Culture talk explains terrorism as flowing from cultural essence rather than economics or politics.

Evidence

Culture talk assumes that every culture has a tangible essence that defines it, and then explains politics as a consequence of that essence. Culture talk after 9/11 … explained the practice of “terrorism” as “Islamic.” “Islamic terrorism” is thus offered as both description and explanation of the events of 9/11. It is no longer the market (capitalism), nor the state (democracy), but culture (modernity) that is said to be the dividing line between those in favour of a peaceful civic existence and those inclined to terror. It is said that our world is divided between those who are modern and those who are premodern. The moderns make culture and are its masters, the premoderns are said to be but conduits. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 77

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the load-bearing definition of what culture talk does — essence → explanation — the exact analytical move the reader needs to test against Hamid’s protagonist.
• XREF: Directly relevant to The Reluctant Fundamentalist, where Changez’s own retrospective analysis is exactly about what caused 9/11 and who gets to define ‘fundamentalist’. — connects to: Radicalization discourse was built to serve counterterrorism policy, not science.; Culture cannot fully repress death terror, driving people to localize threats in fetishized evil. — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory: Implications…, 54