Post-9/11 Iraq in Context: Reading American and Anti-American Politics in Inaam Kachachi’s The American Granddaughter

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of English Language and General Courses, Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran

2 Department of English Language and General Courses, Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran.

Abstract

This study seeks to delineate the representation of post-9/11 in Iraq through employing a range of ideas and conceptions from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s formulation of Empire to Agamben’s theorization of the state of exception so as to reveal the real cause of the US invasion of Iraq, the real significance of fundamentalism which arose in the wake of the violence resulting from the invasion, and the resistance role that fundamentalism played in Iraq. The study seeks to demonstrate how Islamophobia, terrorism, fundamentalism, and Empire are inextricably intertwined and the way they are represented in Inaam Kachachi’s The American Granddaughter. The findings of the study reveal the fact that the main intentions of the invasion arise out of the Empire’s attempts to spread its supranational sovereignty to the entire world, along the way giving rise to fundamentalism, which stands as the antithesis of the Empire and which does not have anything to do with going back to the roots of Islam but rather serves the losers of the process of globalization as the means through which they can contest its winners. The novel, thus, is an attempt at giving a narrative mode to the events that led to the fundamentalist renaissance in Iraq as a form of postcolonial confrontation and indicating how fundamentalism has been a form of resistance to Empire and its aspirations in contrast to the prevailing view that American invasion of Iraq was a response to fundamentalism in the Middle East.

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References

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History

  • Receive Date: 22 August 2024
  • Revise Date: 05 December 2024
  • Accept Date: 08 February 2025

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