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Metatextuality of Transnational Marriages in Updike’s Terrorist

Received: 9 January 2014    Accepted:     Published: 20 February 2014
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Abstract

In this paper, we intend to analyse an American novel, John Updike’s Terrorist (2006), with the aim of examining its critical standpoint of the American women’ marriages to Muslim migrants. This essay explores the reasons which lead Updike to refuse this social hybridity and how that refusal disseminates biased attitude against the Muslim Americans in general. Having appropriated Gerard Genette’s theory of metatextuality to frame our analysis of the novel, we argue that metatextuality refers to the texts’ explicit or implicit critical treatment of one another. Our analysis of Updike’s metatextuality of the transnational marriages concludes that Updike is extremely biased against the Arabs and Muslims because his refusal of these marriages concentrated merely on American women who marry Arab and Muslim migrants. He develops dialogues to expose the Arab Americans as having a strong Islamic identity which, as he claims, provokes them to reject the US liberal life and oppose the US policy and history. In addition to that, the novel reveals that American transnational matrimonies to Arabs result in confused American identities that live in-between spaces; they are neither Americans nor Arabs and their loyalties lie with the religion and culture of their Muslim fathers, not of the American mothers. This suspicion is intended to expose the Arab and Muslim Americans as dangerous for the US security. It also uncovers the author’s ideology which stands against the Arabs and Muslims.

Published in International Journal of Literature and Arts (Volume 2, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijla.20140201.13
Page(s) 10-15
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Metatextuality, Transnational Marriage, Arab/Muslim Americans, John Updike

References
[1] Ashipe, M. A. 2007. On being Updike forever: narcissism as national epic in John Updike’s short fiction. Ph..D thesis. Washington University.
[2] Baldick, C. 1990. The concise Oxford dictionary of literary terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[3] Chandler, D. 2007. Semiotics: the basics. London: Routledge.
[4] Deitering, C. 2008. Waste sites: rethinking nature, body, and home in American fiction since 1980. Ph.D thesis. Binghamton University: State University of New York.
[5] Genette, G. 1997[1982]. Palimpsest: literature in the second degree. Newman, C. & Doubinsky. C. (trans.). New York: University of Nebraska Press.
[6] Holme, R. 2004. Literacy: an introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
[7] Maira, S. 2009. Missing: youth, citizenship, and empire after 9/11. Duke University Press.
[8] Pape, D. J. 2008. Up out of this: metatextuality in Joyce’s Ulysses. Master thesis. Villanova University.
[9] Popham, W. J. 2008. Transformative assessment. Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
[10] Riyad Manqoush, Noraini Md. Yusof, Ruzy Suliza Hashim. 2011. The use of historical allusion in recent American and Arab fiction. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies 11(1): 57-68.
[11] Riyad Manqoush, Noraini Md. Yusof & Ruzy Suliza Hashim. 2011. Depictions of Arabs in recent American fiction: a critical analysis of Adams’ Harbor. In Raihanah M .M., Ruzy Suliza Hashim, Noraini Md. Yusof & Zalina Lazim. (eds.). Gender, multiculturalism and re-visioning, pp. 43-58. Serdang: Universiti Putra Malaysia Press.
[12] Riyad Manqoush, Noraini Md. Yusof & Ruzy Suliza Hashim. 2011. Modes of Intertextuality: Hypertextuality and Metatextuality of History in Early Twenty-First Century American and Arab fiction. Germany: Lambert for Academic Publishing.
[13] Riyad Manqoush, Noraini Md. Yusof & Ruzy Suliza Hashim. 2011. Amplifications of religious fundamentalism in Fiction: al-Saqqaf’s Qissat Irhabi vs. Updike’s Terrorist. Middle East Studies Online Journal 3(6): 297-317.
[14] Stam, S. & Raengo, A. 2005. Literature and film: a guide to the theory and practice of film adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
[15] Updike, J. 2006. Terrorist. New York: Ballantine Books.
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  • APA Style

