Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T11:53:25.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Don DeLillo's “In the Ruins of the Future”: Literature, Images, and the Rhetoric of Seeing 9/11

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Marco Abel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay explores the rhetorical strategies deployed by Don DeLillo in his essay on 9/11. What distinguishes the essay is less what it says about 9/11 than how, in responding to the event, it puts the question of response at stake. Resisting the demand to speak with moral clarity and declare what 9/11 means, he instead shows that response is always a question of response-ability, or the ethical “how.” To image 9/11, DeLillo rhetorically activates a neorealist mode of seeing that differs ethically from other accounts of perception, such as those of (neo)phenomenology. Whereas the latter locate the perceiving subject's perspective outside an event, DeLillo insists that point of view—the act of seeing—is immanent in the event. Responding to this immanence, DeLillo's rhetoric of seeing suspends and questions any representational judgment of 9/11.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 118 , Issue 5 , October 2003 , pp. 1236 - 1250
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Theodor, Adorno. Aesthetic Theory. Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999.Google Scholar
Theodor, Adorno. Negative Dialectics. Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Continuum, 1973.Google Scholar
Theodor, Adorno. Prisms. Trans. Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber. Cambridge: MIT P, 1983.Google Scholar
Allen, Glen Scott. “Raids on the Conscious: Pynchon's Legacy of Paranoia and the Terrorism of Uncertainty in Don DeLillo's Ratner's Star.” Postmodern Culture 4.2 (1994). Project Muse. 26 July 2002 <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v004/4.2allen.html>. 28 pars.Google Scholar
Paul, Auster. City of Glass. New York: Penguin, 1986. Vol. 1 of The New York Trilogy.Google Scholar
Ulrich, Baer. Introduction. Baer, 110 Stories 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulrich, Baer. 110 Stories. Ed. Baer. New York: New York UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Peter, Baker. “The Terrorist as Interpreter: Mao II in Postmodern Context.” Postmodern Culture 4.2 (1994). Project Muse. 26 July 2002 <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v004/4.2baker.html>.Google Scholar
Jean, Baudrillard. “The Spirit of Terrorism.” Trans. Rachel Bloul. Awake: Post September 11, 2001 Politics and Discussion. 14 Nov. 2001. 5 March 2002 <http://awake.sparklehouse.com/downloads/papers/baud_terr.html>.Google Scholar
Bazin, André. What Is Cinema? Trans. Hugh Gray. Vol. 2. Berkeley: U of California P, 1972.Google Scholar
The Bicycle Thief. Dir. Vittorio De Sica. 1948. DVD. Corinth, 1998.Google Scholar
Claire, Colebrook. “Inhuman Irony: The Event of the Postmodern.” Deleuze and Literature. Ed. Buchanan, Ian and Marks, John. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000. 100–34.Google Scholar
Gilles, Deleuze. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989.Google Scholar
Gilles, Deleuze. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Gilles, Deleuze. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Trans. Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Gilles, Deleuze. Masochism. Trans. Jean McNeil. New York: Zone, 1994.Google Scholar
Gilles, Deleuze. Negotiations. Trans. Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Gilles, Deleuze. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. What Is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Americana. New York: Penguin, 1989.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. “In the Ruins of the Future: Reflections on Terror and Loss in the Shadow of September.” Harper's Dec. 2001: 33–40.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Libra. New York: Penguin, 1991.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. Underworld. New York: Scribner, 1997.Google Scholar
DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 1986.Google Scholar
Sergei, Eisenstein. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. Ed. and trans. Leyda, Jay. New York: Harcourt, 1977.Google Scholar
Michel, Foucault. “The Masked Philosopher.” Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984. Ed. Kritzman, Lawrence D. New York: Routledge, 1990. 323–30.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel, and Deleuze, Gilles. “Intellectuals and Power.” Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault. Ed. Bouchard, Donald F. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977. 205–17.Google Scholar
Steffen, Hantke. “‘God Save Us from Bourgeois Adventure’: The Figure of the Terrorist in Contemporary American Conspiracy Fiction.” Studies in the Novel 28 (1996): 219–43.Google Scholar
Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Fredric, Jameson. “Postmodernism.” Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. 1–54.Google Scholar
Martin, Jay. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994.Google Scholar
Immanuel, Kant. Critique of Judgment. Trans. J. H. Bernard. New York: Hafner, 1951.Google Scholar
Jeffrey, Karnicky. “Wallpaper Mao: Don DeLillo, Andy Warhol, and Seriality.” Critique 42 (2001): 339–58.Google Scholar
Kings of the Road. Dir. Wim Wenders. 1976. Videocassette. Pacific Arts, 1987.Google Scholar
Peter, Knight. “Everything Is Connected: Underworld's Secret History of Paranoia.” Modern Fiction Studies 45 (1999): 811–36.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Nealon, Jeffrey T. “Maxima Immoralia? Speed and Slowness in Adorno.” Rethinking the Frankfurt School: Alternative Legacies of Cultural Critique. Ed. Nealon, and Irr, Caren. Albany: State U of New York P, 2002. 131–41.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Nietzsche. The Genealogy of Morals. The Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage, 1989. 13–163.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Nietzsche. “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.” Untimely Meditations. Ed. Breazeale, Daniel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 57–123.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Nietzsche. “On Truth and Lying in the Extra-moral Sense.” Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language. Ed. Gilman, Sander et al. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. 246–57.Google Scholar
9/11. Dir. Gédéon Naudet and Jules Naudet. DVD. Paramount, 2002.Google Scholar
Richard, Powers. “The Image.” New York Times Magazine 23 Sept. 2001: 21–22.Google Scholar
John, Protevi. Political Physics. New York: Athlone, 2001.Google Scholar
Philip, Rosen. Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001.Google Scholar
Margaret, Scanlan. “Writers among Terrorists: Don DeLillo's Mao II and the Rushdie Affair.” Modern Fiction Studies 40 (1994): 229–52.Google Scholar
Kaja, Silverman. World Spectators. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Ryan, Simmons. “What Is a Terrorist? Contemporary Authorship, the Unabomber, and Mao II.” Modern Fiction Studies 45 (1999): 675–95.Google Scholar
Vivian, Sobchack. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Ella, Taylor. “The 5,000-Pound Maus.” Los Angeles Weekly 13–19 Nov. 1998. 6 Feb. 2002 <http://www.laweekly.com/ink/98/51/art-taylor.shtml>..>Google Scholar
Paul, Virilio. The Aesthetics of Disappearance. Trans. Philip Baitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), 1991.Google Scholar
Paul, Virilio. Ground Zero. Trans. Chris Turner. New York: Verso, 2001.Google Scholar
Paul, Virilio. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. Trans. Patrick Camiller. New York: Verso, 1989.Google Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. New York: Verso, 1994.Google Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. Welcome to the Desert of the Real! New York: Verso, 2001.Google Scholar