By emphasising the idea that such imagemes are discursive constructions whose semantic structure is based on binary oppositions, in a systematising article published at the turn of the millennium, ‘The Rhetoric of National Character—A Programmatic Survey’ (2000), Joep Leerssen manages to turn the scales of this (still) marginal and largely ideological approach to the literary text from the mere collection and comparison of tropes towards a more complex understanding of their compounding, of structuralist orientation. As he puts it: ‘the study of national stereotype could move beyond merely inventorying the vocabulary of national prejudice in different texts and turn to its grammar’ (2000, 271). Pursuing an overview of shifts in national prejudices—for example, the English were depicted as suicide-prone and splenetic in the eighteenth century and as phlegmatic, self-controlled, with a stiff upper lip during the next one (275)—Leerssen posits the interesting question as to what determines such shifts, and sets out to provide an answer that lies in the interplay of the binary oppositions between (the cool) North and (the warmer) South, between weak and strong, and, finally, between central and peripheral. Any given country may be regarded from the perspective of an either northern or southern counterpart (or, in the present demonstration, of an eastern or western one), which may determine contradictory characterisations. Leerssen makes an interesting observation in relation to the next category, weak versus strong, referring to Spain and its being perceived as evil (leyenda negra) while it was a great power , but given a romanticised image after its political weakening. He posits that ‘an amelioration of a given image is made possible by a decline in political power’ (277). The case of America and its perception through a European lens reveals a similar stance, only in reverse: from a romanticised image of a wasteland, of an uncivilised wilderness, to that of an absolute hegemon with domineering behaviour. This may account for American centrality today, as opposed to its much more peripheral status before the twentieth century.
What the critical study of the mental constructs of alterity (in both instances under focus here, namely the hegemonic American other as the representation of attenuated alterity , and the Muslim terrorist as the embodiment of ultimate otherness) regards as significant is the underlying attitudes that permeate the text. Roughly, these attitudes may be either positive (translating into xenophilia, cosmopolitanism, internationalisation, cultural globalisation, Americanisation , and so on), or negative (such as xenophobia , ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism ), although such a demarcation seems excessively radical: things are rarely black and white, and, even if they were, the socio-political-cultural milieu of the twenty-first century is too marked by political correctness to accept literary (or other) texts which carry explicit overtones of the latter category.
The imagological reading should then consider the extent to which the images employed may be regarded as stereotypes , and establish their role ‘either in sustaining tradition (e.g. reinforcing myths of otherness) or, by contrary, in undermining it’ (Mohor-Ivan and Praisler 2007, 50). In this context , mention should also be made of the fact that stereotyping goes hand in hand with the attitudinal patterns that follow a symbolic system. Thus, Pageaux (2000, 96–8) identifies four types of attitudes that an individual may develop in the relationship with an observed culture: mania (the tendency to consider the foreign culture as superior to the base culture ), phobia (the perception of the examined other as inferior), philia (positive judgement of the Other seen as equal, although different) and one aiming at cultural unity within national groups (Pan-Slavism, Pan-Europeanism, among others). Although useful as a guideline, this distinction between attitudes cannot be observed in an absolute manner, at least not when discussing contemporary literature , within the frame of the mingling of cultures and nationalities in a given geopolitical space. One may, nonetheless, understand the Western attitudes targeted at the Muslims as ‘phobic’, especially after 9/11. As far as the American ‘spected’ is concerned, the question is not in the least that simple, which is why the imagological approach needs to be complemented with a more complex understanding of the intercultural relations at work within the Western space. What is more, it is true that the following analyses concern the representations of otherness, but also those of selfhood, given that the discussion centres on literary works produced by American authors.
At the Heart of the Storm: America After 9/11
The question is not whether America leads in the world, but how. (Barack Obama, Address on the State of the Union, 20 January 2015)
This section discusses literary representations of the West , as symptomatic of the oppositional pair West /East , from the new historicist perspective, doubled by a few imagological considerations. One may regard the differences established between the two as ranking among the most striking in the long list of contrasts (masculinity/femininity, white/different skin colour, centre/periphery, urban/rural, activity/passivity, ruler/subject etc.), perhaps due to the fact that this opposition practically subsumes all the others —if not in fact, at least at the level of the collective mindset. Nonetheless, it needs to be stated that both West and East represent constructs, mutable in time and space, in close relation to geopolitical and economic dynamics, and that a definitive boundary between the two cannot be drawn. For example, before 1989–1990, a period that brought about a significant redesigning of the map of Europe , the West could be said to end at the Berlin Wall. The subsequent expansion of NATO and of the European Union to the East in the 2000s has displaced the border again, by incorporating some of the former communist states, thus causing, in turn, changes at the level of the mentality of these peoples, who have started considering themselves ‘Westerners’. Not long ago (2014–2015), the world witnessed the outburst of a new clash between the West and the East , determined by the timid expansion of the Occident towards the states of the former USSR (Ukraine, in particular); therefore, ‘the border’ may shift again (in either direction). However, what this process also triggers is a differentiation between the degrees of westernisation . In truth, one may assert that some are ‘more Western’ than others , that there seems to exist a ‘West of the West ’, and even a ‘most Western’ (which would be America ) and, last but not least, that the Western identity is made up of multiple conflicting identities.
