In Transnational Politics in the Post-9/11 Novel, Joseph Conte discusses the (un)representability of terror in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, focusing on Cosmopolis and Falling Man by Don DeLillo, Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon, Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee and Snow by Orhan Pamuk.

Conte’s transnational perspective on the post-9/11 novel takes a historicist approach to the occasions of resistance against hegemonic powers, including resistance against the global market-state as well as resistance against the nation-state. What is interesting about Conte’s argument, however, is that it draws attention to the dialectical relationship between the hegemony of the capitalist market-state over the marginalized individual and reactionary acts of terrorism. The book delves into a discussion of several ideologies associated with acts of terrorism in the four novels including anti-globalism, anarchism, and transversalism. Starting with Cosmopolis and Falling Man, Conte draws attention to DeLillo’s foresight regarding the fall of the towers. The postmodern novel appears almost as prophecy, foretelling the fall of the twin towers through various imaginings of individual acts of terrorism.

In the first two chapters of the book, Conte frames his argument through the postmodern premonitions of the transnational author, DeLillo, whose close attention to the twin towers even before the attack should not come as a surprise. After all, the towers themselves not only awaken the horror of Kant’s mathematical sublime with their incomprehensible size, but in their destruction, they also offer the experience of the dynamical sublime comparable to that of a colossal catastrophe in nature. The destruction of the towers presents the onlookers with a force that is almost reminiscent of a natural disaster, although it is by no means an occasion of the forces of nature. Unlike the Kantian sublime, what comes about through the collective experience of the attacks is not an assurance of “the power of reason” (Kant, 261). On the contrary, the “postmodern sublime” (Conte, p. xi) evokes confusion and ambiguity. As Conte points out, the sheer size and grandeur of the towers themselves imply the possibility (or even the necessity) of their destruction. Accordingly, through the eye of the novelist who is often privy to the “latent crises in the culture” (Conte, p. 58), the terrorist act is not merely prophesied but actively and informedly predicted. In this way, DeLillo’s premonitions lay the ground for Conte’s discussion of the relationship of each novelist to their novels, but more specifically, their narrators.

Conte turns to Jean-François Lyotard for the evaluation of the postmodern sublime and here he puts forth one of the central arguments of the book; that the post-9/11 novel consists in the presentation of the unpresentable. For Lyotard, sublime refers to the feeling that arises due to the inability of the imagination to conjure an object that represents an unpresentable Idea (78). This inability prevents the realization of the experience of that Idea, and therefore, its knowledge cannot be gained (78). Following this, Conte argues that the post-9/11 fiction operates with the unpresentable. The chosen novels carry the unpresentable into fiction in a postmodern fashion in two ways: First, is the disruption of the “aesthetic decorum” (Conte, 19). Second, is the “counternarrative” that exposes the political affect coming about through the breaking down of the grand narratives of hegemonic discourse (60). In keeping with Lyotard’s view on the postmodern, the post-9/11 novels discussed in the book offer various examples of narrative form that go beyond the conventions of genre. In addition, Conte also draws attention to the deconstruction of the globalist approaches to knowledge that the chosen novels put forth. In place of globalism, Conte’s analysis offers transversalism.

According to Jean-François Lyotard, what is distinctive about the postmodern is “incredulity towards metanarratives” (xxiv). The postmodern is not concerned with creating legitimizing metanarratives. On the contrary, it welcomes “the incommensurable” (xxv). Rather than affirming knowledge through reference to authority with regard for the metanarrative, the postmodern signals the diminishing trust in the metanarratives themselves (xxiv).

Lyotard discusses the tension between the modern and postmodern conceptions of knowledge in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. The modern conception of scientific knowledge privileges what Lyotard calls “the grand narratives” to legitimize its own processes of production and transmission. The grand narratives in the modern conception of knowledge serve as the cradle from which scientific progress emerges. Not only does the grand narrative justify scientific progress, but it also contextualizes it in the world with reference to a great aim, whether it is “emancipation” or “the creation of wealth” (Lyotard, xxiv). In contrast, the postmodern conception of knowledge showcases a distrust in these grand narratives themselves. Lyotard refers to Wittgenstein’s conception of the language games and suggests that different kinds of utterances carry certain rules in their use. In the postmodern, the “language games” diversify in a manner where achieving a unified and monolithic explanation of the purpose of knowledge production is impossible (xxiv). Still, the disintegration of the grand narrative does not mean that narratives themselves become completely obsolete. Rather than providing an overarching framework of justification, narratives in the postmodern can provide knowledge about the local and the traditional, which while not universalizable, still gives insight about the “rules” of “social bond” (21).

Conte’s framework for the analysis of the form of the post-9/11 novel takes the disintegration of the grand narrative as a core component. Conte suggests, the fragmentation of the grand narrative of the justification of scientific knowledge is mirrored in each novel’s fragmentation of its own narrative structure. Conte smoothly connects the narrative fragmentation of the post-9/11 novel to its politics by tracing the history of the novels of resistance against market-state neoliberalism from the 19th century onwards. What is distinct about the post-9/11 novel is its “political affect” which as a motivator for political actions of resistance, necessitates a “counternarrative” that opposes “hegemony”, whether that of US or other. (60). Pynchon’s Against the Day is a perfect ground for the illustration of Conte’s argument regarding the parallel between the rise of “international Anarchism” against “monopoly capitalism” and the rise of terrorism against globalization (112). Conte expands upon this parallel and builds his argument towards a consideration of transversal and transnational approaches to global politics as a way to expose and simultaneously accommodate the “différend”, or the culturally and politically “incommensurable” in Lyotard’s terms (Lyotard, 23). To explain how the différend manifests across cultures, globalist approaches fail to acknowledge the différend because they operate through “grand narratives” that marginalize that which cannot be reconciled with liberal individualism.

