A Limited Rebellion

On 11th September. 2001,when the plane hijacked by terrorists hit into the World Trade Center in USA,the course of human history and the appearance of western literature both changed.Since then,the Bush administration has manifested evergrowing nostalgia for the Cold War,and the mainstream narrative keeps strengthening the image of American as an innocent victim,hijacking the event to serve the military attacks initiated by American government.In this regard,Don Delillo,an American novelist,proposes the mission of contemperary western writers,that is,to create "countemarrative".It is a narrative strategy that stands opposite with official narrative,arguing against the western-centered narraive strenthened by the Bush administration to amplify the binary opposition including"us" against "them",good against evil,the West against the East,and democracy against terrorism.Most "9/11" fictions present obvious characteristics of counternarrative.The counternarrative implications in "9/11" fictions can be mainly clasified into the following three aspects.Firstly,using de-sentimentalising strategy,it truly reconstructs the brutal moments in the catastrophe,depicts human existence situation around Ground Zero,and defies tragedy romanticization and reality aetheticization caused by "image dominance",in order to arouse true mourning by recording the disaster as things really are.Secondly,it introspects American pre-history before"9/11" objects to putting terrorism into non-historical contexts and simply regarding it as savage and irrational,and advocates that Americans-look inside themselves to analyse the origins of terrorism.Thirdly,it potrays complicated images of terrorists,digs into their souls,tries to deconstruct the deeply-rooted oriental images in western minds,and shows that western visonaries are attempting to know more about the Orient,which is the first step against peacefully co-existence and pluralistic tolerance between the East and West.To coordinate the counternarrrative implications at the level of subjects,"9’11”fictions often adopt some forms and techniques accordingly,mainly including the following four ways.Firstly,it employs the perspective and voice of the Orient or the"other",to make de-demonized literary representations of islamic culture,musilims and the Orient in a broader sense,or to seek for a voice to compete with the ideologies that dominates,or to reveal the "9/11" pre-history,or to express the desire that the other and the center should understand and link up with each other.Secondly,it juxtaposes several story lines,the mutally reinforcing and comparison of which creates colorful counternarrative implications ,and this provides the writers with tensional narrative area.Thirdly,it juxaposes several historical events,and speculates on present social problems grounded on broad historical contexts,allowing readers to get profound knowlege about reality.Lastly,it represents multi-voiced narrative ensembles ,and by displaying dfferent views of different people writers call on readers to think with good sense and actively hear other people’s heartfelt wishes, trying to establish a much more comprehensive and multicutural world.How to evaluate the "9/11" counternarrative is a question that shouldn’t be simplified.We are supposed to see,counternarrative suggests American people’s self-examination,but that doesn’t mean it sympathize with the terrorists blindly;many counternarrative fictions truly advocate active intropection of both sides ,the tolerance of each other,and pluralistic coexistence of both.However,when dealing with minorities,some texts unintentionaly shows western writers’ deep-seated superiority and orientalistic mindset,and reinforces their status as "subject" through the writing of the "other".Therefore,the so-called counternarrative ends up being restricted rebellion of official narrative.