László Munteán Phantomogenic Ekphrasis:Traumatizing Images in Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man
1Introduction
The distressingsight of people jumpingorfalling out of the World Trade Center has become an integralpart of our collective imaginary of 9/11. Photographs cap- turing their jump and subsequent fall into the abyss have burned into our mem- ories. Although such traumatizing images werequicklytaken out of circulation in print media, they have had along afterlife on the Internet and in the arts. In the realm of literature, anumber of texts,especiallynovels, have addressed 9/11’sfalling bodies, or “jumpers,” as they werealsocalled:Art Spiegelman’s In the ShadowofNoTowers (2004), Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World (2004), Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007) are perhaps the best-known. Mi- chael Cunningham’s Specimen Days (2005), although rarelydiscussed as a9/11 novel, and even less so in relation to the falling bodies, alsoevokes images of the falling people, albeit differentlyfrom these novels. This chapter compares Cunningham’sand DeLillo’snovels on the basis of the techniques they employ to represent images of the 9/11 jumpers. The notionofekphrasis will serveasalens through which to comparethe two novels. An ancientrhetoricaltool for describing visual images through words, ekphrasis has been defined and applied in avariety of ways (Hagstrum 1958;Krieger 1967; Heffernan 1993; Wagner 1996). Most significantlyfor my purposes in this chapter,W.J.T.Mitchell(1994) distinguishesthreemoments of ekphrasis: indifference,hope, and fear,each of which describes the writer’s emotional disposition towards the image/text dialectic. After discussing the problematic relationship between imageand text in relation to photographs of the jumpers,Iuse Mitchell’sterminologytolookatekphrasis as ameans of ver- balizing terrorizing images. Subsequently,Iintroduce the term “phantomogenic ekphrasis” to examine how Specimen Days and Falling Man approximate images of the 9/11 jumpers.
OpenAccess. ©2020László Munteán, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110693959-006 86 László Munteán
2Falling and jumping
Emphasizing photography’ssignificant role in the public response to the terrorist attacks, Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett (2003:13) described 9/11 as the ultimate “Kodakmoment.” Accordingly, visual representations of the traumatic experi- ence of 9/11 have raised substantial scholarlyattention in the past nine years with the works of Marianne Hirsch (2003,2004), E. Ann Kaplan (2003), Barbie Zelizer (2002),and Rob Kroes (2007) defining the main paths of inquiry.Images of the jumpers,however,attest to aparticular category within the photographic archive of 9/11.They present akind of horror that differs from the sight of carn- age. While the hero-cult of the victims obviouslyserves the purpose of translat- ing trauma into anarrative,whereby loss gains meaningasanact of sacrifice (as the term “hero” suggests),¹ the onlydeaths that involved agency on the part of the victims werethoseofthe firefighters who were killed in the collapse and the people who jumped out of the towers to escape death by fire. This latter form of intentionality,however,would not pass smoothlyasheroism. The terro- rizing forceofthese images lies not so much in their “graphic” content as in their potential to be perceivedasaconflation of incongruent narrative schemes. Frank van Vree (2010:276)calls these images “groundingimages” because they “give proof of and epitomize the atrocious tragedyinits barest form, but as such they are – also in this respect –‘indigestible,’ not letting themselves be absorbed by astory that takes the viewer away” (278). These images’ indiges- tibility is underscored by the crisis of languageposed by their description in words. Forasmuch as they depict falling bodies, they are also imbued with the act of jumping that precededtheir fall. It is thus not merelythese people’s deaths that the viewer is compelled to imagine, but also the decision thatren- ders theirfall aresultofavoluntary act: suicide. Givenboth the hopelessness of the situation in the burningtowers as well as the stigma attributed to the word “suicide”–not to mention, as LauraFrost reminds us, the term’sconso- nance with “the other suicides of that day, the hijackers” (2008:188) – this inter- pretation is, of course, highlyproblematic. As JoanneFaulkner contends in rela- tion to Richard Drew’sphotograph of the “Falling Man,” the image “reveals and embodies atraumatic horror,difficult to encounter: the horror of choosing the means of one’sown particulardeath in the face of aless certain but more pro- tracted demise at the handsofanother” (2008:68).
