Suchergebnisse

Tabish Khair's Just Another Jihadi Jane (2014) explores the global phenomenon of female suicide bombers after the emergence of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the international reconfiguration of geopolitical power after 9/11. Khair tells the story of Jamilla and Ameena, two British teenage girls of South Asian Muslim descent who decide to join Islamic State in their search for their religious ideal of Islamic truth and their impending need for belonging and recognition. This chapter analyzes the multi-dimensional complexity of vulnerability exposed both in the story thematization and in the narrative mode of fictional testimony (Ganteau 2015). Firstly, it describes the story emplotment vertebrated along two different axes: the socioeconomic and cultural context that articulates vulnerability as precarity (Butler 2004; 2009) and the conditions of the precariat (Standing 2011); and female vulnerability to oppression and patriarchal violence after the girls move to Syria. Secondly, this chapter investigates the materiality of the narrative medium of fictional testimony as a precarious yet creative vehicle to expose vulnerability. Ultimately, this chapter contends that Khair's story and narrative form particularize the stereotyped jihadi Jane, shattering to pieces the sociopolitical ungrievability imposed on their différance (Derrida 1968) and their wasted lives (Bauman 2004).

Introduction: Aiming to provide a theoretical introduction that further informs the analyses conducted in subsequent chapters, this chapter will review the synergies operating among the different conceptualizations of vulnerability and various well-established theories that explore the materiality of the body and its affects from multifold viewpoints. Divided into three sections, the first explores some of the most salient critical proposals related to vulnerability and the body by manifesting the semantic multiplicity that applies to these terms. This is a necessary step to sketch an operational frame in which to contextualize the literary and filmic research endeavor of the collection. The second section ponders on the ethical and aesthetic features that make possible the integration of complementary and competing configurations of vulnerability in the production of literary texts and audiovisual productions and explores its salient elements that place literature and film as a privileged sites of expansion, critical reflection, and challenge of vulnerability both as a universal condition as well as a particular and specific manifestation in historical, geopolitical, social, and cultural and natural dimensions. Finally, the chapter closes with a brief description of the twelve essays collected in the volume by discussing their organizational logics and their distinct contribution to it.