Masters Thesis

Rendered out of Commission: Othered Arabs and Abject Rhetoric in Service of Empire

My thesis investigates post-9/11 patterns of discourse while reimagining strategic positionality of reappearing Orientalist tropes evidenced in modern rhetorical approach to Arabs. Projection, dehumanization, distorted and exaggerated ways of seeing/depicting Arabs as implacable “Others” are among discursive patterns explored. My methodology adopts a postcolonial framework to survey issues of language situated in the overarching meta-narrative in effort to expose (then subvert) hypothetically hyperactive neocolonialist attitudes. I search for such attitudes, potentially, relocated in the original state-sanctioned story—an officially held account that remains fixed into collective history. First, I examine running themes in The 9/11 Commission Report looking for very specific (negative) images of Arabs (as eternal enemies). Today, such images have—inarguably—stuck. While it may be culturally popular to consider Arabs in dualistic us/other binary terms, maintaining them as ultimate threats to our collective safety, these predisposed images bring with them some very serious material implications (and/or physically damaging consequences) to the Arab world at large. The original report (along with Marvel Comics graphic afterbirth) played a definitive role in reassembling, then mass-disseminating, a historic/ahistorical portrayal of Arabs as the embodiment of terrorism. Assemblages were spread (via a top-down knowledge exchange) to a very receptive American audience for mainstream public consumption. After unpacking The Report, to locate/interrogate various narrative threads in attempt to reclaim a safe space for “Others,” my project morphs into a multi-media hybrid poetics weaving in and out of conjecture playfully, conceptually, and as per Said’s recommendation—contrapuntally.

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