As JürgenHabermas remarkedinthe wakeof9/11: “But whydothey need to be called heroes? Perhapsthis word has different connotations in American English than it does in German” (quot- ed in Simpson 2006:viii). Phantomogenic Ekphrasis 87
Simultaneously, however,our contextual knowledge of the hopeless situa- tion inside the buildingscancels out the narrative of suicide. Used synonymous- ly,the terms “jumpers” and “falling people” are pitted against each other once consideringtheirconnotations. Frost (2008) registers this crisis of signification in the context of the burgeoning glorification of the victims in the wake of 9/ 11. She contends that
[b]oth accounts involveanimposition of an explanatory narrative upon the falling people: “These people wereforcedout” or “They were choosingtodie”.Unlike the deaths of pas- sengers on United 93, which sources such as The9/11 Commission Report, A&E’sdrama Flight 93, and the film United 93 narrated as aproactive deed of heroism, the falling people present acatch-22.Ifthey were victims of horrendous circumstances, driventoact out of blind instinct,then their story is one of pureloss,nightmare, passivity,victimhood. If they had some degree of agency, then there is apossibilityofheroism, but also an excru- ciatingchoice to jump or to burn. […]The falling bodies have been seen, but they have not been understood; and their representations,bynews sources and artistic forms alike, sug- gests ageneral desire that they remainbeyond the reaches of understanding.(188–189)
To extend Frost’sargument,these “explanatory narratives” are not merelyim- posed for the sake of “understanding” but it is by virtue of these narratives that the falling people are produced as subjects in discourse. In this sense, the indigestibility of these visual representations lies, at least in part,with the binary opposition of “falling” vs. “jumping.”
3 “Do youremember thisphotograph?”:Trauma and ekphrasis
If ekphrasis consists in the translation of visual images into words, the fall/jump binary marks alack of abetter word, acrisis of semiosis, which manifests itself in the inability of languageasameans of description. Although the photographs themselvesare nothing more than representations of events, it is through lan- guagethat they are invested with meaning.Once words falter in describing them, they occupy ablind spot of meaning,aterrain of semiotic indigestibility, which is keytothe structure of trauma.Trauma, as Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (1992: 102) contend, is an “event without areferent” which the traumatized subjectunwillingly relivesinvarious forms of reenactment.The immediacyand inaccessibilityofthe traumatic imprint is, as CathyCaruth suggests, inherently paradoxical insofar as “the greatest confrontation with reality mayalso occur as an absolute numbing to it,that immediacy,paradoxicallyenough, maytake the form of belatedness” (1995:6). One mayrightfullyassume that this sense 88 László Munteán of belatedness or deferral jeopardizes the potential of ekphrasis as adescriptive tool. However,such adeferral of meaning concomitant with the processoftrans- lation from one mediuminto another is central to the ekphrastic act.The differ- ence between the medial qualities of words and images always renders the for- mer belated or deferred vis-à-vis the latter. “Words can ‘cite,’” W. J. T. Mitchell writes, “but never ‘sight’ their objects” (1994: 152). And citation, we mayadd, is aperformative act that not onlydescribes but also produces its object. Mitchell identifies three moments of ekphrasis, each marking an affective disposition towards the image/worddialectic. He calls the first phase “ekphras- tic indifference,” which is predicatedonthe impossibility of ekphrasis. “Averbal representation,” Mitchellcontends, “cannot represent – that is, make present – its object in the same wayavisual representation can. It mayrefertoanobject, describeit, invoke it,but it can never bring its visual presencebefore us in the waypictures do” (152). This phase is followed by “ekphrastic hope” when “the impossibility of ekphrasis is overcome in imagination or metaphor,when we dis- cover a ‘sense’ in which languagecan do what so manywriters wanted to do: ‘to make us see’” (152). As aresult, “[t]he estrangement of the image/text divisionis overcome, and asutured, synthetic form, averbal icon or imagetext,arises in its place” (154).Whereas ekphrastic indifferencedwells on difference, ekphrastic hope is fueledbythe imagination, which trustfully embraces the representation- al power of words. This moment is, in turn, undercut by the third phase, which Mitchell calls “ekphrastic fear”:
the moment of resistance or counterdesire that occurs when we sense that the difference between the verbal and visual representation might collapse and the figurative,imaginary desire of ekphrasis might be realized literallyand actually. […]Itisthe moment in aesthet- ics when the difference between verbal and visual mediation becomes amoral, aesthetic imperative rather than (as in the first, “indifferent” phase of ekphrasis) anatural fact that can be relied on. (154)
