Session 8(a): Terrorism, Eco-terrorism and Destitution

Concurrent Session 8a: Terrorism, Ecoterrorism and Destitution
Chair: Vera Profit

Post-Modern Narratives of Evil and 9/11: The Case of Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World
Scott Powers
The Department of Modern Foreign Languages, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA. USA

In the wake of the Holocaust, theorists including Arendt and Lyotard outlined a postmodern perspective on evil by reconsidering human tragedies as the products of multiple forces and historical conditions that exceed human agency. More recently, postmodern thinkers such as Tzvetan Todorov and Miguel Benasayag, in their analysis of social discourse, have demonstrated how the ways in which we think and speak about evil are themselves implicated in the genesis of events that society considers evil. But how would such a perspective on evil be expressed in fiction?
In this paper, I would identify a postmodern account of evil in Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World (2004). In this best-selling French novel, Beigbeder purports to go where the media did not dare to go: inside the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001. The novel offers a fictional rendition of the final moments of the lives of those who died in the twin towers. At the same time, the narrator, in presenting himself as Baudelaire’s progeny, provides a contemporary account of human evil.
My analysis would discuss both the novel’s themes and narrative structure. At a conceptual level, the novel undermines the dualist vision of evil, advocated by U.S. political discourse. The narrator frames his vivid description of the victims’ agony with a broader socio-political critique that undoes a series of assumed binaries between East and West, Islam and Christianity, the sacred and the secular, and ultimately good and evil. Beigbeder focuses his attention not on wicked human agents, but on the leading role of discourse on good and evil in the perpetration of human suffering. With respect to the structural level, the narrator’s use of irony and deliberate self-contradictions preclude a simplistic—“good versus evil”—interpretation of  9-11 and the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
An important conclusion that I will draw from my analysis is that in this postmodern story, the moral concept of evil does not entirely surrender to historical and rhetorical critique. Rather, evil retains its currency as Beigbeder redefines the notion for a post-9-11 ethics.

The Da Vinci Code’s success in warming up debates around its controversial issues concerning the Catholic Church and Opus Dei, or the surprised tourists in Paris complaining of wrong information given in the book about some of the locations where the action unfolds bear witness to the power of best-sellers as opinion-formers. The fact that the author, Dan Brown, decided to mix fictionalised events with real ones, even with controversial but plausible theories regarding the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, may explain why many readers have taken the book as much more than fiction. A similar technique has been used by Michael Crichton in his latest thriller, State of Fear (2004), in which he questions the validity of the theories predicting climatic change by structuring the plot around a series of acts of ecoterrorism causing natural disasters which imitate the effects of global warming, leaving scientists at the mercy of these pressure groups. In contrast to Brown, however, Michael Crichton actually appears to be serving a political agenda. State of Fear includes an “author’s message”, two appendixes and a bibliography with almost 200 references, which Crichton uses to justify his reasons for supporting the contention developed in the book, a thesis that he has also defended in public conferences. It is safe to say that State of Fear has become more than a fictional work; it has been transformed into a powerful instrument of science politization, precisely a danger against which the best-selling author warns the reader in one of the appendixes. This paper explores the way Michael Crichton makes use of the ecothriller genre to support a political agenda enthusiastically applauded –perhaps even instigated?- by the Bush administration.

The paper begins with the definitions of core concepts considered germane to the study: Gender, Destitution, Living Conditions and Older People. Undoubtedly, the experiences of both men and women are not the same throughout the life- course. The paper seeks to interrogate the gender dimensions of destitution as it affects older men and women living in Metropolitan Lagos.
A study was therefore conducted to ascertain or determine the level of destitution among older urbanites and its impacts on their living conditions vis-a – vis their access to food (balanced diet), good shelter, clothing and health care services. The study found out that the living conditions of older people in Metropolitan Lagos are essentially deplorable tending towards destitution and depressed quality of life. Factors identified for the above situations include poverty, weakening of the extended family system, frail filial piety, lack of meaningful productive activities or sustainable sources of livelihood, depressed economy and absence of comprehensive social services to complement the frail efforts of the extended family system.
Out of 155 respondents interviewed, 64.5% were found to be living in deplorable conditions, 44.5% considered themselves poor and 20.0%said they were very poor. Modernization and Activity theories of ageing will be combined with situational Constraints Theory of Poverty as explanatory tools. The paper ends with policy recommendations for government to fulfill its social contract to Nigerian people especially older members by improving their living conditions. Our contention is that older people stripped of the traditional support systems should be assisted by the government through comprehensive old age allowance given to all Nigerians aged 60 years and above irrespective of their previous employment status.