"God save us from bourgeois adventure": THE FIGURE OF THE TERRORIST IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CONSPIRACY FICTION

• Published in: Studies in the novel 1996-07, Vol.28 (2), p.219-243
• Main Author: HANTKE, STEFFEN
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: American literature; Bourgeois; Cold wars; Conspiracy theories; DeLillo, Don; Fiction; Literary postmodernism; McElroy, Joseph; Narratives; Novels; Political rhetoric; Political violence; Terrorism; Violence
• ISSN: 0039-3827; 1934-1512

[...]one of the most crucial changes that conspiracy theory has undergone in the "New World Order" is the fragmentation of the sense of absolute centrality that used to govern the U.S. position toward global politics. Virtually all of DeLillo's work and its inherent critique of postmodernity are consequently based on one crucial rhetorical gesture, the ironic reversal of (supposedly) authentic cause and (supposedly) secondary representational effect. [...]simulations of disaster in White Noise create true victims, systems of surveillance in Running Dog and The Names create the crime they are supposed to detect and monitor, abstract rational codes like mathematics in Ratner's Star create the metaphysics they are meant to erase, etc. The difference between Lyle's and Cartwright's degree of influence in establishing their own reading over that of the terrorist's, however, is reminiscent of Roland Barthes' distinction between "readerly" and "writerly" text. Since there is no significant difference between the empty routines of his private life and the cliche-ridden, petty, and ultimately futile machinations of the terrorist plot, Lyle's decision to get involved in the conspiracy denies the realm of terrorism the special status that it may have laid claim to on the basis of its willingness to resort to physical violence, its intrinsic persuasiveness, or the sheer appeal of its metaphysical nostalgia. Gray's case demonstrates dramatically that the author's absence from the public eye and prolonged silence have fueled, rather than atrophied, a publicity machinery that has elevated his claim to privacy to the rank of "a local symptom of God's famous reluctance to appear" (p. 36) and keeps marketing him, no matter if he produces or not. Since the power of this machinery is geared toward textual and commodity production, just as the author himself, isolation and silence alone are not sufficient means of throwing sand into its gears.