Under the circumstances, the following scrutiny of some British and American literary works representative of the category of 9/11 fiction sets out from the premise that, while the West is regarded as the antagonist Other by the Islamic fundamentalists , the attacks on the WTC being an attack on the entire Western civilisation , and not just an attack on America , a (tense ) relationship between selves is also apparent at an inner level. Hence, the investigation of the extreme alterity represented by the Middle East is delayed, and focus is laid on the disparities between Americans and other Westerners (in this particular case, the British). This is not to say that America may be overlapped with ‘the self’ and the United Kingdom with ‘the Other’ , although the structure of this Chapter may be suggestive of such a distinction. Following the principles of the emerging transatlantic literary studies, the Anglo-American literary works are considered as a whole, as integrated in the broader transatlantic context outlined. The first literary productions analysed are by American authors, and the choice is supported by methodological reasons. On the one hand, America was greatly affected by the events of 9/11, and the American literary representation of the disaster at the WTC is, generally and naturally, marked by the trauma induced by an attack to one’s self. By contrast, the British 9/11 literature is detached, if not indifferent, in tone, and the reactions represented by the British writers range from a very quick recovery from the initial shock to direct accusations targeted at the Americans . In terms of trauma , the West has been shattered by the attacks on the WTC; for the British , however, they still happened to somebody else.
The American Self After 9/11
In one of the most comprehensive critical works dealing with American 9
/11 fiction, After the Fall: American Literature since 9/11, Richard Gray integrates these twenty-first century literary productions into a long tradition with a ‘recurrent rhythm in the cultural history of the United States’ (2011, 29), which actuates intellectualism, the emergence of new ideologies and literary imagination in times of crisis. Inspired by Henry James’s assertion that the Civil War made ‘the world a more complicated place that it had hitherto seemed’ (1867, qtd. Ibid.), and acknowledging the impact that the First World War had on the literature of the time (with an obvious reference to the Lost Generation), Gray draws a parallel with the attacks that hit America at the dawn of the new millennium, the most recent event of such great importance that may trigger paradigmatic shifts at the level of the national narrative:Innocence is shattered, paradise is lost, thanks to a bewildering moment, a descent into darkness, the impact of crisis. This is an old story, at least as old as the American nation. And, at this moment, in the national narrative , it has been fired into renewed life by the events of September 11, 2001 and after – the acts of terror that left nearly 3000 dead by the end of that day and the acts of both terror and the ‘war on terror’ that have accounted for hundreds of thousands more deaths. (4)
The reconfiguration of identity, as represented in contemporary American fiction , has two directions in the context of this ‘lost paradise’. On the one hand, American 9/11 fiction is a traumatic one, placing the anonymous Everyman—more or less directly affected by the attacks on the WTC —at the centre of the impossible quest for regaining personal balance after the national crisis. This, indeed, inscribes it in the tradition Gray mentions, but with a wholly novel addition: this is the first time in American literature when the self-image is that of a victim of the inexorability of history. The emphasis on average Americans and their life after 9/11 in literary works which border experimentalism, employing narrative modes pointing to the inner dimension of the mind, leaves little room for the reality outside the text to infiltrate, as if what the media brings were already too much to bear. Don DeLillo’s Falling Man has been selected from the wide array of traumatic representations of 9/11 in American literature in view of counterpointing the British-constructed image of America and its people in the twenty-first century, despite his works’ postmodernity, which may, only apparently, seem indicative of a departure from the neorealism sought for here.3 On the other hand, more rewarding in what the representation of the American societal self is concerned, and also more realistic, due to its tight relation to journalism, is the novel authored by Amy Waldman , The Submission. This literary piece, highly acclaimed and considered representative of ‘a second wave of 9/11 fiction’, one more detached and more political, despite the inherently traceable trauma, has been deemed suitable for its apparently antithetical relation to Don DeLillo’s novel, in order to de-/reconstruct the image of the American after 9/11.
Falling Man or Falling Identity?
It has become commonplace to assert that Don DeLillo had anticipated the collapse of American identity long before 9/11 (although not specifically through the symbolism which the two towers invite). After 2001, many exegetes of his works have come to the realisation that the dread of the ‘transnational forces of global capitalism and fundamentalist terrorism’ (Conte 2011, 560), present in his writings from his debut in the 1970s (Americana), and his breakthrough in the middle of the 1980s (with White Noise and Libra), and more prominently in Mao II, one of the most powerful narratives on terrorism, inspired by the seclusion of J. D. Salinger and by the fatwa that Ayatollah Khomeini issued against Salman Rushdie , may have followed this prophetic trend. In the same line of thought, particularly interesting are the observations made by Linda Kauffman and Joseph Conte: the former quotes from Mao II, in which ‘the two towers symbolized the displacement of global capitalism, beginning with their very construction’ (2008, 356), while the latter begins his 2011 article, ‘Don DeLillo’s Falling Man and the Age of Terror’ , with a motto quoted from another famous novel by DeLillo , Underworld:‘I think of it as one, not two,’ she said. ‘Even though there are clearly two towers. It’s a single entity, isn’t it?’