Thus, this third moment of ekphrasis consists in the realization that, ultimately, both visual and verbal representations are nothing more than representations, and the ontological and hierarchical differencebetween them is arbitrary. Associated Press photographerRichard Drew’siconic imageof“Falling Man” reveals apeculiar dimension of ekphrastic fear.Showing aman falling headfirst with the vertical girders of the towers behind him, Drew’sphotograph was not onlytrimmedtomeet the aesthetic criterion of symmetry but,when it appeared in the September 12,2001 issue of the New York Times, it was accom- panied by the following caption: “Aperson falls headfirst after jumpingfrom the north tower of the World Trade Center.Itwas ahorrific sight that was repeatedin the moments after the planesstruck the towers” (Kleinfield 2001:A7). By virtue Phantomogenic Ekphrasis 89 of explaining what the photograph depicts, the captionexpands the temporal horizon of the imageand transforms it into aheadfirst fall. Forevenifthe man never reallyfell headfirst (except for afraction of asecond), he is made to do so by the caption. Thus, both imageand text function as performatives that produce, rather than describe, the man’sfall as a headfirst fall. The tabooingofDrew’sphotograph reveals, however,thatthe realization of the illusory nature of the photograph playedlittle role in its perception by the general public. Rather,the terrorizing forceofthe imagehad moretodowith its perceivedindexicality or what Roland Barthes describes as “this has been” in his work Camera Lucida (1993: 96). In this relation, ekphrasticfear gains a new dimension: how to write about images that defy description?Whereas Mitchell bases his three phases of ekphrasis on the radio program Boband Ray,inwhich listeners had to imagine Bob’sphotographs of his summer vaca- tion on the basis of his conversation about them with Ray, the caption to Drew’sphotograph in the New York Times is predicated on readers’ exposure to the imageasthey open the newspaper.The imageisnot to be imagined, but seen. Consequently, the caption’srelation to the imageisinformed by the photo’straumatizingforce, which lends an ethical dimensiontoekphrasis. The efforts of two journalists to trace the identity of the man in Drew’sphoto further illustrate this dimension.Tom Junod, one of the journalists, describes Falling Man in terms of the Unknown Soldier and designates Drew’sphotograph as an unmarked grave(2003:199). While instigating bearing witness to the tabooed photographasanethical imperative,Junod’sekphrasis constitutes a metaphor,which mitigatesthe traumatizing power of the imagethrough its con- textualization within familiar narrativesofwar,sacrifice, and heroism (see Mun- teán 2013). Junod begins his article by asking, “Do youremember this photo- graph?” (2003:177). This question is significant in the sense that it renders imagination an act of memory.The article elicits the photograph as atabooed relic of 9/11 and demands that readersbear witness to it.Ifekphrastic hope relies on the power of the imagination, in the case of “Falling Man,” as well as in other images of the falling bodies, hope consists in the act of recollection more than in imagination. Thismnemonic gesture is key to both Cunningham’sand DeLillo’s novels, to which Iturn next.
4 “Faint but discernible”: Specimen Days
Caleb Cain, areviewer of Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days,describes the three tales thatmake up the novel as three interlocking “novellas”:aghost story (“In the Machine”), adetective story (“The Children’sCrusade”), and asci- 90 László Munteán ence fiction story (“Like Beauty”)(Cain 2005:n.p.). As aform-within-a-form, each novella is built up of recurringimages thatintersect through multiple intra- textual relations in the novel as awhole. Most conspicuously, following in the vein of Cunningham’searlier bestseller, TheHours (1998),the novellas in Speci- men Days are interlocked by threecharacters that appear and reappear in vari- ous disguises and timeframes, with Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855) weav- ing them together as an overarchingintertext. At first glance, the novel’srelevance to 9/11 is most obviouslyindicated by the second story, “The Children’sCrusade,” set in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks when the towers’ ruins werestill visible at Ground Zero. This historicalallusion, however,isinserted into afictional world of teenage sui- cide terrorists who, inspired by Leaves of Grass, randomly blow up people and themselvesinthe act of aloving embrace. Instead of limiting my discussion to the scope of this second novella, Iwill focus on the first one, “In the Machine,” set about ahundred years earlier,inturn-of-the-century Lower Manhattan. The protagonist of this story is Lucas, a12-year-old Irish boy traumatized by the death of his brother Simon in an industrial accident. Nicolas Abraham’s(1987) notion of the phantom is particularlyuseful to ex- plore the dynamics of ekphrasis at work in the first two novellas of Specimen Days. Phantoms,Abraham contends, are secreted traumas passed on within fam- ilies from generation to generation in the form of verbal traces thatindicate the phantom’sincessant presenceinthe psyche of the traumatized