9/11 in European Literature : Negotiating Identities Against the Attacks and What Followed

This volume looks at the representation of 9/11 and the resulting wars in European literature. In the face of inner-European divisions the texts under consideration take the terror attacks as a starting point to negotiate European as well as national identity. While the volume shows that these identity formations are frequently based on the construction of two Others--the US nation and a cultural-ethnic idea of Muslim communities--it also analyses examples which undermine such constructions. This much more self-critical strand in European literature unveils the Eurocentrism of a supposedly general humanistic value system through the use of complex aesthetic strategies. These strategies are in itself characteristic of the European reception as the Anglo-Irish, British, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Italian, and Polish perspectives collected in this volume perceive of the terror attacks through the lens of continental media and semiotic theory Front Matter ....Pages i-xi Introduction: 9/11 in European Literature (Svenja Frank)....Pages 1-34 Front Matter ....Pages 35-35 9/11: The Interpretation of Disaster as Disaster of Interpretation—An American Catastrophe Reflected in American and European Discourses (Rolf G. Renner)....Pages 37-60 The Wind of the Hudson. Gerhard Richter’s September (2005) and the European Perception of Catastrophe (Ulrich Kinzel)....Pages 61-81 ‘Burning from the Inside Out’: Let the Great World Spin (2009) (Eoin Flannery)....Pages 83-101 Front Matter ....Pages 103-103 Seeing Is Disbelieving: The Contested Visibility of 9/11 in France (Jean-Philippe Mathy)....Pages 105-129 Cultural and Historical Memory in English and German Discursive Responses to 9/11 (Sandra Singer)....Pages 131-157 The Post-9/11 World in Three Polish Responses: Zagajewski, Skolimowski, Tochman (Ewa Kowal)....Pages 159-179 The Islamic World as Other in Oriana Fallaci’s “Trilogy” (Charles Burdett)....Pages 181-204 Front Matter ....Pages 205-205 National Identity and Literary Culture After 9/11: Pro- and Anti-Americanism in Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World (2003) and Thomas Hettche’s Woraus wir gemacht sind (2006) (Birte Christ)....Pages 207-251 The Mimicry of Dialogue: Thomas Lehr’s September. Fata Morgana (2010) (Svenja Frank)....Pages 253-282 Europe and Its Discontents: Intra-European Violence in Dutch Literature After 9/11 (Maria Boletsi)....Pages 283-321 Tourist/Terrorist: Narrating Uncertainty in Early European Literature on Guantánamo (Philipp Hubmann)....Pages 323-355 Back Matter ....Pages 357-386 This volume looks at the representation of 9/11 and the resulting wars in European literature. The Anglo-Irish, British, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Italian, and Polish texts analysed by the collected essays deal with the September 11 attacks and their aftermath. The texts perceive the event through the lens of the continental European media and semiotic theory and thus employ metafictional and metanarrative elements. These elements within the texts contribute to the general negotiation of European identity before the backdrop of 9/11 and the subsequent international conflicts. The volume demonstrates how the terror attacks in the face of inter-European divisions reshapes European identities in literature Svenja Frank, Editor. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.