Terrorism and Modern Literature From Joseph Conrad to Ciaran Carson

by Houen, Alex

• ISBN13: 9780198187714
• ISBN10: 0198187718
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Looking at 100 years of terrorism in print--from Conrad on Anarchism in the 1880s to Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson on the "Troubles" in the 1980s-- Terrorism and Modern Literature offers a fresh perspective on terrorism's cultural aftermath. In this first extensive study of the phenomenon, Alex Houen explores the historical and political dimensions of writing terrorism in the modern world.

Author Biography

Alex Houen is Lecturer in English Literature and American Studies, University of Sheffield.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Figuring 11 September 2001	p. 1
Definitions and Discourses of Terrorism	p. 7
Literary Approaches to Terrorism	p. 17
Fenians and Anarchists	p. 21
Joseph Conrad: Entropolitics and the Sense of Terror	p. 34
The Secret Agent: Anarchism and the Thermodynamics of Law	p. 34
Sublime Subversions: Female Terrorism and Popular Victorian Fiction	p. 54
Under Western Eyes: The Sense of Terror	p. 66
Wyndham Lewis: Literary 'Strikes' and Allegorical Assaults	p. 93
Refiguring the Avant-Garde: Vorticism's Syndicalism	p. 93
'Enemy of the Stars'	p. 107
Vorticism and Suffragette Violence	p. 121
'The Crowd Master'	p. 131
'Cantleman's Spring Mate'	p. 137
Ezra Pound: Anti-Semitism, Segregationism, and the 'Arsenal of Live Thought'	p. 143
Radio Assassination	p. 143
Pound and Italian Fascism	p. 150
Heidegger and the Institution of Terror	p. 154
Heaven by Holocaust: The Pisan Cantos	p. 158
Pound and John Kasper: A Guide to KKKulchur	p. 172
'Maintain antisepsis, let the light pour': The Rock-Drill and Thrones Cantos	p. 185
Walter Abish: Plotting Everyday Terror	p. 192
Sketches of Atrocity	p. 192
Situationism and 'Happenings'	p. 199
How German Is It	p. 205
'The blood of Jews or the blood of cops'	p. 213
Terrorism, Potentiality, Real-ization	p. 222
Conclusion: Re-placing Terror: Poetic Mappings of Northern Ireland's 'Troubles'	p. 235
A Postmodern State of Emergency?	p. 235
Northern Ireland: The Grounds of Conflict	p. 239
Poetry and Place: Rewriting the Dinnseanchas	p. 246
Ciaran Carson's Belfast Poems	p. 259
Terrorism and Legislation in Northern Ireland	p. 264
The Poem's Map: Making the World Possible	p. 269
The Diaphor: Surveying the Tropes of Terror and Violence	p. 273
Bibliography	p. 279
Index	p. 306
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