person. “What haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others” (287), secrets thathavenot been verbalized. Thus, the phantom embodies secret- ed traumas and is sustained by what Abraham calls “phantomogenic words [that] become travesties and can be acted out or expressed in phobias of all kinds (such as impulsephobia), obsessions, restricted phantasmagorias…” (292).Inwhat follows, Iwill demonstrate how such phantomogenic words con- stitute ekphrasticconstellations that recall 9/11’sfalling bodies. Lucas’scompulsion to recitelines from Leaves of Grass is more thanmere fascination with Whitman’spoetry: “He hadn’tmeanttospeak as the book.He never did, but when he was excited he couldn’thelp himself” (Cunningham 2005:4). Indeed, when he quotesWhitman, he does so in the form of an uncon- trollable speaking fit.Especiallyinsituations wherehecannotfind the right words to express himself, Whitman’spoem, which he simplycalls “the book,” speaksthrough him. Forinstance,uttered as asentence, the Whitman line “Every atom belongingtomeasgood belongstoyou” (5) serves him well to ex- press what remains unspeakable to him: his adoration for his dead brother’s fiancée Catherine.His speaking in fits, therefore, has adouble meaning.On the one hand,the word “fit” refers to his inability to control “his Whitman,” Phantomogenic Ekphrasis 91 while on the other hand,italso denotes his ability to applyWhitman fittingly, albeit unwittingly. Upon presentingCatherinewith abowl to express his lovefor her,Lucas ut- ters two Whitman lines in which Catherine “recognizes” Simon’svoice address- ing her:
He said, “The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the bigwheel.” […] “The prostitutedraggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck. The nine months’ gone is in the parturition chamber,her faintness and pains areadvanc- ing.” Catherine paused. She looked at him with anew recognition. “What did yousay?” He didn’tknow.She had never beforeseemed to hear him when he spokeasthe book. “Lucas,please repeat what youjust said.” “I’ve forgotten.” “Youspokeofaspinning-girl. Youspokeofabride, and … aprostitute. And awoman about to give birth.” “It was the book.” “But whydid yousay it?” “The words come through me. Inever know.” She leaned closer,gazinginto his face as if words were written there, faint but discern- ible, difficulttoread. (Cunningham2005:54–55)
The “new recognition” that Lucas’sutterance elicits is, in fact,the uncannyrec- ognition of the self in the other.Byunknowingly speaking in afit,Lucas per- forms atext that “fits” Catherine’sown trauma. His speakingfit consequently becomes an interfacefor Catherine to confront her own repressed trauma.In Abraham’sterms,Lucas acts likea“ventriloquist” (1987: 290), avoice articulat- ing not onlyWhitman but Catherine as well. As aresult, Catherine collapses and discloses to Lucas what she perceivesasher complicity in Simon’sdeath: “‘Itold your brother he must marry me. Idon’tknow if the child is his. It probablyisn’t. But Simon was willing.[…]Isuspect.Hehad his accident because he was un- happy.Hemay have been so distracted by the thought of our weddingthat he allowed it to happen’” (Cunningham 2005:69). This mutedtrauma lies in Cath- erine’shaunting suspicion of her ownresponsibility for Simon’sdeath – areal- ization of guilt that informs her understanding of Lucas’swords. Iwant to arguethat Catherine’sreadingofLucas also teaches us, readers of Cunningham’snovel, how to read the text at hand. In the sameway that the words “spinninggirl,”“prostitute,”“nine months,” and “bride” are (mis)read by Catherine and construed in her reading as reverberations of her own complic- ity in Simon’sdeath, Specimen Days presents us with words “faint but discerni- 92 László Munteán ble” exposing the phantomogenic contours of 9/11’sfalling bodies in the form of aphantomogenic ekphrasis. In order to identify these contours, let me focus on two scenes, one that concludes “In the Machine” and one in “The Children’sCru- sade.” To prevent Catherine from going to work, Lucas self-mutilatesbyallowing his hand to be devoured by the machine so that Catherine willtakehim to the hospital. Waiting for treatment with the girl at his side, he suddenlysuccumbs to the pull of an irresistible drive and, with his mangled hand soaking in blood, dashes out of the hospital and runs to the sitewhereCatherine’swork- place, the Mannahatta Company, is alreadyablaze. Cunningham’sdescription of the fire at the fictitious Mannahatta Company uncannilyresembles the historical event of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25,1911, which took the livesof146 female garment workers, manyof whom jumped to their deaths from the topfloors of the building(vonDrehle 2003:152–156). Ascene in the second novella, “The Children’sCrusade,” further substantiates the connection between the fictitious and the historic buildings. In it,the police psychologist Cat sets up an interview with aWhitman specialist at New York University, the present-day owner of what usedtobethe Triangle Shirt- waist Factory.Upon her entrance to the building, the narration gestures toward a historical reality outside the text (the NYU building is indeed identical to the old Triangle Factory), through the textual coordinates of the horrific fire at the Man- nahattaCompany:
