Erasing illusions and memory: A move from cultural Trauma of 9/11 in Khakpour's The last illusion

1st Hamdard International Conference of Literature & Linguistics
1

Erasing Illusions and Memory: A Move from
Cultural Trauma of 9/11 in Khakpour’s The
Last Illusion
Abdul Rashid
Lecturer in English
Bahadur sub campus Layyah
Bahauddin Zakriya university Multan, Pakistan
 1st Hamdard International Literature and Linguistic Conference
2

Introduction
The novel Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpor, revolves around the
story of a Iranian born feral child named Zal whose demented mother
abandons him horrified by the white color of his skin. Zal’s mother
considers that she has given birth to a ‘White Demon’. She prisoned
him in birdcage where he eats insects, seeds for birds and squats at the
newspaper. Zal in spite of living with the humans was not aware of the
norms of human society. It develops his character as hybrid one both
on biological and social grounds. Later on, he is adopted by Hendricks
an American behavioral analyst.
3

Introduction ………Continue
As New York was struggling to come forward to the incident of 9/11,
Zal finds himself in trouble as an outsider to the society. His friendship
with a famous illusionist(Silber) who claims that he can fly like a bird
keeps Zal’s life into chaos. So, he remains at the edge of collision and
devastation consistently. The novel The Last Illusion is a political
allegory in the context of 9/11, its devastation and trauma.
4

Theoretical Framework
 Fiction writers from America and the world has been attempting to
re-write the memory of 9/11 and urged a voice against the prevalent
discourse of cultural trauma for a move to social and civic justice to
the minorities which America failed to provide to the minorities in
post 9/11 times. The present study is an attempt to explore the theme
of hybridity, third space and erasing illusions in Porochista
Khakpour’s novel The Last Illusion.
 For the thematic analysis the theoretical insights have been taken
from Alexander (2013), Towards the Theory of Cultural Trauma and
Craps (2018) Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma out of Bounds.
5

Theoretical framework … continue…
Violence based version of
trauma
Decolonized version of
trauma
6

Research Questions
There are the following major research questions.
1. How did Porochista Khakpour foreground to erase
the memory and Illusions of trauma in American
Society in her novel The Last Illusion?
2. What strategies Zal did adopt to overcome trauma
imposed on him by social/ external world in the
process of adaptation?
7

Literature Review
In post 9/11 times there was the emergence of discourse which has
been dealing with the fear, fright and trauma of 9/11. The initial
responses of the fiction have been focusing the horrors and
representation of the dominant discourse of nationalism. But later on,
fiction focused on the agenda of unburdening the construction of
cultural trauma of 9/11. Alexander has traced the relevance of
traumatic situations in Western and non-Western, developed and less
developed societies. He asserts that it would be a serious
misunderstanding if trauma theory were restricted in its reference to
Western social life. True, it has been Western societies that have
recently provided the most dramatic apologias for traumatic episodes
in their national histories. But it has been the non-Western regions of
the world, and the most defenseless among them, that have been
8

Literature Review
 The latter half of the twentieth century this modern framework had
thoroughly penetrated non-Western societies: “In the mass media, the
victims of genocide are frequently condensed into an essentialized portrait
of the universal sufferer, an image that can be . . . (re)broadcast to global
audiences who see their own potential trauma reflected in this simulation
of the modern subject” (Hinton 2002: 21–2).
 The process of trauma, it can allow collectivities to define new forms of
moral responsibility and to redirect the course of political action.
Collective traumas have no geographical or cultural limitations. They
emerge when collectivities experience themselves as having sustained
grave injuries, and when they draw, for better and for worse, on the moral
lessons that seem to emanate from them.
9

Textual Analysis/ Content Analysis/ Data
Analysis
Peripheral Modernity of America
“Asiya, what’s wrong? Relax!”
“ It’s coming, Zal, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s
coming.”… Zal gathered her as she struggled against him.
She felt very hot, and her eyes were rolling wildly.
Nine-one-one, she started hissing, through all the forth in her
mouth.(p. 170-71)
10