The post-9/11 novel offers the necessary ground upon which the différend may be acknowledged and welcomed. Pamuk’s Snow attempts to convey the incommensurable in the conflict between the secularists, Islamists and the nationalists in Turkey’s political landscape through a form that allows interruptions, foretelling and retrospection, according to Conte. While Conte pays close attention to the representation of the incommensurable in this way, the Snow chapter of the book still appears slightly isolated from the argument regarding the parallel between the rise of the anarchist movement in late 19th century and the rise of anti-globalism inherent in the Islamist fundamentalist movement that comes up against the neoliberal market-state. While the conflict between the political factions represented in the novel aids Conte’s argument, the local context in which the novel exists does not align as seamlessly as in the case of, for example, Cosmopolis, which takes place in New York. Conte brings the discussion of transnationality to Snow mostly through the figure of the author and the narrator. Conte’s discussion of Pamuk’s position as a transnational author mirroring the figure of the exiled poet Ka is reminiscent of his interpretation of Pynchon’s narrators as tools for authors’ own political/philosophical contemplations. In Snow, the local overwhelmingly overshadows the global, showcasing how the “little narrative [petit-recit]” (Lyotard, 60) persists in the postmodern novel.

It is worth noting that the two novelists writing from outside the U.S.; Coetzee and Pamuk, are also both Nobel Prize recipients and consequently, their works are often evaluated as tokens of a specific kind of world literature. Gloria Fisk draws attention to the difference between the scrutiny that Western and non-Western writers are subject to by the Swedish Academy by arguing that while the Western writer must “transcend any mark of their locality”, non-Western writers are burdened with the task of “embodying their particularity” (140). In this framework, the politically and the culturally incommensurable, which Conte argues is expressed in Coetzee’s and Pamuk’s novels, may possibly not be there at all. As Fisk suggests: “The literary value of the non-Western writer becomes contingent on the political utility he serves, and that utility is defined in Western terms” (140). If Pamuk is writing for an audience of world literature, then the locality of the tensions between factions of Turkey’s political landscape ultimately risk being framed for the consumption of a predominantly Western audience. Consequently, the presentation of the unpresentable may in fact still be a problem in a novel like Pamuk’s Snow. The transversality of the novel which Conte argues is crucial to the expression of the différend may then be compromised in the effort to translate the factional conflicts between the residents of the East-Anatolian Kars in a manner that makes sense to the readers of world literature. As a result, there is a chance that literary works situated as world literature fall into the problem of perpetuating the grand narratives of dominant justifications of scientific/political knowledge within the world literary space. I fear Conte overlooks the problem of the commodification of the transnational non-Western author which Fisk calls attention to.

In the final chapter of the book, Conte brings his argument to a close by analyzing four more novels in which the protagonists “leave the United States to become global citizens” (224). In this final chapter, following from the examination of the incommensurability, the post-9/11 novel is posited as “an expression of transversal politics” (223). Touching upon the protagonists of The Submission by Amy Waldman, Once in a Promised Land by Laila Halaby, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist and A Hologram for the King by Mohsin Hamid, Conte argues that transversality in post-9/11 fiction emerges through the representation of “plurality in a post-civilization world” (232). Through the analysis of the four novels, the main conclusion of the book is scattered throughout this chapter. The examples that Conte discusses in this final chapter help locate the ways in which the post-9/11 transnational protagonist operates for the achievement of transversal cosmopolitanism. However, the chapter feels a bit crowded, as the four novels that Conte introduces are presented at the last minute, and the conclusion that Conte has been building up to gets lost in the discussion of the manifestations of transversal cosmopolitanism in Waldman’s, Halaby’s, and Hamid’s novels. Finally, through the analysis of the world citizenship of the protagonists of the four novels, Conte concludes in a hopeful manner by acknowledging what it means to be an American citizen in the post-9/11 world. There is no single nationality, ethnicity, or religion that can define citizenship. True cosmopolitanism lies in the welcoming of world citizenship above state citizenship.

Cosmopolitan forms of citizenship have been more and more prevalent in the post-9/11 novel, as evidenced by the novels that Conte discusses. Perhaps, what feels alien to the readers of world literature must persist in the post-9/11 novel. The discomfort one may experience when reading about the radicalization of Hammad, the fictional hijacker that is indoctrinated by Mohamed Atta that DeLillo inserts into his narrative in Falling Man, or the representation of the violent conflict between the Islamist, secular, and nationalist factions of the people of Kars in Snow, or the confrontation between Eric Packer and Benno Levin in Cosmopolis, may be just what the situation calls for. However, the incorporation of transversal cosmopolitanism in world literature also necessitates the representation of concerns outside the issues of individual acts of terrorism. Issues of immigration, incarceration, exile, and refuge in novels like Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains and Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive contemplate state terrorism against individuals and communities in precarious circumstances. Conte’s examination in Transnational Politics in the Post-9/11 Novel is only one side of the coin. However, as he argues, for the weaving of the tapestry of cosmopolitanism, the transnational novelist has a great responsibility for the representation of the unpresentable, whether through courageous genre-breaking or through unflinching portrayals of political heterogeneity.

Works Cited

Kant, I. Critique of Judgment. Trans. W. S. Pluhar. Hackett Publishing Company, 1987.

Conte, J. Transnational Politics in the Post-9/11 Novel. Taylor & Francis, 2019. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781000766462

Fisk, G. “Orhan Pamuk Wins the Nobel Prize: The Cases of Orhan Pamuk and Mo Yan”. Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature. Columbia University Press, 2018, pp. 128-230.

Lyotard, J.-F. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi. University of Minnesota Press, 1979.

Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical investigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Basil Blackwell, 1972.