Terrorism and Modern Literature, From Joseph Conrad to Ciaran Carson (review)

Alex Houen's book examines the interface of terrorist violence and textuality, negotiating the divide between the "visceral" reality of terrorism and discursive aspects of its representation. It belongs to the relatively new interdisciplinary field of inquiry known as "terrorism studies" or "terrorology." Houen claims to proceed centrifugally from "within literature" (18), thereby querying the degree to which literary responses to terrorism "have also meant trying to refashion the force of literature itself" (18).

"Is terrorism primarily a matter of discursive practices?" (4). By metaphorizing events do we, indeed, textualize them and thereby efface the physical reality of the violence? In what ways have modern literary practices been changed by actual events, and, conversely, can discourse, particularly figurative language, affect events? (6) To what extent do writers use stylistic and tropological strategies to "represent, mediate and sometimes even practice terrorism"(18)? Through the analysis of literary texts, the book deals with the figural aspects of terrorism in modern times. It covers a wide spectrum of fictional and poetic responses, ranging from the 1880s to the present: the popular fiction of the Irish Fenians, Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes, the writings of Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound's final Pisan Cantos, the postmodernist novels of Walter Abish on the West German terrorist gangs of the 1970s, and, finally, the work of contemporary Belfast poet Ciaran Carson on Northern Ireland's "Troubles" (21). The interrelations between terror, violence and textuality are shown to be figured differently (275) in these works.

With no universal consensus on the definition of terrorism, Houen concedes that the familiar assertion "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," has only served to ambiguate and neutralize the "cultural contagion" (18). The plethora of meanings given to terrorism has, in turn, bred a related host of euphemisms such as "urban guerillas," "paramilitaries," and "inversionary movements," all of which are preferred to the word terrorists in the text. In fact, Houen's own claim for variety becomes problematic because he too may, inadvertently, through lexical dispersal, be contributing to the process of mitigation, neutralization, and virtualization to which he objects.

The opening sentence, "Words, fictionalization, plays with meaning —these are the last things that most people associated with the impact of the terrorist attacks in America on 11 September, 2001" (1), echoes the sense of incongruity with which I initially approached the book. Admittedly, from the vantage point of those for whom the insidiousness and devastation of terrorist attacks is a quotidian reality, a dispassionate, scholarly disquisition on "the cultural impact of terrorism" (275) may seem an unaffordable luxury. The task becomes even more disconcerting in light of the author's declared aim to deal with the physical reality of terrorism and his criticism of preceding studies for failing to do so. An oft-cited statement by George Orwell comes to mind: "You cannot take a purely aesthetic interest in a disease you are dying from; you cannot feel dispassionately about a man who is about to cut your throat,"¹ which Richard Rorty, for one, has dismissed as "one of Orwell's rare descents into rant."² Yet even as a specter of an old debate, this statement reasserts the gap between the perspective of those at the receiving end of terrorist violence and an aesthetically distanced representation, between critical figurations and the physical realities of violence, where theory rarely treads. Conceivably, this is the gap that Houen seeks to bridge.

The meticulously researched book provides the reader with important information about the historical movements that practiced terrorism since the late nineteenth century and discusses their literary reflections. Thus, for example, in a sections dealing with the sexualization of sublimity in Conrad's Under Western Eyes, the role of women in Russian terrorist groups in the 1870s is linked to the portrayal of female Nihilists in popular Victorian novels, and, through the latter, to Conrad's heroine Nathalie Haldin.

Alluding to present realities, Houen shows how...