The American self and the Arab other in 1980s bestsellers in the United States.

摘要

Popular fiction is often regarded as a 'degraded' literary form whose social impact is confined to pure entertainment and leisurely reading. When historians of the 1980s name some of the most influential writers of the decade, Stephen King and Danielle Steel fail to make the list despite their enormous popularity and their novels' readability. Excluding popular fiction from classrooms, anthologies, and literary criticism relegates the 'common' readers to mere consumers of fiction and recipients of the genre's depiction of reality in binary oppositions of good/evil, heroic/villainous, and masculine/feminine. In an attempt to trouble the 'trinity' of reader/text/writer, this dissertation reads the popularity of the formulaic as indicative of a popular desire to sustain a binary view of us/them. It contextualizes the discussion in the depiction of the American self and the Arab Other in 1980s bestsellers, posing two questions: why are Steel and King absent from literary discussion of colonial literature in the 1980s and why shouldn't they be included?;In answering these questions, this dissertation introduces the concept of juxtaposition as another method of representation, which does not overtly or explicitly construct the Arab stereotype. Juxtaposition creates a subtle contrast between 'us' and 'them' without verbalizing it and insinuates contrast and oppositionality without addressing the complexities and multidimensionality of what is being contrasted or juxtaposed, such as the binary of self and Other, the American national identity or its sexual politics. Popular fiction as bestsellers creates simultaneity of influence by providing the medium in which the reading public is exposed to homogeneous and binary representations of the Arab family and the American family in juxtaposition. King and Steel's novels produce knowledge of the Arab Other through their simultaneous popularity with novels that popularize the Arab stereotype. The plausibility of the social clarity in Steel and King's bestsellers relies on the representability of equally clear demonology of Arabs in contemporary bestsellers such as The Haj and The Little Drummer Girl.;This dissertation reads the juxtaposition of the American self and the Arab Other in the historical context of the 1980s as a prelude rather than a discontinuity of the 1990s and 2000s during which the United States engaged in a full-scale military offensive against Iraq and Afghanistan and maintained its military presence in the Arab peninsula. It disputes the view of '9/11' as a moment of rupture, and by focusing on the 1980s, it argues that post-9/11 discourse continues the systematic demonization of Arabs.