a way that appears to readers as literary fundamentalism, such as post 9/11 American writers? Most of the effective causes underlie superior behaviors, namely, neo-orientalist ideology and imperial interests quite enough to threaten the survival of scholarly literature on 9/11 attacks. Fundamentalist narratives have increasingly become the concern of critics and readers over the last two decades. This study aims to explore post-9/11 writers' fundamentalist tendencies that have increasingly become a part of contemporary narratives on a larger scale in political narratives. A central inquiry in the study is how adherence to fundamentals, perceived as a basic principle for a profession or a new feature in the literature, may develop into fundamentalism. It also investigates the ways in which fundamentalist narratives racialize a collective subject described as "Islam and the Muslims" in the aftermath of 9/11. This category became more prominent in fundamentalist narratives that are in harmony and solidarity with the state and its agenda, ignoring its imperial attitude toward the Middle East. Analysis refers to Updike's Terrorist as an example of fundamentalist text that manifestly identifies Arabs, their intentions, their culture, and their religion as barbaric and aggressive. The circumstances under which these narratives developed and influenced American writers' attitudes are also explored.
This paper deals with some aspects of neo-orientalism in the modern American novel highlighted in much conventional political and literary studies and conceptualized both as a composite of cultural studies and a western ideology. When applied to the post 9/11 American novel analysis, neo-orientalism uses terrorism as a significant aspect of a much broader reaction to Islamists’ threats living in the United States and Europe. It is common in neo-orientalist discourse about extremism to refer to Islamism as a threat to nations and therefore, it is important to find how the American novel represents the Muslims and how vigorously acts with the state in its fight against terror. This paper focuses on contemporary issues on Arabs represented in Robert Ferrigno’s Prayers for the Assassin (2006), such as extremism, women’s rights, hostility, and identity, common themes in post 9/11 novel on the Muslims. Moreover, this study attempts to answer two questions: Has there been a change in the representation of Muslims in the American novel after nineteen years from 9/11, and has American media coverage affected the representation of the Muslims in the novel? In the analysis of Prayers for the Assassin, Muslim characters are victimers and victimized at the same time; they live out the contradiction of being victims of post 9/11 anti-Muslim representations and being arrogant and aggressive towards the non-Muslims.
This essay on the Ground Zero novel offers three perspectives on one of the most exciting current debates in humanities by approaching the effects of the most notable 21st century event on the American novel. It presents a scholarly analysis of the American novel of the past 20 years and provides a discussion for readers who are divided by geography, ideology, and religion to understand how the 9/11 novel reflects both geopolitical relations and conflicts of our collective present. It sets two necessary provisos for the analysis of post-9/11 American narrative: terrorism and counter-terrorism. This analysis approaches the post-9/11 novel from two opposing perspectives/voicesneutral narratives and political narratives-to provide a neutral cultural territory divorced from geopolitical strategy to understand this new version of American literature and explore the common beliefs and values in it. A third focus, on the literature of immigrants, is emerging in American literary studies and offers a bridge to those interested in exploring the cultural contributions of Muslim immigrants to American culture. It would be a mistake to conclude without referring to the contributions of Arab American writers because the concepts of culture and coexistence are interlinked.
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