Forging New Strategies of Representation in Times of Terror: Visuality and Intermediality in Post-9/11 novels of DeLilo and Foer

Abstract

In the classical Trauma Theory propounded by Cathy Caruth, trauma by definition
eludes conscious psychic registration and recall. Using this precept as a springboard,
the present paper seeks a critical engagement with the means by which the formal
structures of artistic representations get impacted and metamorphosed by the
“unsayability” and “unpossessibility” of trauma. The immediate impact of 9/11 on
literary discourse was a perceived “lack” in the powers of the written word when
juxtaposed against the visual imprint of the scorching celluloid images that were etched
on the national imaginary. The attempt to “possess” 9/11 led to the rise of a new
enterprise of “form” in the post 9/11 representations marked by visuality, intermediality
and genric hybridity. This is recorded in the rise of such hybrid forms like the ‘novelalbum’, the ‘graphic novel’ and the ‘essay-memoir.’ The paper explores how Don DeLilo in Falling Man and Jonathan Safran Foer in Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close endeavour to transcend the perceived inadequacy of language by harnessing
other para-textual resources to augment the polyphonic resonances of the text and in
effect transmuting them into layered palimpsests.