One of these buildings,Cat had never been quitesurewhich,had been that sweatshop, where the fire was.She knew the story onlyvaguely – the exits had been blocked to keep the workers from sneakingout early. Something like that.There’dbeen afire,and all those women were trapped inside. Some of them had jumped. From one of these build- ings – was it the one she was entering? – women with their dresses on fire had fallen, had hit this pavement right here or the pavement just down the street. Now it was all NYU.(Cun- ningham2005:156)
Focalized through Cat,Cunningham’sdescription ekphrasticallyevokes photo- graphs of dead women lying on the pavement at the foot of the building,though it is the story,not the images per se, that Cat “vaguely” recalls. There is, however,another ekphrastic gesture that is even less direct than the abovereference to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.The NYUbuildingoffers an intratextual gatewayfor the reader to “recognize” Cat as Catherine and retro- actively “re-read” the fire of the Mannahatta Companynot onlyinterms of the disaster of the Triangle catastrophe, but also in terms of 9/11.Inthis relation, Lu- cas’sapocalyptic vision of the “unspeakable beauty” (Cunningham 2005:101) of the catastrophe at the MannahattaCompanyrecalls the symmetry of the “Falling Man” photograph. In the same waythat the “words [that] come through” Lucas Phantomogenic Ekphrasis 93 allowed Catherine to face up to her owntrauma, so does Catherine’sreadingof Lucas’swords give us amodel for readingCunningham’snovel as amnemonic device that evokes 9/11’sfalling bodies in terms of the Mannahatta/Triangle cat- astrophe. The type of ekphrasis at work in Specimen Days is essentiallydifferent from Junod’sapplication of the metaphor of the Unknown Soldier.Here, ekphrastic hope is anchored on readers’ familiarity with images of the falling bodies so that they can flash up as aphantom, in Abraham’ssense, from within the de- scription of another catastrophe. The following passagefurther illustrates the mechanism of this phantomogenic ekphrasis. Witnessing the building on fire, Lucas looks up at one of the workers:
The woman stood in the window,holdingtoits frame. Herblueskirt billowed. The square of brilliant orangemade of her abluesilhouette, fragile and precise. She was like agoddess of the fire, come to her platform to tell those gatheredbelow what the fire meant,what it wanted of them. From so far away,her face was indistinct. She turned her head to look back intothe room,asifsomeone had called to her.She was radiant and terrifying. She listened to somethingthe fire told her. She jumped. […] The woman’sskirt rosearound her as she fell. She lifted her arms,asiftotake hold of invisible hands that reached for her. When she struck the pavement,she disappeared. She’dbeen awoman in midair,she’d been the floweringofher skirt,and then in an instant she was onlythe dress,puddle on the cobblestones,still liftingslightlyatits edgesasifitlived on. (Cunningham 2005:98)
Another passageofthe sameevent yields an even more distressingconfiguration of the dilemma of aesthetics in Drew’sphotograph. As Lucas catches sight of an- other woman justabout to jump out of the building,hevisualizes her fall as flight:
She looked down. She looked at Lucas. […] He returned her gaze.Hecould do nothingelse. His heart ragedand burned, full of its own fire.[…]She said (though she did not speak in words),Weare this now.Wewere weary and put-upon, we livedintinyrooms, we atecandyinsecret,but now we areradiant and glorious. We arenolonger anyone. We arepart of somethingvaster and moremarvelous than the livingcan imagine. […] The fire woman spread her wings and flew. […]Hesaw the woman cross the sky.[…]Heknew that his heart had stopped. He want- ed to say, Iamlarge,Icontain multitudes.Iam in the grass under your feet.(100 –101) 94 László Munteán
Cognizant of Junod’s2003 article, it is difficult not to read this passageasa phantomogenic text that evokes the composed posture of the Falling Man in Drew’sphotograph. “Although he has not chosen his fate,” Junod writes, “he ap- pears to have,inhis last instants of life, embraced it.Ifhewerenot falling,he might very well be flying.[…]Some people who look at the picture see stoicism, willpower,aportrait of resignation; others see something else – something dis- cordant and terrible: freedom” (Junod 2003:177). What Lucas perceivesasan “unspeakable beauty” (Cunningham 2005:101) once he visualizes the woman’s fall as flight,uncannily dovetails with the “terrible freedom” suffused with the unsettling aporia of jumpingand falling,inJunod’sdescription of Drew’sphoto- graph (Junod 2003:177). While the imageofthe Unknown Soldier in Junod’sarticle uses ekphrasis as ameans of healing, Cunningham’stext constitutes acounter-narrative of trauma insofar as it evokes,rather thandescribes, the falling bodies of 9/11. Cunning- ham’sevocation of the Mannahatta/Triangle catastrophe is not to contextualize “Falling Man”;onthe contrary,itfunctions as aphantomogenic text that be- guiles informed readers into recallingthe jumpers.
