OTHERING AND MUSLIM SUBJECTIVITY AFTER 9/11: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF HOME BOY

Abstract

The event of September 11, 2001, has changed the nature of political and cultural discourse globally, as the majority of countries started to construct Muslims as the "Other" through narratives of terror, suspicion and national insecurity. In this context, the literary text of H. M. Naqvi's "Home Boy" (2009) is a powerful account of the struggle of Pakistani Muslim immigrants in the socio-political landscape of post-9/11 America. The present study employs the critical discursive framework of “othering” and “Muslim subjectivity” and takes Norman Fairclough's (1995, 2015) Three-Dimensional Model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the “Home Boy.” This study is considered as a qualitative research design and uses purposive textual sampling methods, based on the aspects of interconnected aspects of text analysis, discursive practice, and social practice, to analyze the selected text excerpts in the novel. The results indicate that Muslim identities are discursively produced through labelling the identities, lexical representation, polarization, Islamophobic discourse, surveillance and institutional control.The results show that the process of othering is reinforced through the discursive production of Muslim identities through identity labelling, lexical representation, polarization, Islamophobic discourse, surveillance and institutional control. At the same time, it explores the notion of Muslim subjectivity as fluid and contested, a subjectivity in which the protagonists negotiate membership, encounter disruptions in their sense of belonging, negotiate hybrid identities, interpellate dominant ideological discourses, and ultimately reconstruct a sense of self. “Home Boy” is also a literary counter-discourse that critiques hegemonic post-9/11 portrayals of Muslims, as the study suggests, by revealing the connection between language, power, and ideology. This study brings Critical Discourse Analysis in combination with a postcolonial view of identity into the critical study of Pakistani Anglophone literature, postcolonialism and discourse studies, Islamophobia, and representation of Muslims after 9/11. It shows how literary discourse not only mirrors historical truth, but also offers a critical arena to challenge the exclusionary narratives and to affirm the multiculturalism of Muslim identities in modern societies.