Speaking Silences - Pakistani Fiction Amidst Terrorism & Chaos

Abstract

Since the disastrous events of 9/11 and its aftermath, the discourse of terrorism has appeared to become the most dominant preoccupations of American literature. Several novels have been composed following the September 11 attacks that deal directly or indirectly with the effect of the event on individuals, both inside and outside of the United States of America. Although these novels often claim to deal with the post traumatic- after effects of the attacks, the Western writers frequently employ Orientalist stereotyping and it appears that after 9/11 this attitude towards Muslims has even hardened and strengthened the old Orientalist discourse by representing all Muslims as terrorists. In line with Edward Said’s:“the East writes back” this thesis shows the novels, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Home Boy and Burnt Shadows, stand as a reaction to this dominant post 9/11 rhetoric and challenge the discourse of colonization from the Pakistani side(which stands for the East) and welcome decolonization. Edward Said’s Orientalism serves as the theoretical basis for this research. The thesis explores the response of contemporary Pakistani literature in English .i.e. how writers are responding, reacting and relating with the contemporary reality of terrorism, violence, extremism and suicide bombing and the challenges that the existing political and social scenario creates for Pakistani writers and how despotism, martial rule, violence militant extremism and imperial occupation of Afghanistan have placed the Pakistani writer, like his fellow citizens, in the margins, from where writers are now raising their voices and struggling to regain their national identity and create for themselves an individual literary identity. How have the writers not only disrupted the status quo but also challenged and questioned the post 9/11Western discriminatory attitude towards the Muslims. Moreover it reveals the struggle of the authors to dismantle the terrorist label ascribed to the Muslims and post 9/11 stereotyping of Muslims as extremists and religious fanatics.