5 “Died by his own hand”: Falling Man
Inflating “Falling Man” into an overarchingimageemerging from the open wound of 9/11,Don DeLillo’s FallingMan settlesdeep into the void thatCunning- ham’s Specimen Days pries open. Instead of evoking the falling bodies of 9/11 as an emphatic absenceemanating from the iconographyofanother event, Falling Man features the mysterious performance artistDavid Janiak, who mimics the pose of the man in Richard Drew’sphotographbyattaching himself to aharness and executing jumps at various locations in the city.LikeLucas in Specimen Days,Janiak, known as the Falling Man, “speaks” phantomogenic words that “point to agap,that is, to the unspeakable” (Abraham 1987: 290). Pierre Nora(1989)defines lieux de mémoire as sites that emerge out of acom- munal deliberation to “create archives, maintain anniversaries, organize celebra- tions, pronounceeulogies,and notarize bills because such activities no longer occur naturally.” These sites are significant because “[w]e buttress our identities upon such bastions…” (12). In contrast,aswehaveseen, Drew’sphotograph of- fers afigure thatiscollectivelywilled away but nevertheless prevails as a “groundingimage” (van Vree 2010:276), leaving an indelible mark in the mem- ory of thosewho have seen it.With atwist on Nora’sterm, one can arguethat “Falling Man” is at the very least acounter-site of memory in the sense that it obstructs identification (both by relating to the photograph and relatingthe pho- Phantomogenic Ekphrasis 95 tograph as arepresentation of aparticularact by aparticularperson). Paradoxi- cally, it asserts itself as asite by means of refusingtobeidentified as asite of memory in Nora’ssense. Janiak’srepeated performances in public spaces attest to an embodied voice of acollectivelyrepressed trauma that,asaphantomogen- ic performance, wreaks havocinthe city.Bychoreographicallymimicking the pose of Drew’s “Falling Man,” Janiak buildsathree-dimensional model of the photograph every time he executes ajump. Whydoes he do this?And whydoes he choose this particular photograph? Once the novel’sfemale protagonist Lianne catches sight of the artistdangling on his harness at Grand Central Station, she recognizes the “original” of Janiak’s model: “There was the awful openness of it,something we’dnot seen, the single falling figurethat trails acollective dread, bodycome down among us all” (De- Lillo 2007:33). Janiak not onlyreplicates the “original” but alsoactivates and re- configures the public space in which he situates his model. In so doing,onlook- ers are encapsulated in adiorama in which they themselvesare made to bear witness to afamiliar but repressed aspect of 9/11 through Janiak’smediation. On one occasion, he performs at the subwaystation at 125th Street.Lianne sees him standingstill, preparingfor his jump, and ponders his purpose:
She thought of the passengers. The train would bust out of the tunnel south of here and then begin to slow down, approachingthe station at 125th Street,three-quarters of amile ahead. It would pass and he would jump. Therewould be those aboard whosee him stand- ing and those whosee him jump,all jarredout of their reveries or their newspapers or mut- teringstunned into their cell phones.These people had not seen him attach the safety har- ness. They would onlysee him fall out of sight.Then, she thought, the ones already speakinginto phones,the others groping for phones,all would try to describe what they’ve seen or what others nearby have seen and arenow tryingtodescribe to them. (164–165)
In line with the dazzling textureofDrew’sphotograph, in which the Falling Man paradoxicallyconstitutes the onlyfixed point of reference, here Janiak’sperfor- mance renders the fall asequence of still images framedbythe windows of the subway. As such, his performance reenacts the dazzling effect of Drew’sse- quence suspended by the well-known frame. In aparadoxical fashion, while his poseiscontrolled, the passengers catchingsight of him are made to “fall” as they continue their ride irreversibly to the next stop. The setting,inthis case, the subway, is thus ascreen that Janiak fullyincorporates in his model: by wayofinscribing himself into public space as aperformer, his performance phantomogenicallyputs Drew’stabooed imagebackinto circulation. One might be tempted to suggest,asKristiaan Versluys (2009:23) has, that in DeLillo’snovel, Janiak stands in “for the people who had no choice but to