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Cultural Melancholia: US Trauma Discourses Before and After 9/11
Series: - Costerus New Series Online, Volume: 212
- Costerus New Series, Volume: 212
Author:
In Cultural Melancholia: US Trauma Discourses Before and After 9/11, Christina Cavedon frames her examination of 9/11 fiction, especially Jay McInerney’s The Good Life and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, with a thorough discussion of what US reactions to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 disclose about American culture. Offering a comparative reading of pre- and post-9/11 literary, public, and academic discourses, she deconstructs the still commonly held belief that cultural repercussions of the attacks primarily testify to a cultural trauma in the wake of the collectively witnessed media event. She innovatively re-interprets discourses to be symptomatic of a malaise which had afflicted American culture already prior to 9/11 and can best be approached with melancholia as an analytical concept.
Dr. Christina Cavedon works as research project coordinator at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and is a self-employed translator, editor, and research manager. She has a background in English Literature and Linguistics, Film Studies, and Art History.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
THEORIZATIONS OF MELANCHOLIA
CHAPTER 2
TRAUMA STUDIES IN THE MEDICO-PSYCHIATRIC FIELD
CHAPTER 3
THEORIZATIONS OF CULTURAL TRAUMA IN RELATION TO CULTURAL MELANCHOLIA
CHAPTER 4
CULTURAL NARRATIVES ACTIVATED BY THE 9/11 ATTACKS
CHAPTER 5
WHITE MIDDLE CLASS MELANCHOLIA IN JAY MCINERNEY’S FICTION
CHAPTER 6
POSTMODERN MELANCHOLIA AND THE FANTASY OF THE TUCHÉ IN DON DELILLO’S PRE-9/11 NOVELS
CHAPTER 7
FALLING MAN’S ESCAPE INTO HYPERREALITY
CONCLUSION
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
THEORIZATIONS OF MELANCHOLIA
CHAPTER 2
TRAUMA STUDIES IN THE MEDICO-PSYCHIATRIC FIELD
CHAPTER 3
THEORIZATIONS OF CULTURAL TRAUMA IN RELATION TO CULTURAL MELANCHOLIA
CHAPTER 4
CULTURAL NARRATIVES ACTIVATED BY THE 9/11 ATTACKS
CHAPTER 5
WHITE MIDDLE CLASS MELANCHOLIA IN JAY MCINERNEY’S FICTION
CHAPTER 6
POSTMODERN MELANCHOLIA AND THE FANTASY OF THE TUCHÉ IN DON DELILLO’S PRE-9/11 NOVELS
CHAPTER 7
FALLING MAN’S ESCAPE INTO HYPERREALITY
CONCLUSION
INDEX
Scholars, critics, and a general public interested in the ways in which interpretations of 9/11’s cultural repercussions differ when either applying trauma or melancholia as an analytical concept.