Narrating 9/11: Fantasies of State, Security, and Terrorism(A Modern Fiction Studies Book)

Contemporary fiction takes on 9/11, interrogating the global expansion of surveillance based on fantasies of US national security. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Narrating 9/11 challenges the notion that Americans have overcome the national trauma of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The volume responds to issues of war, surveillance, and the expanding security state, including the Bush Administration’s policies on preemptive war, extraordinary rendition, torture abroad, and the suspension of privacy rights and civil liberties at home. Building on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Žižek, and Donald Pease, the contributors focus on the ways in which post-9/11 narratives help make visible the fantasies that attempt to justify the ongoing state of exception and American exceptionalism. Narrating 9/11 examines a variety of contemporary narratives as they relate to the cultural construction of the neoliberal nation-state, a role that mediates the possibilities of ethnic and religious identity as well as the ability to imagine terrorism. Touching on some of the mainstays of 9/11 fiction, including Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and John Updike’s Terrorist, the book expands this particular canon by considering the work of such writers as Jess Walter, William Gibson, Lauren Groff, Ken Kalfus, Ian McEwan, Philip Roth, John le Carré, Laila Halaby, Michael Chabon, and Jarett Kobek. Narrating 9/11 pushes beyond a critical focus on domestic realism, offering chapters that examine speculative and genre fiction, postmodernism, climate change, and the evolving security state, as well as the television series Lost and the film Paradise Now.

Table of Contents:
Introduction. Fantasies of 9/11 1 john n. duvall and robert p. marzec state and corporate fantasies 1 Zero Dark Democracy 17 timothy melley 2 Fictitious Capital: Historicizing the Present in William Gibson’s “Bigend” Trilogy 40 hamilton carroll 3 Climate Change and the Evolution of the 9/11 Security State: The Fantasy of Adaptation and Ian McEwan’s Solar 70 robert p. marzec 4 Nostalgia for the Future: Temporality and Exceptionalism in Twenty-First Century American Fiction 98 aaron derosa 5 Lost in Iraq 118 alan nadel fantasies of trauma, ethnicity, and religion 6 Regarding the Pain of Self and Other: Trauma Transfer and Narrative Framing in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close 145 ilka saal 7 Strange Times to Be a Jew: Alternative History after 9/11 168 margaret scanlan 8 Arab American Citizenship in Crisis: Destabilizing Representations of Arabs and Muslims in the United States after 9/11 194 carol fadda-conrey 9 Violence and the Faithful in Post–9/11 America: Updike’s Terrorist, Islam, and the Specter of Exceptionalism 217 anna hartnell fantasies of terrorism 10 Representing the Enemy Other: Jarett Kobek’s ATTA, Postmodern Narrative, and the Architectural Unconscious 245 john n. duvall 11 Policing the Globe: State Sovereignty and the International in the Post–9/11 Crime Novel 263 andrew pepper 12 Outtakes and Outrage: The Means and Ends of Suicide Terror 284 samuel thomas Afterword: Fantasy-Work in the Post–9/11 Sphere 309 donald e. pease List of Contributors 313 Index 317 vi Contents

About the Author :
John N. Duvall is the Margaret Church Distinguished Professor of English at Purdue University. The editor of MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, he is the author of Race and White Identity in Southern Fiction: From Faulkner to Morrison. Robert P. Marzec is an associate professor of English at Purdue University. The associate editor of MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, he is the author of An Ecological and Postcolonial Study of Literature: From Daniel Defoe to Salman Rushdie.

Review :
This incisive collection is an urgent wake-up call. —Choice The idea behind Narrating 9/11 is both fascinating and timely. —Modern Philology