Within and Without the Metropolis. Foreground and Background in Post-9/11 Literature

Post-9/11 literature is an often disconcerting cultural sector. It proclaims a degree of willingness to face one's most closely held creeds and to challenge one's established views not only on culture, but on a sociopolitical conditioning which has grown to determine the historical trajectory of the early 21st century. By reading post-9/11 novels, one is effectively embarking on a quest for meaning, for the key to understanding one of the most traumatic and complex events in recent history. Even for the common reader, the message put forward by most post-9/11 fiction becomes clear: the quest for answers meanders through a series of further questions, a trace of signification which apparently has no ultimate resolve. However, the mechanism of cauterization and healing, and sometimes coping with the absence of meaning, are accounted for in these literary works. The inner strife of the self may be resolved publicly, in this manner, only by relating to the experience of the Other.

This book moves beyond the mere applied reading of a series of carefully selected novels, in an ambitious attempt to place an entire subgenre, which has stemmed from the essential turning point of September 11, 2001, within the larger context of geopolitical strategies, shifting sociocultural paradigms, and inherent psychological conflicts. Given the multilayered nature of post-9/11 trauma, Alexandru Oravitan chooses to offer a nuanced interpretation of the confrontations between extremes that appear insurmountable in a New Millennium, when foreground and background become fluid, unstable, even interchangeable entities. While the proposed case studies aim to offer a panoramic view of the mechanisms fiction employs to investigate the perspective of the American subject in relation to that of a multifaceted alterity, alienated by a disquieting era, the meticulously researched and articulated volume provides a topical meditation on potential answers to profound dilemmas, as well as on the possibility of healing wounds and building a hybrid territory for the recovery and reconstruction of both Self and Other. – Cristina Cheveresan