Challenging the Dominant Discourse: Khan’s My Guantanamo Diaries and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror

Jeffrey Carr

doi:10.31178/inter.9.23.3

Abstract

This study juxtaposes Mahvish Rukhsana Khan’s powerful memoir My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me (2008) with the post-9/11 rhetoric of political leaders and the mainstream media in the United States during the first decade of the twenty-first century. In her work, Khan exposes the extreme, dehumanizing conditions endured by military prison detainees – many of whom Khan argues were falsely arrested – and advocates for their right to receive fair hearings. The several examples of evident torture revealed by the interviewed detainees throughout the text contrast sharply with the rhetoric from speeches and interviews of early twenty-first century American political leaders, such as President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and the news coverage from neoliberal media outlets like CNN and Fox News. Similarly, the brutal representations in Khan’s memoir contrast with the largely positive depictions of torture in popular films and television programs. To support the validity of Khan’s claims, the article will also consider the available War on Terror-era interrogation logs from the Guantanamo Bay military prison camp. This study seeks to illustrate the ability of prevailing power structures to interpellate consumers of mass media while simultaneously suggesting that literature possesses a unique potential to challenge dominant discourses, as it has done throughout history. Finally, this paper argues that works by Khan and other Muslim American authors have the power to disrupt the current racist and xenophobic episteme and challenge the ideological consensus fostered by mainstream media.

Highlights

This study juxtaposes Mahvish Rukhsana Khan’s powerful memoir My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me (2008) with the post-9/11 rhetoric of political leaders and the mainstream media in the United States during the first decade of the twenty-first century
Despite the popularity of the anti-war rhetoric of Cohen, Moore, Green Day, and other filmmakers and recording artists of the time, their overall message was mostly overshadowed by the pro-war propaganda of politicians such as Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, along with the news coverage by mainstream corporate media outlets ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News
To further understand this troubled era, this study focuses on a less frequently heard but more relevant source of anti-war rhetoric: twenty-first century South Asian American literature

Summary

Interpellation and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror

Before turning a critical eye to Khan’s memoir, it is essential to review the political rhetoric of the Bush Administration and the mainstream media that propagated its racist, imperialist agenda. In Bush’s speeches, he interpellates or hails average Americans as subjects and propagates the ideology of imperialism by appealing to the pathos of fear, racism/xenophobia, and patriotism In both his “War on Terror Speech” and his “Axis of Evil Speech,” Bush uses the fear of threatened security to persuade his audience of the existence of an omnipresent enemy. Regardless of whether the commitment to journalistic inquiry has decreased due to the pursuit of profit, a desire to propagate an imperialistic agenda, or both, mass media, in presenting a perspective that conforms to the rhetoric of the Bush administration, contributed to the interpellation of American subjects while simultaneously silencing the voices of the victims of war

The Unheard Voices of the War on Terror

Torture in Guantanamo and on the Screen

Conclusion

Findings

Works Cited