Coming to terms with terror

Why write literary texts against the backdrop of terrorist attacks? One might think that these literary texts come definitely too late: after the attacks, after the collective emotion and the public demonstrations, after the trials, after the pain, the despair and the grief. Only derisory words in the aftermath of ruthless violence. But if the goal of terrorist attacks is to violently discourage any political dissent through fear so as to reinforce unanimous polarisation, literature is on the contrary a place where multiple voices can be heard.

Writing in a context of terror attacks can be a way to restore a capacity to think and to tell through words. It is this capacity to restore, but also to develop further a place for speech and collective elaboration after a violent event, rather than content as such, which make them share a common concern. But it does not mean that the capacity and the attempts to restore are the same everywhere: although terrorism is a global phenomenon, literary responses are grounded in local ways of living - domestic and national. This is why our approach must be a comparative one.

We will focus on attacks that took place in France, Norway and Germany after 9/11: Is it possible to trace significant differences in the literary responses from various national contexts? Which cultural contexts tend more towards fictionalizing the events and which ones are more concerned about testimonies and other factual genres? Is there some kind of temporal order in this, first the victims and their relatives, then the more professional writers? What difference does it make when victims are themselves professional writers?  How does the nature of the different events (i.e., the status and social roles of victims and perpetrators, the type of violence and the political message of the terrorist acts) condition different responses?

These are questions that the roundtable will tackle and try to answer with Alexandre Gefen (CNRS, Sorbonne Nouvelle), Jean Lassègue (CNRS, EHESS) and Ingvild Folkvord (NTNU, Norway).

Speakers

• Alexandre Gefen (CNRS, Sorbonne Nouvelle)
• Jean Lassègue (CNRS, EHESS)
• Ingvild Folkvord (NTNU, Norvège)