In his essay "'God save us from the bourgeois adventure': The
Figure of the Terrorist in Contemporary American Conspiracy Fiction"
(1996), written in the aftermath of the 1993 attack on the World Trade
Center, Steffen Hantke remarks how quickly politicians, the media, and
the public at that time agreed that the bombing had to be understood as
part of a larger confrontation between Western democracies and 'Islamic
Fundamentalism' (for the following comp. 1996: 219-222). He goes on to
argue that the then newly discovered enemy 'Islamic terrorism' had filled
the vacancy in the collective political imagination that was left by the
demise of Communism in the late 1980ies, and that this new conflict
continued the kind of cultural paranoia that had sustained the historical
narrative of the Cold War era. Hantke describes cultural paranoia as the
effect of a cultural machinery that amalgamates complex political contexts
and historical developments into homogeneous and larger-than-life
cultural abstractions against which the collective political imagination can
construct itself as a unified entity. In other words, cultural paranoia
creates a sprawling narrative of the nation/the American way of
life/Western civilization under threat that legitimizes state power, ensures
compliance with dominant social norms and unifies the nation by
stigmatizing dissent as treason.
Table of Contents
Introduction - The Age of Terrorism
1. Don DeLillo's Mao II – The 'zero sum game' of novelists and terrorists
2. Postmodernism, late capitalism, and art
2.1. Postmodernism as aesthetic project and historical epoch
2.2. Jameson: Postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism
2.3. Late capitalist culture
2.4. The loss of the "Real"
2.5. Postmodernism as a cultural dominant
3. Postmodernism as a cultural dominant in Mao II
4. The writer
4.1. Postmodern mass culture and the culture industry
4.2. Bill's modernist view of art
5. The terrorist
5.1. The terrorist as spectacular author
5.2. Spectacles of violence
Conclusion
Research Objectives and Core Themes
This thesis examines the intersection of literature and terrorism in the age of postmodernism, specifically analyzing Don DeLillo's novel Mao II. The central research question investigates how the cultural power of the writer has been eclipsed by the terrorist, who, through spectacular acts of violence, dominates the cultural imagination in a globalized media environment defined by late capitalism and the loss of the "Real."
- The relationship between postmodernism, late capitalism, and cultural production.
- The decline of the writer as a shaper of sensibility and thought.
- Terrorism as a form of spectacular performance and "propaganda by deed."
- The role of mass media in constructing cultural abstractions and conspiracy theories.
- The blurring of boundaries between reality, fiction, and the hyperreal.
Excerpt from the Book
2.4. The loss of the "Real"
The fetishization of the commodity, as the eclipse of the 'real' use value by the 'fictional' construct of the commodity fetish, leads us to another important aspect of Jameson's analysis of postmodernism. Drawing on the work of Jean Baudrillard, Jameson argues that the object world has turned into a set of simulacra (Jameson 1991: 9), i.e. simulations without an origin or a referent (Baudrillard 1983: 2). Baudrillard starts from Saussure's analysis of the linguistic sign as the arbitrary connection between a signifier (the phonetic word) and the signified (its referent). However, Baudrillard argues that the signified is not an object in the real world, but rather the idea of an object, so that the referent as the reality content of the sign becomes a mere projection of the signified idea (comp. Homer 1998: 132). There is then no direct knowledge of the material world, but only an indirect knowledge through the ideas or simulacra of things.
Summary of Chapters
Introduction - The Age of Terrorism: This section establishes the theoretical framework regarding cultural paranoia and the role of the terrorist as a perceived replacement for Cold War threats in the political imagination.
1. Don DeLillo's Mao II – The 'zero sum game' of novelists and terrorists: An introduction to the novel's core conflict, characterizing the struggle between the reclusive writer Bill Gray and the terrorists as a battle for cultural influence.
2. Postmodernism, late capitalism, and art: A foundational theoretical chapter applying Fredric Jameson’s and Jean Baudrillard’s concepts to describe the economic and aesthetic shifts of the postmodern era.
3. Postmodernism as a cultural dominant in Mao II: An analysis of how the novel depicts the homogenization of space and the consumerist nature of the contemporary environment.
4. The writer: Focuses on Bill Gray’s attempt to preserve modernist artistic autonomy amidst the pervasive commodification of the culture industry.
5. The terrorist: Examines the terrorist as a "spectacular author" who uses violence to capture public attention and manipulate the media's narrative flow.
Conclusion: Synthesizes the finding that the writer has lost their capacity for social influence, with their voice now assimilated by the same postmodern media machinery they sought to escape.
Keywords
Don DeLillo, Mao II, Postmodernism, Late Capitalism, Terrorism, Cultural Paranoia, Simulacra, Commodity Fetishism, Spectacular Author, Media Studies, Agency Panic, Hyperreality, Writer and Terrorist, Mass Culture, Cultural Dominant
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this publication?
The work investigates the changing cultural relevance of the literary intellectual in the postmodern era, focusing on the competitive relationship between the novelist and the terrorist as seen in Don DeLillo's Mao II.
Which theoretical perspectives are used to analyze the text?
The analysis primarily draws on Fredric Jameson’s theories of late capitalism and postmodernism, Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of the simulacrum and the hyperreal, and Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of the culture industry.
What is the primary objective of this thesis?
The objective is to explore whether literature can still exert a critical influence on society, or if its role has been completely overtaken by the sensationalism of terrorist acts and global media narratives.
What research methodology is applied?
The author uses a cultural-theoretical approach, combining literary analysis of Mao II with political and philosophical critiques to interpret contemporary societal phenomena through a literary lens.
What is covered in the main body of the work?
The main chapters discuss the transformation of cultural space, the commodification of literature, the shift from traditional authorship to "spectacular" performance, and the role of media in shaping terrorist narratives.
Which keywords best describe the essence of the work?
Key concepts include postmodernism, late capitalism, the "Real," cultural paranoia, simulacra, the culture industry, and the power struggle between writers and terrorists.
How does Bill Gray's character represent the struggle of the writer?
Bill Gray represents the attempt to maintain modernist values of artistic isolation and truth, yet his eventual integration into celebrity culture illustrates the futility of this resistance.
In what way is the terrorist depicted as a "spectacular author"?
The terrorist is framed as a "spectacular author" because they use violent, "coercive" media events to manipulate public perception and insert their narrative into the global information flow, effectively competing with writers for the public's imagination.
How does the setting of Beirut function in the novel?
Beirut serves as the location where the spheres of the terrorist and globalized late capitalism merge, illustrating how the violence of war and the imagery of consumerism coexist in a "millennial image mill."
- Citation du texte
- Horst Baumann (Auteur), 2003, Terrorism and American Literature, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/113099
