Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T16:25:27.335Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Writing the Precarious Self in Falling Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2020

Aliette Ventéjoux
Aliette Ventéjoux*
Affiliation:
Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas, 92, rue d’Assas, 75006Paris, France. Email: aliette.ventejoux@u-paris2.fr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The terrorist attacks on American soil of 11 September 2001 have reminded people how easily they can be submitted to the will of the other. This article will analyse how literature, and more particularly post-9/11 literature, deals with a new world order where the self seems to have become subjected to terrorism, being today its potential victim rather than a subject. More precisely, how have American novelists dealt with the demise of the sovereign self after the attacks of 11 September 2001 and what is the role played by memory? Focusing on Falling Man (2007) by Don DeLillo, this article will demonstrate the importance of art and literature to fight against the demise of the sovereign self.

Type
Articles
Information
European Review , Volume 29 , Issue 3: Literature in Times of Crisis and Vulnerability , June 2021 , pp. 370 - 382
Copyright
© 2020 Academia Europaea

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amfreville, M (2009) Écrits en souffrance. Figures du trauma dans la littérature américaine. Paris: Michel Houdiard Éditeur.Google Scholar
Auster, P (2003) Random Notes – September 11, 2001–4:00 PM. Collected Prose. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Ballenger, JF (2006) Self, Senility, and Alzheimer’s Disease in Modern America. A History. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Boxall, P (2013) Twenty-First-Century Fiction. A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, J (2006) Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Butler, J (2010) Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London: Verso.Google Scholar
Caruth, C (1996) Unclaimed Experience. Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Däwes, B (2011) Ground Zero Fiction: History, Memory and Representation in the American 9/11 Novel. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter American Studies.Google Scholar
DeLillo, D (2001) In the ruins of the future: reflections on terror and loss in the shadow of September. Harper’s, December, pp. 33–40.Google Scholar
DeLillo, D (2007) Falling Man. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Derrida, J (1981) Disssemination. London: The Athlone Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duvall, J (2011) Witnessing trauma: Falling Man and performance art. In Olster, S (ed.), Don DeLillo, Mao II, Underworld, Falling Man, New York: Continuum Publishing, pp. 152–168.Google Scholar
Ferguson, RA (2013) Alone in America: The Stories that Matter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foer, JS (2005) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Frost, L (2008) Still life. 9/11’s falling bodies. In Keniston, A and Follansbee Quinn, J (eds). Literature after 9/11. New York: Routledge, pp. 180–206.Google Scholar
Ganteau, JM and Onega, S (eds) (2017) Victimhood and Vulnerability in 21st Century Fiction. New York and London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henke, S (1998) Shattered Subjects. Trauma and Testimony in Women’s Life-Writing. New York: St Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Holloway, D (2008) Cultures of the War on Terror. Empire, Ideology, and the Remaking of 9/11. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harack, K (2013) Embedded and embodied memories: body, space and time in Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Falling Man . Contemporary Literature 54(2), pp. 303–336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Junod, T (2003) The Falling Man. Esquire Classic, September. Available at: https://classics.esquire.com/the-falling-man (accessed 6 May 2019).Google Scholar
Kauffman, LS (2010) The wake of terror: Don DeLillo’s ‘In the Ruins of the Future,’ ‘Baader-Meinhof,’ and Falling Man . In Schneck, P. and Schweighauser, P. (eds), Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction. Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo. New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 19–39.Google Scholar
Keniston, A and Quinn, JF (2008) Literature after 9/11. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
LaCapra, D (2001) Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Leps, MC (2010) Falling Man: performing fiction. In Schneck, P and Schweighauser, P (eds), Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction. Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo. New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 184–203.Google Scholar
Onega, S and Ganteau, JM (2017) Introduction. In Ganteau, JM and Onega, S (eds), Victimhood and Vulnerability in 21st Century Fiction. New York and Oxon: Routledge, pp. 1–18.Google Scholar
Pennebaker, JW (1992) Opening Up: The Healing Power of Confiding in Others. New York: Avon.Google Scholar
The Oxford English Dictionary (2015) Online edition. Available at: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/224872?redirectedFrom=vulnerable#eid (accessed 25 March 2015).Google Scholar
Versluys, K (2009) Out of the Blue: September 11 and the Novel. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar