Language of conciliation: A reading of Joseph O’ Neill’s Netherland

Abstract

The present paper analyzes Joseph O’Neill’s
 Netherland as a narrative of conciliatory engagement with the Other despite the
 presence of an Orientalist discourse in the post- September 11 world. This
 novel depicts a Western society disoriented by the anxiety generated by the
 intensified phenomenon of terrorism after September 11. Mostly Western
 characters find themselves anxious, fearful and discomforted due to the
 ubiquitous presence of individual and collective anxiety. The manifest intent
 in the novel is to bring these characters out from their pre-September 11
 spaces of comfort into a post-September 11 world of discomfort in order to
 confront, engage and reconcile with people, events and phenomenon that have
 contributed to those discomforts. These undertakings force the characters to
 explore a whole plethora of strategies, some escapist and irrational, others
 more meaningful and productive. Like the conflict between the self and the other,
 and the West and Islam in most September 11 novels, Netherland too recognizes
 those differences. However, the distinct approach here is not to avoid, ignore
 or escape from those differences, but to look for a middle ground based on the
 principles of peaceful co-existence, mutual understanding, conciliation,
 forgiveness, humanism, tolerance and multiculturalism. The other is accorded
 recognition in an international and cosmopolitan space of less divisiveness as
 the new discourse discourages the binary divisions of nations, ethnicities,
 cultures and religions.