ART AS PHARMAKON

Abstract

This essay proposes an interpretation of Don DeLillo’s Falling Man based on a combination of textual analysis and contemporary theoretical approaches to the specific questions of trauma, grief, and posttraumatic healing as well as the more general question of the status of the subject in a postmodern context marked by increasing globalization. This multidimensional interpretive approach centers on one of the key metanarrative questions posed by DeLillo’s novel: the potential function of art as an antidote against various expressions of contemporary angst, such as the viral dread of terrorism or the fear of aging and age-related maladies. In exploring the significance of a double esthetic articulation in DeLillo’s novel (an esthetic of defamiliarization and an “esthetic of disappearance”), the essay explores the author’s representation of his characters’ varying reactions to terror-related trauma and the role of the imagination in such reactions. While Falling Man represents subjective experiences of trauma and loss in painful and at times shocking ways, its dissection of the imaginary dimension of trauma also points toward various strategies through which traumatic experiences can be articulated into cohesive modes of self-assessment, grief management, and healing.