Literary-critical skepticism can single-handedly defuse mass violence.

Evidence

As David Simpson says, “What saves the Lincoln Tunnel is a moment of literary-critical scepticism of the sort that Ahmad has indeed shown before and which his teacher Shaikh Rashid has himself modelled for Ahmad despite his apparent intention to train him as a suicide bomber.… Ahmad in his final moment is unable to construe the truth of the holy book as unambiguously endorsing blowing up Jack Levy, even as he had previously resolved to blow up several hundred others who were not looking to die.” Ahmad’s critical reading leads to his “conversion.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 142

Categorization

• QUESTION: A provocation worth chasing: does Morey credit reading skill with causal power that his own anti-essentialist framework elsewhere doubts? This is the crux of whether fiction can actually contest fear.