submit to their fate.” However,Iwould like to suggest that Lianne’sfixation on the work 96 László Munteán of the performance artistdemonstrates that,rather,what he stands in for is the ambiguity and uncertainty surroundingtheir choice to take the fall. In Lianne’s eyes, the “flash” of the performance compels her to recall amemory predating9/ 11. Forher,Janiak’sjump is an embodied yethollow cipher for the suicide of her own father.BywatchingJaniak’sperformance of Drew’sphotograph, Lianne is visually confronted with her own silenced trauma in much the same waythat Catherinereads herself in Lucas’sWhitman lines in Cunningham’s Specimen Days. Upon witnessinghis jump at 125th Street,Lianne’sponderingsare conveyed in freeindirect speech: “Jumps or falls.Hekeels forward, bodyrigid, and falls full-length, headfirst,drawingarustle of awefrom the schoolyardwith isolated cries of alarm that are onlypartlysmothered by the passing roar of the train” (DeLillo 2007:168). Then she starts running as if losing control over her body:
She thought,Died by his own hand. She stopped runningthen and stoodbent over,breathingheavily. She lookedinto the pavement.When she raninthe mornings she went long distances and never felt this drained and wasted. She was doubled over,liketherewere two of her,the one who’d done the runningand the one whodidn’tknow why. (169)
Similarly to Catherine’sreading of Lucas, Lianne readsatext “faint but discern- ible” into Janiak’sperformance (Cunningham 2005:55). In adeferred fashion, the performance activates arepressed memory that surfaces in the form of the fragment “Died by his own hand” (DeLillo 2007:67, 218) – perhaps writtenin the coroner’sreportupon her father’sdeath. As arecurringtextual trace, the sen- tencebecomes acatalyst of traumaticdisplacement evidenced by Lianne’spsy- chosomatic drive to run without alogicallycomprehensible reason. ForLianne,aswellasfor the reader,the phrase “Jumps or falls” givesathrill when juxtaposed with the conflict of signification in the iconographyofDrew’s photograph. We have alreadyseen thatitisthe dilemmatic nature of the man’s agency,signified by the words “jump” and “fall,” which renders “Falling Man” asite of undecidability and thereforeatraumatizing image. Thisparticular prob- lem is addressed by the preceding sentence: “The train comes slamming through and he turns his head and looks into it (into his death by fire) and then brings his head backaround and jumps” (DeLillo 2007:167). It is, therefore, not simply the reenactment of the posture of the man, but rather what remains invisible in Drew’sphotograph that is at stake in Janiak’sperformances:the jump. He per- forms choice, the act of decision that precedes his fall. As part of her reenactment of this trauma,the term “muzzle blast” (DeLillo 2007:41, 130), which Lianne associates with the method of her father’sdeath, receivesapoignant edge in the context of suicide: “The news of his death seemed to ride on the arc of those two words. They wereawful words but she Phantomogenic Ekphrasis 97 tried to tell herself he’ddone abrave thing.Itwas waytoo soon” (41). Like Jan- iak’spublic appearances, “muzzle blast” functions as amemory triggerthat takes her to “counter-sites” that she has failed to inhabit as narratable memories. Situated in the context of “Falling Man,” the expression “bravething,” which Lianne devises as anarrative to contextualize her father’ssuicide, reverberates the rhetoric of heroism burgeoning after 9/11 and yetfalters once applied to the jumpers.DeLillo’snovel inhabits this counter-site by mappingthe suicide of Lianne’sfather onto David Janiak’sperformance, thus turning the traumatic memory of the suicide into agatewayfor Janiak’sperformances to retroactively inscribe the taboo of suicide onto the “Falling Man” photograph. In other words, the suicide of Lianne’sfather is mapped onto Janiak’sperformance, thereby re- framing the act of the Falling Man in terms of suicide. Consequently, what Janiak models is not so much the photographic image per se but,asDeLillo focalizes the performance through Lianne, he addresses why the imageisinassimilable. To modify Versluys’sremark, rather than standinginfor thosewho had “no choice but to submit to their fate” (2009:23), Janiak’sperformance problematiz- es the ambiguity of choice itself. Although not carried out through words, the act of the performance artistis ekphrastic insofar as it describes what Drew’siconic and