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Global civil war and post-9/11 discourse in The Wasted Vigil

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 27; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0950236x.2013.784024

1470-1308

Oona Frawley,

Islamic Studies and History

Abstract Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil offers the opportunity to consider the ways in which notions of civil war in the twenty-first century are complicated both by legacies of colonialisms and by contemporary discourse on extremism. Though the Afghanistan represented in the text is shown to be in a state of civil war stemming from tribal conflict, it is, simultaneously, an occupied space with an inheritance of multiple occupations. This palimpsestic arena serves as a meeting ground for key characters, each of which hails from and so represents a distinct part of Afghanistan's legacy. The novel also offers a meditation on the nature of extremism and its representations in the post-9/11 era. If, as Baudrillard suggests, terrorism like that enacted on 11 September 2001 succeeds because of its symbolic value, Aslam's novel pursues the notion of the symbolic through language as a way of moving beyond the standoff created by current-day (and largely American) rhetoric about extremism. The ‘global civil war’ enacted in the pages of The Wasted Vigil thus offers a critique not only of definitions of civil war, but also, and perhaps more significantly, a far more damning critique of the American-centric perspective on globality and media's normalization of the unimaginable image. Keywords: Nadeem Aslamglobal civil warpost-colonialismterrorismterrorist discourseextremismpost-9/11 fiction Notes See, for instance, Khaled Hosseini's official website: http://www.khaledhosseini.com/hosseini-bio.html, or the Wikipedia entry on Hosseini: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaled_Hosseini. Hamid's official website, http://www.mohsinhamid.com/shortbio.html, provides a biography, as does Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohsin_Hamid. http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=1149 (accessed 1 February 2011). See Aslam's comments on ‘White England’ in ‘Writing Against Terror: Nadeem Aslam’. Michael O'Connor, July 2005. Three Monkeys Online. http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/als/_nadeem_aslam_interview.html (accessed 6 February 2011). ‘An Interview with Nadeem Aslam about The Wasted Vigil’. Book Browse. http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=1149 (accessed 8 February 2011). Ibid. Ibid. All references to The Wasted Vigil (London: Faber and Faber, 2008) are abbreviated from here on as WV. This might also be seen as a mirror of current-day American rhetoric about ‘Af-Pak’ and what are perceived as increasing links between the two countries based on extremist groups; the rhetoric persists despite a general rejection of the term in Pakistan, which, given the lessons of history, might well shy away from another pairing with a neighbouring nation. See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London: Penguin, 2005). Page references to this work will be given in text. Ann Hironaka, Neverending Wars: The International Community, Weak States, and the Perpetuation of Civil War (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). Page references to this work will be given in text. Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis (eds), Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis. Volume I: Africa (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2005), p. 16. Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, ‘Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946–92’, Journal of Peace Research, 37.3 (2000), pp. 275–299(295). Mahmood Mamdani, ‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: A Political Perspective on Culture and Terrorism’, American Anthropologist, New Series, 104.3 (2002), pp. 766–775(773). Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable (Brooklyn: Verso Press, 2009). Cathy Caruth, extract from ‘Trauma and Experience’ in Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead (eds), Theories of Memory: A Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 200. Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism (London: Verso, 2002). Page references to this work will be given in text. Casa notes that ‘Allah forbids photography. The only exception to this a Muslim must reluctantly make in today's world is the photo needed for a passport: to go on the pilgrimage in Mecca, or to cross borders for the purposes of jihad’ (WV, p. 240). Heike Harting, ‘Global Civil War and Post-Colonial Studies’, Globalization Working Paper Series, Issue 06/3 (May 2006), p. 7. See Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005) and Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).