Frawley, Oona
(2013)
Global civil war and post-9/11 discourse in The
Wasted Vigil.
Textual Practice, 27 (3).
pp. 439-457.
ISSN 0950-236X
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.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
Nadeem Aslam; global civil war; post-colonialism; terrorism; terrorist discourse;
extremism; post-9/11 fiction; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts & Humanities > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies > English |
| Item ID: |
11445 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2013.784024 |
| Depositing User: |
Oona Frawley
|
| Date Deposited: |
23 Oct 2019 15:28 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Textual Practice |
| Publisher: |
Taylor & Francis (Routledge) |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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