W-Rites of Representation: Speaking Some Truth Back to Power

Résumé

It would be a monumental error to assume that the colonial encounter
happened in the remote past and has had little bearing on the present. The
experience of [de]colonization did wound and scar “the psyches, the cultures and the
economies of the colonized”1 and the colonizer as well largely determining the lens
through which these others come to be seen. The catalystic and seismic 9/11 attacks
on the World Trade Centre shook the world at large pitting the West against Islam
and perpetuating the rhetoric that Islam is the sworn enemy of Western civilization.
Amidst such clouded judgement, the Islamophobic discourse was refueled and
pitched up to heretofore unprecedented scales. So solemn, sullen and sulky
Westerners had become it was thought that laughter was a thing of the past and the
post 9/11 world was labeled the dark age of comedy. In the winds of darkness there
blew a breeze of comic relief heaved by Muslims and ushered in by Zarqa Nawaz to
clear up the misty air.