    Riyad Abdurahman Manqoush, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, Noraini Md. Yusof. (2014). Metatextuality of Transnational Marriages in Updike’s Terrorist. International Journal of Literature and Arts, 2(1), 10-15. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20140201.13

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    ACS Style

    Riyad Abdurahman Manqoush; Ruzy Suliza Hashim; Noraini Md. Yusof. Metatextuality of Transnational Marriages in Updike’s Terrorist. Int. J. Lit. Arts 2014, 2(1), 10-15. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20140201.13

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    AMA Style

    Riyad Abdurahman Manqoush, Ruzy Suliza Hashim, Noraini Md. Yusof. Metatextuality of Transnational Marriages in Updike’s Terrorist. Int J Lit Arts. 2014;2(1):10-15. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20140201.13

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijla.20140201.13,
      author = {Riyad Abdurahman Manqoush and Ruzy Suliza Hashim and Noraini Md. Yusof},
      title = {Metatextuality of Transnational Marriages in Updike’s Terrorist},
      journal = {International Journal of Literature and Arts},
      volume = {2},
      number = {1},
      pages = {10-15},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijla.20140201.13},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20140201.13},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijla.20140201.13},
      abstract = {In this paper, we intend to analyse an American novel, John Updike’s Terrorist (2006), with the aim of examining its critical standpoint of the American women’ marriages to Muslim migrants. This essay explores the reasons which lead Updike to refuse this social hybridity and how that refusal disseminates biased attitude against the Muslim Americans in general. Having appropriated Gerard Genette’s theory of metatextuality to frame our analysis of the novel, we argue that metatextuality refers to the texts’ explicit or implicit critical treatment of one another. Our analysis of Updike’s metatextuality of the transnational marriages concludes that Updike is extremely biased against the Arabs and Muslims because his refusal of these marriages concentrated merely on American women who marry Arab and Muslim migrants. He develops dialogues to expose the Arab Americans as having a strong Islamic identity which, as he claims, provokes them to reject the US liberal life and oppose the US policy and history. In addition to that, the novel reveals that American transnational matrimonies to Arabs result in confused American identities that live in-between spaces; they are neither Americans nor Arabs and their loyalties lie with the religion and culture of their Muslim fathers, not of the American mothers. This suspicion is intended to expose the Arab and Muslim Americans as dangerous for the US security. It also uncovers the author’s ideology which stands against the Arabs and Muslims.},
     year = {2014}
    }
    

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    AB  - In this paper, we intend to analyse an American novel, John Updike’s Terrorist (2006), with the aim of examining its critical standpoint of the American women’ marriages to Muslim migrants. This essay explores the reasons which lead Updike to refuse this social hybridity and how that refusal disseminates biased attitude against the Muslim Americans in general. Having appropriated Gerard Genette’s theory of metatextuality to frame our analysis of the novel, we argue that metatextuality refers to the texts’ explicit or implicit critical treatment of one another. Our analysis of Updike’s metatextuality of the transnational marriages concludes that Updike is extremely biased against the Arabs and Muslims because his refusal of these marriages concentrated merely on American women who marry Arab and Muslim migrants. He develops dialogues to expose the Arab Americans as having a strong Islamic identity which, as he claims, provokes them to reject the US liberal life and oppose the US policy and history. In addition to that, the novel reveals that American transnational matrimonies to Arabs result in confused American identities that live in-between spaces; they are neither Americans nor Arabs and their loyalties lie with the religion and culture of their Muslim fathers, not of the American mothers. This suspicion is intended to expose the Arab and Muslim Americans as dangerous for the US security. It also uncovers the author’s ideology which stands against the Arabs and Muslims.
    VL  - 2
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Author Information
  • Department of English, Faculty of Education, Hadhramout University, Yemen

  • School of Language Studies and Linguistics, National University of Malaysia

  • School of Language Studies and Linguistics, National University of Malaysia

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