Cultural Melancholia: US Trauma Discourses Before and After 9/11
ISBN: 9789004305984
Platform/Publisher: BRILL / BRILL
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Individuation (Philosophy); Philosophical anthropology.;

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.


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