The Selfish Event and the Proximal-Ancillary Coverage Continuum: A Dialogical Approach to the Discourse(s) of the American 'War on Terror'

In this dissertation, I strive to prove that at least under certain circumstances, the fictional and the non-fictional can be seen not as separate but as part of a continuum. To do this, I divided my dissertation into two parts, one that deals with the circumstances for a reconsideration of the truth-fiction dichotomy, and one that deals with how a continuum between the two is much more lucrative from a hermeneutical point of view. In view of this, I base my arguments on two theoretical constructs, which will be explained in full in the first few pages of each part. The first part of my dissertation forwards the notion of selfish events and will focus chiefly on the literature dealing with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, while the second part proposes the notion of a proximal-ancillary continuum and will focus primarily on the literature coming out of the American ‘war on terror’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first part of my dissertation is divided into three chapters, each of them dealing with either a theoretical element or a specific group of texts. While the first chapter outlines the theoretical trajectories, my argument is based on and from which it draws its substance, the second and third chapters will bring theory and practice together through an in-depth analysis of texts. In this first part, I argue that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, created an ethos of perception and cultural production that can be traced throughout the vast majority of texts that tackle the events either directly or indirectly. Because of this, 9/11 can be called a selfish event, namely one that, due to the acute effects of its occurrence, does not have the time and the cultural resources to forge a discourse of its own that could reflect upon and explain the complexity of that event, and as such it resorts to cultural artifacts that happen to be in its proximity. A selfish event, as I will argue, absorbs and contaminates these cultural artifacts to sustain its cultural authority at least until a separate discourse of its own has been created and culturally reinforced. This appropriative move then translates into a cultural practice and is reflected, as I shall show, in narratives that perform a similar appropriative move. The second part of my dissertation is divided into three chapters and focuses pri- marily on the proximal-ancillary coverage continuum and how it can be applied to the interpretation of the literature currently coming out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In particular, this part revolves around the notion of ancillary coverage. This particular concept derives, on the one hand, from the terminological necessity of differentiating between what I call the proximal/journalistic coverage of a particular military event – in this case the wars in Afghanistan in Iraq – and the ancillary/fictional coverage of that same event, and, on the other hand, from the logical necessity of rendering two corpora of texts into two operational categories that could be defined according to a set of features. Albeit my research groups together these two corpora under the generic umbrella of coverage, the ultimate purpose is not only to bring to the surface the perceived similarities between these two types of coverage, but also to show how common features, such as the post-factum feedback, operate differently in the case of each type. Considering that proximal coverage is governed by its own internal rules and regulations, chiefly dictated by the necessities of the profession of journalism, this part of my dissertation strives, on the one hand, to identify at least in part the rules and regulations that exercise control over ancillary coverage, and, on the other hand, to define them in terms of how they operate in relation to the fictional accounts I have chosen as primary sources.