‘Very terrible thing but you have to look at it, I think.’
‘Yes, you have to look.’ (1997, 372)
Nonetheless, one should not invest this persistence of the imagery of the two towers with more significance than it actually has—although Conte seems to point exactly in this direction: ‘the recurring reflection on the towers in DeLillo’s writing suggests they had already assumed an iconic role in his thought that is more profound than their architectural stature or political historicity’ (2011, 561). Indeed, it is precisely this architectural stature that includes the twin towers among the symbolic representations of America as a superpower—and this may be related to DeLillo’s longing for a critique of global capitalism. Nevertheless, it must be taken into account that Don DeLillo is a novelist of the urban space, a novelist of and from New York , which is the reason one should not disregard the opinion that ‘the two office buildings were metonyms for crisis despite of the connotation of boom and prosperity that they were invested with’ (Neculai 2014, 90), and consequently that the recurrence of their image may well be the product of a ‘Manhattanite’s urban consciousness’ and a ‘literary response to this building boom and its relation with New York’s communities’ (91). In other words , the two towers represented an inescapable reality of the New York scenery, one that ‘penetrate[d] the minutest textures of everyday life’ (Wegner 2009, 50). Loathed and despised for their ugliness and for the dislocation of people’s lives and small businesses back in the 1970s, the twin towers of the WTC were, nonetheless , a symbol of the American identity, and a terrorist attack targeting them was, in fact, perceived as an attack on national identity.
A prominent idea of Mao II is that terrorism , in our times, is responsible for shifts at the level of identity, replacing the creators of culture , with whom they share the passion for plotting: ‘There is a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists . Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now the bomb-makers and gunners have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness’ (DeLillo 1991, 41). (Whether involuntarily intertextual or not, the Scottish novelist Iain Banks passes a similar remark in his 9/11 novel , Dead Air: ‘the barbarians have seized the narrative… the bad guys are writing the scripts’ (2002, 47)). To return to DeLillo , he describes terrorism again in the essay ‘In the Ruins of the Future’ as a ‘narrative that has been developing over years, only now becoming inescapable. It is our lives and minds that are occupied now’ (2001, 33). Resistance to this mental and cultural aggression should be in the form of a counter-narrative that is ‘surely not comprised of patriotic public displays, manifested in a globally-prosecuted War on Terror that has placed American occupying forces in Afghanistan and Iraq’ (Conte 2011, 567). It follows that the Western identity (altered by its accessing of the contemporary violent narratives of terrorism) has found a way to counteract this narrative, which may be an explanation for the emergence of the entire category of 9/11 fiction(s).
In light of this understanding of the reconfiguration of contemporary identities triggered by terrorism , after its brutal disruption of the glossy American life, as promoted by the discourses of the media , and interiorised as reality by their addressees, this section attempts to review Falling Man, a novel specifically addressing trauma in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, from the perspective of the auto-image of the American , coming, on the one hand, to reinforce the idea that what the discursive patterns of politics and the media provide is not truth, and that they simply beget manipulated views and mentalities of the individuals exposed to them. On the other hand, considering the structure of the novel , this discussion is inextricably connected with that which makes reference to the representation of the Muslim Other.
Falling Man has a complicated structure, especially in point of its oscillations backwards and
forwards in time: it sets out in a world of mud, rubble, smoke and ash, with the main character , Keith Neudecker, a corporate attorney, getting out alive and covered in someone else’s blood from the North Tower of the WTC and heading to his former home, where Lianne, his estranged wife, lives with their son, Justin. The plot seems then to develop chronologically, in a collective post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD ) bordering on paranoia and a quest for understanding what they had been through that affects everybody, but especially Keith:They wrote about the planes. They wrote about where they were when it happened. They wrote about people they knew who were in the towers, or nearby, and they talked about God. How could God let this happen? Where was God when this happened? […]
This is the devil. This is hell. All that fire and pain. Never mind God. This is hell. (DeLillo 2007, 60–61, henceforth FM)
Each of the three parts concludes with a short chapter focusing on the young Hammad’s becoming a suicidal terrorist , under the mentorship of Amir (portrayed as the leader of the hijackers’ team that hit the North Tower, therefore, a representation of the real Muhammad Atta). Since a thorough analysis of these sequences is to be pursued in Chap. 5, suffice to mention at this moment that, in point of structure, the three literary representations of ‘the spirit of terrorism ’, signify, at the textual level, an irruption in the natural order, similar to ‘the brutal irruption of death in direct, in real time, but also the irruption of a more-than-real death : symbolic and sacrificial death ’ (Baudrillard 2001). Interestingly , the title of the first part is ‘Bill Lawton’, a misnomer for Bin Laden (as misheard from television by some children), which may be understood either as a tendency of domestication (Americanisation), in the context of the American cultural isolation and centrality, or as a very subtle hint at the conspiracy theories which describe the attacks on the WTC as an all-American job. The literary text points out specifically that ‘some important meaning might be located in the soundings of the boy’s small error’ (FM 73), but it leaves room for speculation as to what this meaning may be.
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