To enter the skin of another: The body in 9/11 literature
Abstract
To Enter the Skin of Another: The Body and 9/11 Literature utilizes 9/11 as a critical lens through which to view how current modes of narrative form and style in the contemporary novel operate in literary discussions concerning September 11, 2001. In analyzing the role of bodies in fictional narratives responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, I argue that in these texts physical bodies are employed as techniques of resistance against what became known as the event "9/11." Resisting narrative as a universal metacode, this dissertation looks at specific texts that address 9/11 and examines how structure, narrative, and fictive bodies in these works attempt to recreate a temporal construct of 9/11 as event. Although I offer close readings of six novels (one graphic) published during the decade after 9/11, my argument is not tied to a specific corpus of literature. Instead, my purpose in engaging in this type of study is to open up a new way of looking at literature written in response to September 11, 2001, as well as to suggest a method of approaching literature that is now in production "after 9/11." ^ While I draw on narratological theories in the development of my argument, I am careful not to fall into traps of predictive graphs or a distinctive narratology. Rather, I add to existing post-classical narratological discussions by raising questions of form, structure, and aesthetics in an effort to show how narrative devices—particularly in relation to the body—work given dislocations of the personal and political as a result of globalization and brought to dramatic prominence on the morning of September 11, 2001. As case studies, my chapters offer readings of Frédéric Beigbeder's Windows on the World (2003), Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers (2004), Claire Tristram's After (2004), Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), Don DeLillo's Falling Man (2007), and Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). ^
Subject Area
Literature, Modern|Literature, American
Recommended Citation
Jenn Brandt,
"To enter the skin of another: The body in 9/11 literature"
(2012).
Dissertations and Master's Theses (Campus Access).
Paper AAI3503120.
http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dissertations/AAI3503120