8th Annual McGill University Graduate Student Symposium on Language and Literature
"Representing the Border"
March 23 & 24, 2002
Montreal, Quebec
Terrorism and Literature
"[The terrorist] threat was obviously libidinally invested - just recall the series of movies from Escape From New York to Independence Day. The unthinkable which happened was thus the object of fantasy: in a way, America got what it fantasized about, and this was the greatest surprise."
‹ Slavoj Zizek
In the wake of September 11th, the definition of terrorism has undergone a sea change. What exactly does it mean when members of the Bush administration warn us that the "relativism" of the terrorist/freedom fighter dichotomy is no longer acceptable (assuming, of course, that this reductive logic was ever acceptable in the first place)? In its voyage from a radical form of politics to metaphysics ("evildoers"), terrorism as a term has become massively overdetermined. Panelists are invited to consider this process of overdetermination in its varying literary manifestations. By bringing a postSeptember 11th perspective to bear upon texts written prior to the attacks, we hope to make manifest those anxieties and desires which, up until three months ago, remained latent in popular consciousness. Proposals that consider (but, which are by no means limited to) the following topics are encouraged:
o the etymology of terrorism: a term in transition?
o national literatures, national struggles (e.g. Ireland)
o the war on terrorism; the war on drugs
o studies of particular authors (e.g. Conrad, DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis)
o the role of violence: consumeroriented spectacle or revolutionary praxis?
Proposals should be emailed to matt.kavanagh@mail.mcgill.ca by January 31st. 2002.
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