Continue……..
 And then she added the words, the ones he had heard all too many
times but that still managed to confirm the worst for him: “ it’s
coming, Zal. It’s coming for all of us.” (173)
The novel The Last Illusion alludes the prevailing peripheral of
modernity in America which resulted in the traumatic consequences.
Where all the characters of novel are the victims of elimination. All
the characters are treated as second class citizen. The novel The Last
Illusion visualizes the invisible structural inequality prevalent in
American society.
11

Discourse of Normalcy and inclusiveness
 The dominant image in the novel is the move of abnormality to
normalcy. As the novel is more a political allegory, through the
strive of Zal Khakpour asserts the normalcy of prevailing political
situation in America. Khakpour condemns the hypocrisy of the
parents to their sons in the parallel to wider political context. As
Khanam as mother does not show a justified maternal love to her
disable child, in the similar analogy America does not show a
similar pattern to all her citizenship. Khanam is discriminatory to
her children and America is discriminatory to her inhabitants who
are not in line to American national behavior.
12

Continue…….
 Khanum is entrapped in her concerns, similarly America is
entrapped in inter-ethnic closets. This novel is more an attempt to
decolonize the evaluating trauma industry of fear and chaos in
America. It deconstructs the policing attitude of America to the
minorities and raise a sense of awareness in American society. “His
father had set it all up…and would not have created an abnormal
environment for his son…whom Hendricks so badly wanted to grow
up as normal as he could, considering. (Khakpour, p. 82)
13

Continue….
 The character of Hendricks is more a metaphor of recovery from
abnormality. Hendricks thinks it would be so great if Zal was just
like everybody else, implying that the way Zal lives is such an
inconvenience to able-bodied people like Hendricks, as though
being “normal” is such a wonderful way to live. Khakpour invites us
to question whether or not our “normal” is really as wonderful as we
think it is. Is Zal better off as a harmless, insect-eating, asexual,
bisexual person who is a little strange? Or is he preferable as an
alcoholic, sexist man who passes for “normal” by our standards? It
is really for Zal’s good that Hendricks is hell-bent on making him
“normal”? Or is it more so to prove that he is a good father? Why
doesn’t Hendricks approve of Zal when he behaves in a “bird-like”
manner?
14

Paralyzed fear of Death
 Given these dimensions, the disappearance of the World Trade
Center will not stir the same reaction for the novel’s protagonist as it
will for its marginal characters. Zal is therefore supposedly closer to
the readership in terms of reactions, who already know how the
events will unfold. It is precisely this reader expectation which will
be deconstructed in the novel’s closing pages. As mentioned
previously, with 9/11 looming, Zal is increasingly more connected to
the aviary side of his identity. This is a metaphorical way of
describing the exacerbation of his hybridity in a time when the
representatives of the center appear more oblivious than ever to
what they are about to experience.
15

Continue…….
 In order to experience flight, Zal decides to jump from an airplane
using a parachute. While exhilarating, the undertaking also proves
transformative for Zal, given that, instead of stirring his birdlike
instincts, he appears to be more connected to one of the feelings that
constitute the kernel of humanity: “He was suddenly faced with that
most humbling feature of human normalcy: he was paralyzed by his
fear of death. What. The. Hell. Was. He. Doing. Here?!” (Khakpour
179).
16

Continue…….
 Zal also becomes aware of the symbolism of the Twin Towers as he
approaches them and later on, when he reaches the Windows on the
World restaurant. Marveling at their “impossible height”, Zal is
struck by the vertical nature of the Towers and their capacity to
represent a center around which attention and fascination gravitates
(Khakpour 235).
17

Continue…….
 When related to his aviary dimension, one may easily comprehend
why the promise of height and the verticality of the Twin Towers
may exert such a strong reaction on Zal’s part, which permeates the
entire sequence set in the space of the Windows on the World
restaurant. As he becomes accustomed to his surroundings, Zal’s
attention gradually drifts away towards the outside world and
experiences the centrality of his position, a feeling that most of those
who went to Windows on the World have also experienced:
18

