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Falling Men in 9/11 American Fiction Wilfrid Laurier University Scholars Commons @ Laurier Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) 2015 FALLING MEN IN 9/11 AMERICAN FICTION Justin D. Shaw Wilfrid Laurier University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd Part of the American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Shaw, Justin D., "FALLING MEN IN 9/11 AMERICAN FICTION" (2015). Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 1713. https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/1713 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FALLING MEN IN 9/11 AMERICAN FICTION by Justin Shaw DISSERTATION Submitted to the Department/Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Doctor of Philosophy in English and Film Wilfrid Laurier University © Justin Duane Shaw 2014 Abstract “Falling Men” in 9/11 American Fiction Gender critics such as Judith Butler and Michael Kimmel argue that post-9/11 American culture has embraced a traditional gender binary that positions men as the dominant protectors of women, children, and the nation as a whole, exemplified by the widespread veneration of heroic firefighters, soldiers, and the civilians of flight 93 in the media (Kimmel 249). This regression reinforces hegemonic masculinity in American culture, which R.W. Connell defines as “the pattern of practice (i.e., things done, not just a set of role expectations or an identity) that allow[s] men’s dominance over women to continue” (Connell and Messerschmidt 832). Christine Beasley has “demassified” hegemonic masculinity by dividing it into two categories: sub-hegemonic masculinity, which refers to traditional modes of dominant masculinity that emphasize brawn and physical aggression, and supra-hegemonic masculinity, which designates the increasingly sublimated practices of dominance undertaken by business professionals. Rather than focusing on the sub-hegemonic ideals venerated after 9/11, my study will focus on a figure of supra-hegemonic masculinity that was suppressed in the United States after 9/11: the American businessman, who embodied the neoliberal values against which 9/11 was staged as a symbolic critique. I argue that this figure is focalized in several important works of 9/11 fiction, which attempt to reintroduce the centrality of this figure in the historical and geopolitical context of American capitalism in transnational markets. “Falling Men in 9/11 American Fiction” explores how novelists such as Don DeLillo, Laila Halaby, Amy Waldman, and Teju Cole identify the absent cause of 9/11 to be aggressive masculine dominance as sublimated through American capitalism. This dominance is depicted in the figuration of domestic gender relations in a way that mirrors and critiques American geopolitical relations abroad. Thus, when Richard Gray claims that post-9/11 American novelists “vacillate […] between large rhetorical gestures acknowledging trauma and retreat into domestic detail,” and further argues that “the link between the two is tenuous, reducing a turning point in national and international history to little more than a stage in a sentimental education,” he is in fact getting it backwards: rather than reducing 9/11 entirely to domestic trauma, this fiction situates itself within the domestic space from where it can dramatize the outward influence that interpersonal gender relations have on oppressive American foreign policies abroad, and vice versa (134). Therefore, in a synthesis of a key debate framed by Richard Gray and Michael Rothberg, I argue that this fiction is inherently dialectical: its “centripetal” orientation, rather than being simply reductive and “sentimental,” establishes the domestic analogue for a greater “centrifugal” critique of hegemonic American ideology as it manifests itself abroad – underscoring that an understanding of domestic gender relations is essential to any analysis of American culture and fiction after 9/11. Contents Chapter 1: Managing Terror and Hegemonic Masculinity in Post-9/11 America................1 Introducing Hegemonic Masculinity............................................................................................12 American Hegemonic Masculinity Since the Western Frontier...................................................14 Immediate Post-9/11 Cultural Responses....................................................................................25 The Debate on 9/11 American Fiction.........................................................................................29 Chapter 2: Falling Men in Post-9/11 American Fiction..........................................................43 The American Individualism of the Industrial Self Made Man...................................................47 The Rise of Neoliberalism in America.........................................................................................50 The Entrepreneurial Subject of American Neoliberalism: The Transnational Businessman.......55 A Critique of Transnational Business Masculinity.......................................................................60 Don DeLillo's Falling Man..........................................................................................................67 Joseph O'Neill's Netherland.........................................................................................................77 Ken Kalfus' A Disorder Peculiar to the Country..........................................................................86 Chapter 3: Falling Men and Tumbling Women......................................................................93 Tumbling Women.........................................................................................................................95 American Marriage: From Coverture to Companionate..............................................................104 The Neoliberal Postfeminist American Dream............................................................................114 Amy Waldman's The Submission.................................................................................................127 Carolyn See's There Will Never Be Another You..........................................................................144 Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children.....................................................................................156 The Lengthening Shadows of the Falling Man............................................................................165 Chapter 4: In the Shadow of The Falling Man........................................................................167 Post-9/11 Transnational American Subjectivities.........................................................................174 Race and the Contradictions of American Self-Made Masculinity..............................................182 Immigrant American Dreams and Nightmares............................................................................189 Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist.........................................................................196 Laila Halaby's Once in a Promised Land....................................................................................221 Teju Cole's Open City..................................................................................................................234 Afterword: “The Function of 9/11 Fiction: Alternative Masculinities?”.............................257 Holy Fuck: Sublime Violence and “Holy Virility”.....................................................................261 Falling Men as Memento Mori....................................................................................................275 Transcending Death-Transcendence: Moving Beyond 9/11.......................................................286 Works Cited...............................................................................................................................303 Endnotes.....................................................................................................................................316 List of Figures Richard Drew's The Falling Man.................................................................................................45 Eric Fischl's Tumbling Woman.....................................................................................................99 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor, Tamas Dobozy, and committee members Philippa Gates and Eleanor Ty, for the many hours of critical reading, feedback, and correspondence that went into this dissertation. I would also like to thank Penelope Ironstone and Magali Cornier Michael for reading my dissertation, participating in my defense, and providing valuable feedback. Chapter 1: “Managing Terror and Hegemonic Masculinity in Post-9/11 America” Gender critics such as Judith Butler and Michael Kimmel argue that post-9/11 American culture is characterized by a regression to traditional American gender relations. More specifically, they claim that mainstream American culture has embraced a traditional gender binary that positions men as the dominant protectors of women, children, and the nation as a whole, exemplified by the widespread veneration of heroic firefighters, soldiers, and the civilians of Flight 93 in the media (Kimmel “Manhood” 249). This regression reinforces
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