tabooed photograph depicts. But rather than bringingthe performance itself into the foreground, De- Lillo’sprose focalizes it from the viewpoint of the passersby and Lianne who, like manyofthe readers of the novel, are compelled to remember one of 9/11’s most disturbing events. Consequently, DeLillo provides aliterarydescription of afictitious reenactment of adocumentary image. By wayofremindingreaders of Drew’sphotograph through afictitious performance, he keeps the object of ekphrasis at aremove. This kind of ekphrasis, not unlike Cunningham’stactics in Specimen Days, describes inasmuchasitwithholds the healing power of nar- rative.Nowonder thatTom Junod, the “builder” of the metaphoric cenotaph for Falling Man, finds DeLillo’smethod ethicallyquestionable. ForJunod, as he says in areview,the novel is “aportrait of grief, to be sure but it puts grief in the air, as aculturalatmospheric, without giving us anything to mourn” (2007: n.p.). What Junod finds deplorable, however,isperhaps DeLillo’sgreatest achievement in this novel: aphantomogenic ekphrasis that maintains, rather thanabsorbs, the traumatizing forceofthe image.
6Conclusion
Departing from the conventional understanding of ekphrasis as the verbal repre- sentation of avisual representation, this chapter exploredthe potential of ek- 98 László Munteán phrasis to recall, rather than describe, visual images. In particular,Ifocused on the ekphrastic power of literature to recall traumatizing images of 9/11.While ek- phrasis, in its traditionalsense, relies on the imagination of readers to achieve its purpose, the kind of ekphrasis examined here builds on readers’ memories of aparticularevent.Owing to the traumatizing nature of these events, such as the sight of people jumping out of the burning towers of the World Trade Cen- ter,visual documents thereof had been repressed and censored. Employing Abraham’snotion of the phantom, Ideveloped the concept of phantomogenic ekphrasis thatrecalls the memory of these tabooed images obliquely, as amne- monic tool thatinstigatesrecollection without direct description. As opposed to the optimism thatcharacterizes the phase of ekphrastic hope in Mitchell’sformulation, phantomogenic ekphrasis is ominous and unsettling. As we have seen, in both Specimen Days and Falling Man,confrontation with the repressed memoriesofthe falling bodies of 9/11 is contingent on readers’ fa- miliarity with the photographs. Although the twonovels differ with regard to their plot,structure, and style, their technique of recallingthese traumatizing images is similar.The wayinwhich images of 9/11’sfalling bodies uncannily emerge from within the interstices of the layered temporalities of Cunningham’s novel is comparable to the figureofthe fictitious performance artist in DeLillo’s novel who enactsinthe form of performance what DeLillo’snovel does in the realm of literature: compellingreaderstobear witness. Likewise, both novels feature particular characters – Catherine in Specimen Days and Lianne in Falling Man – whose practices of looking,listening, and readingconjure up the 9/11 jumpers as specters to be contendedwith. Although ekphrasis is conventionallytext-based, its phantomogenic applica- tion is not confined exclusively to literature. Forinstance, JamesMarsh’s2008 documentary Man on Wire constitutes afilmic counterpart of Cunningham’s and DeLillo’snovels. The film tells the story of French tightrope walker Philippe Petit’sunauthorized walk on ahighwirestrung between the towers of the World Trade Center in August 1974.Whereas 9/11 is never referenced in the documenta- ry,upon viewing the climactic scene that features archival images of Petit’sstunt in midairaccompanied by interviews with members of his team, it is difficult not to be reminded of photographs of the 9/11 jumpers that similarlyshow human bodies with the iconic façade of the World Trade Center in the background. In much the sameway that the fire at the Mannahatta CompanyinSpecimen Days and the performance artist in Falling Man function as memory triggers, so do images of Petit’sbold performance in Marsh’sfilm approximate 9/11 with- out directlyreferencing it.Although one maydismiss,asJunod probablywould, the phantomogenic mechanism of such textual and filmic representations, this Phantomogenic Ekphrasis 99 chapter has argued for the creative potential of this technique as amnemonic device.
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