Fiction After the Fall: Reimagining Identity, War and Trauma in Non-Western Post-9/11 Literature

Abstract

The incident of 9/11 offered a privileged framework of mourning to America, which foregrounded only the Western identity and trauma. Sequentially, the War on Terror promoted the constructs of Western narratives of civilisation, morality, and peace. This review article offers essentially a counter-narrative on how identity, trauma, and the War on Terror were reimagined by non Western literature against the dominant political and literary discourse of the West. Fiction from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, responding to the dominant discourse of 9/11, shifted to a justice-oriented and pluralistic literary landscape, focusing on a call for equal distribution of senses between the West and the East. Thus, Post-9/11 Non-Western fiction became a space of resistance, where writers confront orientalist stereotypes, destabilise colonial legacies, and reclaim agency of the silenced victims of the West.