TERRORISM AND THE POSTMODERN NOVEL
(Lent Term, 2006)
Tutor: Robert Appelbaum
As
students of contemporary fiction we now find ourselves challenged to ask
questions that are political and social as well as literary, but we need to
learn anew how to do it. The topic
of terrorism provides a particularly clear and urgent case of the
challenge. Has literary fiction
provided us with adequate responses to the reality of terrorism in the
post-modern age? If the dominant
model emerges in the work of Don Delillo and his suggestion that there is a
profound sympathy between the terrorist and the novelist, as so many critics
have argued, what are we to say about literary terrorism or terrorist
literature in the age of a A war on terror? Does the reality of terrorism, as
authors like Roth, Le Carre, and Houllebecq suggest, express a fatal flaw in
the peaceable existence of Western civilization, or do such fictional
suggestions amount to blaming the victims, the real victims, of
irrational evil?
In this
course we will read a number of novels that are entertaining, moving, and
intelligent, novels written since 1970 that examine the phenomenon of terrorism
from a number of perspectives and with a variety of purposes. We will
also explore the theory and history of terrorism in the modern age, and discuss
the shape of postmodernity for both contemporary fiction and contemporary
violence. One presentation and weekly position papers will be required of
all students as well as final dissertations. Dissertations written at the
conclusion of the course should delve into fiction, theory, history, and,
hopefully, critical, which is to say moral, awareness all at once.
Seminar Programme
Week 1 Representing Terror: Perspectives and the
Image
Press
Clippings on Eric Rudolph (Olympic Bomber) : a
handout: also available
on-line at my proprietary web site
Bharati Mukerjee, The Management of Grief: Available in The Middleman and Other Stories, on short loan at the Library
Week 2 Assassination and Historical Hope
Don
Dellilo, Libra
Week 3 The Middle East, Part I: Western Suspense
John
Le Carre, The Little Drummer Girl
Week 4 The
Sahar
Kalifeh, Wild Thorns
Week 5 The Stockholm Syndrome (Independent
Study week)
Mary
McCarthy, Cannibals and Missionaries
Week 6 Novelists and Terrorists
Don
Delillo, Mao II
Week 7 Weatherman and the American Dream
Philip
Roth, American Pastoral
Week 8 Travesty and The Troubles
Patrick
McCabe, Breakfast on Pluto
Week 9 The Romance of Victimization
Ann
Patchett, Bel Canto
Week 10 9/11
Jean
Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism
Jacques
Derrida, Interview on Philosophy and
Terror
Michel Houllebecq, Platform
Primary
Don Delillo, Libra
John LeCarre, The Little
Drummer Girl
Sahar Khalifeh, Wild Thorns
Mary McCarthy, Cannibals and
Missionaries
Don Delillo, Mao II
Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Patrick McCabe, Breakfast on
Pluto
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy
in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida
Michel Houellebecq, Platform
Suggested Additional Primary
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons
Henry James, The Princess
Casamassima
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was
Thursday
Albert Camus, The Just
Gerry Conlon, Proved Innocent
Philip Roth, Operation Shylock
Ciaran Carson, The Star Factory
Russell Banks, Cloudsplitter
John Le Carre, Absolute Friends
Secondary
Books
Abrams, Sabrina Fuchs, Mary McCarthy: Gender, Politics,
and the Postwar Intellectual
Cobbs, John L., Understanding John le Carré
Crenshaw, Martha, and John Pimlott, eds., Encyclopaedia
of World Terrorism
Der Derian, James, Antidiplomacy : Spies, Terror, Speed,
and War
Fay,
Foertsch, Jacqueline, ed., Terrorism and the Postmodern
Novel: Studies in the Novel 36.3
Lacqueur, Walter, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the
Arms of Mass Destruction
Lewis, Bernard, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy
Terror
Martin, Gus, Understanding Terrorism : Challenges,
Perspectives, and Issues
Melchiori, Barbara Arnett, Terrorism in the Late
Victorian Novel
Sullivan, Noel, ed. Terrorism, Ideology, and Revolution
Parenti, Michael, Terrorism Trap: September 11 and
Beyond
Scanlan, Margaret, Plotting Terror: Novelists and
Terrorists in Contemporary Fiction
Simon, Jeffrey D., The Terrorist Trap:
Simon, Reeva S., The
Articles
Baker, Peter, The Terrorist as Interpreter: Mao II
in Postmodern Context, Postmodern Culture 4.2
Bragg, Melvyn, The Little Drummer Girl: An
Interview with John Le Carré, in Bold, Alan Norman, ed. The Quest for Le Carré
Briley, Ron, The Little Drummer Girl and John le
Carré: The Search for Terrorism's Root Causes, Popular Culture Review
14.2
Hantke, Steffen, God Save Us from Bourgeois Adventure: The
Figure of the Terrorist in Contemporary American Conspiracy Fiction, Studies
in the Novel 28
Harmaneh, Walid, That Tempestuous Loveliness of Terror, Literary
Research 18
Harphan, Geoffrey Galt, Symbolic Terror, Critical
Inquiry 28
Lyotard, Jean-François, Terror on the Run, in Terror
and Consensus: Vicissitudes in French Thought, ed. Jean-Joseph Goux and
Philip R. Wood
Parrish, Timothy L, The End of Identity: Philip Roth's
American Pastoral, Shofar 19.1
Rowe, John Carlos, Mao II and the War on Terrorism,
Royal, Derek Parker, Fictional Realms of Possibility:
Reimagining the Ethnic Subject in Philip Roth's American Pastoral, Studies
in American Jewish Literature 20
Simmons, Ryan, What Is a Terrorist? Contemporary Authorship, the Unabomber,
and Mao II, MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 45.3
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, Terror: A Speech after 9-11, Boundary
2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture 31.2
Whitebrook, Maureen, Reading Don DeLillo’s Mao II
as a Commentary on Twentieth-Century Politics, European Legacy 6