The “proto-child”

In The Spirit of Terrorism Jean Baudrillard described the 9/11 attacks not only as an “image-event,” but also, and consequently, as “the absolute event, the ‘mother’ of all events, the pure event uniting within itself all the events that have never taken place” (3–4, italics mine). Accordingly, all post-9/11 events can be seen as the “offspring” of this “‘mother’ of all events” and (developing the idea even further) it can be said that these numerous, uncontrollable “progeny” must include works of fiction – in fact, any creative works in every kind of artistic field devoted or reacting to the subject, as well.

Before discussing these particular “children of collapse” we are concerned with here, however, let us have a look at a work which can be seen as a “proto-child” or a literary ancestor to the post-9/11 novel. “The first suicide-bomber novel of the English language,” as we read in Terry Eagleton's Holy Terror, is Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, published in 1907. Apparently, the book “has acquired a kind of cult status as the classic novel for the post-9/11 age” (Reiss), “remains the most brilliant novelistic study of terrorism as viewed from the blood-spattered outside” (ibid.), and was “one of the three works of literature most cited in the American media” in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 (Shulevitz). A lot has been written about the classic book, and I will mention only a few things, particularly relevant to my study.