THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’ OR WAR FOR TERROR IN IRAQ: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF HASSAN BLASIM’S SHORT STORIES

Abstract

This study carries out the textual analysis of Hassan Blasim’s selected short stories to see the ways, in which the US military intervention in Iraq, (in) famously called as ‘the War on Terror’, results in creating terror, instead of eliminating it. The theoretical underpinnings used for the research have been borrowed from Robert J. C. Young’s study on terror effects. The study reveals that terror causes a psychological trauma within individuals. It inhabits the individuals and
affects their ways of thinking. This study highlights the impact of the so-called war on terror and brings forth the role of cultural productions which record the debilitating aftermaths of such wars. This research underscores the value of literary texts, which, through such portrayals record the horrors of wars in a bid to to make them part of the cultural memory of the people.