Continue…..
 “Zal focused on what interested him more than people-watching:
what was outside the window. On eye level there was just the sky, a
perfect black sky. It was hard to imagine they were rooted in the
ground, he felt so suspended. And then just below, all the lights:
light upon light upon light, networks of Christmas-light-like tangled
incandescence netted New York and Brooklyn and some of New
Jersey and who knew what more. He felt like he could indeed see
the whole world, that it was actually a window on the world. He felt
like he was perched on a narrow branch and that with just the
slightest inclination he could be up and away, into the dark
everlasting heavens above New York.” (Khakpour 237)
19

• Result/ Discussion/ Conclusion/ Findings
1.The tragedy which will plague the neocolonial metropolis of the
world is thus depicted as unavoidable, something which defuses
the reaction to the event both in Asiya’s and in Zal’s case.
2. In spite of these efforts to quell his instinctual needs and to
enable a sense of relief to calm him down, Zal finds his existence
increasingly challenged in the early days of 2001.
3. A brief period of accommodation to life in New York is turned
on its head; Asiya’s crises and the difficulty of adapting to life
within a troubled relationship are coupled with the problems of
adaptation to a regular life, including employment
20

Continue……….
 4.Indeed, a sense of defeat appears to pervade the troubled
relationship between Zal and Asiya as the events of 9/11 draw near.
In spite of Asiya’s “visions” and their increasing degree of precision
(she identifies Manhattan as the site of something perilous to come),
Zal does not respond with alarm or concern: “Let it come. Let it get
Manhattan, whatever it is. You won’t see me stopping it” (Khakpour
227-228).
21

Thanks…….
 Questions
22

References
Kaplan, E. A. (2005). Trauma culture: The politics of terror and loss in media and literature.
Rutgers University Press.
Kerman.M.(2017), Contemporary British Artist of African Descent and the Unburdening of a
Nation, Palgrave Macmillan,USA
Leonard, K. I. (2003). Muslims in the United States: The state of research. Russell Sage
Foundation.
Lee-Potter, C. (2013). Writing the 9/11 Decade (Doctoral dissertation, University of London).
Mirsepassi, A. (2000). Intellectual discourse and the politics of modernization: Negotiating
modernity in Iran. Cambridge University Press.
O'Gorman, D. (2015). Fictions of the War on Terror: Difference and the Transnational 9/11
Novel. Springer.
Oraviţan, A. (2019)The Strife between Center and Margin: Post-9/11 America as Elusive Middle Ground.
Radstone, S. (2007). Trauma theory: Contexts, politics, ethics. Paragraph, 30(1), 9-29.
Schneider, A. K. (2017). 9/11 and the Dystopian Imaginary: Towards a Periodization of
Contemporary American Fiction. Transylvanian Review, 26(Suppl 2), 227-236.
Simpson, D. (2006). 9/11: The culture of commemoration. University of Chicago Press.
Seidler, V. (2013). Remembering 9/11: Terror, Trauma and Social Theory. Springer.
Smelser, N. J. (2004b). Psychological trauma and cultural trauma. Cultural trauma and
collective identity, 4, 31–59.
Strinati, D. (2004). An introduction to theories of popular culture. Routledge.
Balaev, M. (2008). Trends in literary trauma theory. Mosaic: A Journal for the
Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, 149-166.
Balaev, M. (2012). The nature of trauma in American novels. Northwestern University Press.
Bernfeld, S. (1944). Freud’s earliest theories and the school of Helmholtz. The
Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 13(3), 341-362.
Caruth, C. (2016). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. JHU Press.
23

Erasing illusions and memory: A move from cultural Trauma of 9/11 in Khakpour's The last illusion

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Erasing illusions and memory: A move from cultural Trauma of 9/11 in Khakpour's The last illusion

Similar to Erasing illusions and memory: A move from cultural Trauma of 9/11 in Khakpour's The last illusion (9)

More from abdul rashid

More from abdul rashid (9)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Erasing illusions and memory: A move from cultural Trauma of 9/11 in Khakpour's The last illusion