POST-9/11 TRAUMATIC PARANOIA AS REFLECTED IN DON DELILLO’S FALLING MAN

Siti Kurniati Rasad; Achmad Munjid

doi:10.22146/rubikon.v6i2.61482

POST-9/11 TRAUMATIC PARANOIA AS REFLECTED IN DON DELILLO’S FALLING MAN

https://doi.org/10.22146/rubikon.v6i2.61482

Siti Kurniati Rasad^(1*), Achmad Munjid⁽²⁾

(1)
(2) Universitas Gadjah Mada
(*) Corresponding Author

Abstract

This article investigates how the trauma of 9/11 tragedy affects the lives of the characters in DeLillo’s Falling Man and shows how the trauma of 9/11 portrayed in the novel reflects American collective trauma. This investigation is qualitative research utilizing memory and trauma as the theoretical framework. The discussion in this article reveals that individual experience the trauma of 9/11 tragedy differs from one person to another. While other characters go through their mourning successfully, the main character in the novel becomes a perennial mourner and is ceaselessly haunted by his traumatic memory due to constant avoidance from his trauma. His continuous externalization of his trauma causes him to focus on the external threats and becomes a paranoiac. On a societal level, American society is also perpetually mourning and is haunted by post-traumatic paranoia continuously. American exceptionalism, biased orientalist perspective about the orient, and alleged prolonged quasi war between Islam and the west have framed the collective experience of the trauma in binary opposite narrative of a good versus evil war. The collective trauma perpetuates and many policies are born out of their paranoia.

Keywords: 9/11 tragedy; memory; mourning; post-traumatic paranoia; trauma

Full Text:

PDF

References

Alexander, J. C. (2012). Trauma: A Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Baelo-Allué, S. (2012). 911 And the Psychic Trauma Novel Don DeLillo's ‘Falling Man’ El 11 De Septiembre y La Novela De Trauma Psicológico ‘Falling Man’, De Don DeLillo. Atlantis, 4(1), 63-79. Retrieved February 4, 2019, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43486021

Caruth, C. (2006). Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Chomsky, N. (2015). Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.

Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

DeLillo, D. (2008). Falling Man: A Novel. New York: Scribner.

Desmond-Harris, J. (2016, September 09). The Way We Talk about Islamophobia Every 9/11 Anniversary is Maddeningly Oversimplified. Retrieved May 5, 2019, from http://www.vox.com/2016/9/9/12856912/islamophobia-september-11-oversimplified

Erwin, E. (2002). The Freud Encyclopedia: Theory, Therapy, and Culture. New York: Routledge.

Freud, S. (2010). Mourning and Melancholia (L. G. Fiorini, T. Bokanowski, & S. Lewkowicz, Eds.). In On Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia, 19-34. London: Karnac Books.

Gilsinan, K. (2018, December 11). Trump Keeps Invoking Terrorism to Get His Border Wall. Retrieved June 6, 2019, from http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/12/trump-incorrectly-links-immigration-terrorism/576358/

Henry, P. (n.d.). How LGBTQ People Were Blamed For 9/11. Retrieved May 24, 2019, from http://www.intomore.com/impact/how-lgbtq-people-were-blamed-for-9-11

Jackson, R. (2009). The 9/11 Attacks and The Social Construction of a National Narrative (M. J. Matthew, Ed.). In R. Stewart (Ed.), The Impact of 9/11 on The Media, Arts, and Entertainment, 25-35. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kaplan, E. A. (2005). Trauma Culture the Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press.

LaCapra, D. (2014). Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Muller, C. (2017). September 11, 2001 as a Cultural Trauma: A Case Study through Popular Culture. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

Schacter, D. L. (2003). The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Scott-hoy, K. (2003). What Kind of Mother …? An Ethnographic Short Story (N. K. Denzin& Y. S. Lincoln, Eds.). In 9/11 in American Culture, 297-304. New York: AltaMira Press.

Stewart, R. (2009). Foreword (M. J. Morgan & R. Stewart, Eds.). In The Impact of 9/11 on The Media, Arts, and Entertainment, Ix-Xiv. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sutopo, H. B. (2002). Metodologi Penelitian Kualitatif Dasar Teori dan Terapannya Dalam Penelitian. Surakarta: Sebelas Maret University Press.

Volkan, V. D. (2010). Not Letting Go: From Individual Perennial Mourners to Societies with Entitlement Ideology (L. G. Fiorini, T. Bokanowski, & S. Lewkowicz, Eds.). In On Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia, 90-109. London: Karnac Books.

Whitehead, A. (2010). Memory. London: Routledge.

William, S. V. (2013). American Exceptionalism in the Post-911 Era. Symplokē, 21(1-2), 291-324. Retrieved May 3, 2019, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/symploke.21.1-2.0291

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22146/rubikon.v6i2.61482