Cultural melancholia : : US trauma discourses before and after 9/11 / / by Christina Cavedon.

• Superior document: Costerus New Series, Volume 212
• VerfasserIn: Cavedon, Christina,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands ;, Boston, [Massachusetts] : : Brill Rodopi,, 2015.; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Costerus ; Volume 212.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (424 p.)
• Notes: Includes index.

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.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Theorizations of Melancholia -- Trauma Studies in The Medico-Psychiatric Field -- Theorizations of Cultural Trauma in Relation to Cultural Melancholia -- Cultural Narratives Activated by the 9/11 Attacks -- White Middle Class Melancholia in Jay Mcinerney’s Fiction -- Postmodern Melancholia and the Fantasy of the Tuché in Don Delillo’s Pre-9/11 Novels -- Falling Man’s Escape into Hyperreality -- Conclusion -- Index.