The Decline of the Traditional Orientalism in Don Delillo’s Falling Man

Abstract

This article attempts to explore neo-orientalism in Don Delillo's Falling Man. The study will mainly focus on islamophobia as the essential impetus of neo-orientalism. Postcolonial critical stances emphasize the issue of orientalism as the opposite of the West. Western civilizations used to perceive the traditional orient in the light of "self" and "other" dichotomy, whereby the West is the self that spreads its hegemony on the Orient, or East i.e., the other. Traditional orientalism is, therefore, based on this long inherited ideological assumption. However, this study focuses on neo-orientalism as a binary opposition of the Western hegemony. Some extreme Islamic attitudes reject American Western hegemony. Accordingly, they express their ideological will through relying on some religious ideas to attack America. Such response results in islamophobia midst Western societies. In so doing, they justify their rebuttal of the Western hegemony in order to establish their own oriental identity. The study is going to discuss this rebuttal as a way of empowering traditional orientalism which turns to be neo-orientalism. For this reason, it will apply three postcolonial concepts, namely, hegemony, self-other relationship and islamophobia. Thus, the application of these concepts will reveal the formation of neo-orientalism as a means of elevating oriental traditional identity.