Deconstructing Frames: Difference in Global Anglophone Fiction after 9/11 Daniel O’Gorman Royal Holloway, University of London Submitted for Ph.D. Examination 1 Declaration of Authorship I, Daniel O’Gorman, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed…………………….. Date……………………….. 2 Abstract Many works of ‘9/11 fiction’ have attempted to counteract the ‘us and them’ identity binaries propounded by both the Bush administration and Islamist extremists after 9/11. Often these works proclaim a kind of empathy of the sort Ian McEwan described shortly after the event. As he put it: ‘Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and the beginning of morality’. However, novels about 9/11 have often tended to perpetuate ‘us and them’ identity binaries themselves. In contrast to McEwan, this thesis argues that there are a number of contemporary texts that do not straightforwardly generate empathy, but have begun to question the discursive frameworks within which difference is conceptualised. I argue that they do this by blurring the boundaries between the self and the other, drawing attention to the element of the other within the self, as well as of the self within the other. In this deconstruction of difference, categories of East and West, American and non-American, and Muslim and non-Muslim are productively challenged. My thesis finds this deconstruction at work in an eclectic range of novels, including What Is the What by Dave Eggers (2006), Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie (2009), Point Omega by Don DeLillo (2010), and Open City by Teju Cole (2011). It is also evident in texts by other authors, including Nadeem Aslam, Mohsin Hamid, Hari Kunzru, Jonathan Lethem, Kevin Powers and Salman Rushdie. The thesis is divided into five chapters, organised in a way that begins in the United States but gradually becomes more transnational, slowly ‘unanchoring’ itself from the time and place of the 9/11 attacks. In employing such a structure, I hope to show how my chosen novels infuse the event with a strong sense of historicity by, in Kamila Shamsie’s words, ‘entwining it with other stories’. 3 Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7 Us and Them ....................................................................................................................................... 7 Aims and Argument .......................................................................................................................... 14 Reframing 9/11 ................................................................................................................................. 16 Expanding the 9/11 Genre ................................................................................................................ 23 Difference and Empathy ................................................................................................................... 28 Thesis Structure ................................................................................................................................ 33 Chapter1: ‘[N]ew constellations for thinking about normativity’: Rethinking Judith Butler’s ‘Frame’ with Reference to Dave Eggers’ What Is the What……………………………………... 39 1.0 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 39 2.0 Butler’s Frame ................................................................................................................................ 40 2.1 ‘Grievability’ and New Empathic Ties ....................................................................................... 40 2.2 Forestalling Judgement ............................................................................................................... 43 2.3 A Problem for Literature: The ‘visual divide’ and Poems from Guantánamo............................ 46 3.0 ‘[A]n insurrection at the level of ontology’: What Is the What ....................................................... 52 3.1 ‘Imaginary journalism’ ............................................................................................................... 52 3.2 Frames of Representation ........................................................................................................... 55 3.3 ‘[T]he collapsible space between us’ .......................................................................................... 59 3.4 9/11 and the Language of the Frame .......................................................................................... 63 4.0 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 66 Chapter 2: ‘[W]ith thousands of others in their solitude’: Gazing Inward in Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City and Teju Cole’s Open City…………………………………………………………... 68 1.0 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 68 2.0 Virtual Unreality: Chronic City ...................................................................................................... 70 2.1 Ellipses and Insteadmen: An ‘Inward Gazing’ Manhattan ......................................................... 71 2.1i ‘Pocket universe’ ................................................................................................................... 73 2.1ii ‘Beyond the Lincoln Tunnel’ ................................................................................................ 75 2.2 Deterioration of Context ............................................................................................................. 77 2.2i ‘Some rupture in this city’ ............................................................................................. 79 2.2ii ‘Self-division’: The Observer-Hero Narrative ...................................................................... 83 2.2iii Aggressive Witnessing ........................................................................................................ 84 2.2iv Ignorance and Complicity .................................................................................................... 87 2.3 Shifting Perspectives: Authenticating Post-9/11 Reality ............................................................ 89 2.3i Breaking the Frame? .............................................................................................................. 91 2.3ii ‘Synesthetic connections’ ..................................................................................................... 93 4 3.0 Framing and Memory: Open City ................................................................................................... 96 3.1 Competing Memories.................................................................................................................. 98 3.1i Multidirectionality and Cosmopolitanism ............................................................................. 99 3.2 Constellational Thinking ........................................................................................................... 102 3.2i Positioning ........................................................................................................................... 105 3.2ii Screen Memory ................................................................................................................... 107 3.2iii ‘[O]n the move constantly’: Creating Otherness ............................................................... 109 3.2iv Negative Space .................................................................................................................. 111 3.3 ‘[R]ifts and crevices’: The Multidirectionality of the Frame .................................................... 115 4.0 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 120 Chapter 3: ‘Connective Dissonance’: Refiguring Difference in Fiction of the Iraq War……. 122 1.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 122 1.1 Difference and Dissonance ....................................................................................................... 124 2.0 The Wilderness: Imaginative Geographies and the ‘derealization of loss’ ................................... 127 2.1 ‘[M]odernity and its Discontents’: The Wilderness and Identity .............................................. 128 2.2 ‘[A]nother desert altogether’ ..................................................................................................... 132 2.3 Misguided Archaeologies and Particular Histories ................................................................... 134 3.0 Absence and ‘Grievability’ ........................................................................................................... 137 3.1 The Absence of Iraq .................................................................................................................. 139 3.2 ‘The Whole Scorched World’: Narrowing Worldviews ........................................................... 141 3.3 Topographical ‘Lifeworlds’ .....................................................................................................