French Fiction, Empathy, and the Utopian Potential of 9/11

In From Solidarity to Schisms, Cara Cilano conceptualizes September 11 as a moment “characterized by unfathomable vulnerability and the possibility of a better future.” She argues the event, while traumatic, might have served as an impetus to reconfigure American self-perceptions and thoughts about its place in the world. Instead, she contends, the United States squandered the utopian potential of this moment. Cilano remains optimistic, however, because she sees European fictional discourse on 9/11 as emblematic of a desire for a melding of divergent perspectives. Their critique aims to keep America’s sense of itself unbalanced, thus providing fuel for self-reflection, analysis, and, most important, renewal. Taking the measure of current Franco-American relations, this essay tests the validity of this contention by examining works of French fiction published in the five years after the attacks. Four of these texts—Christian Garcin’s La jubilation des hasards, Didier Goupil’s Le jour de mon retour sur terre, Luc Lang’s 11 septembre, mon amour, and Frederic Beigbeder’s Windows on the World—will be the focus of this essay. Are they being written to take advantage of the cosmopolitan potential of the moment, or grasping the opportunity to criticize a (weakened) nation, and thereby expressing uniquely French concerns? The essay contemplates the extent to which self-interest and questions of identity—personal, political, national—interfere with empathy, thus posing a considerable challenge to the utopian dream of a cosmopolitan world. This article is available in Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol37/iss1/7 French Fiction, Empathy, and the Utopian Potential of 9/11 Tim Gauthier University of Nevada, Las Vegas I. The Utopian Potential of 9/11 In From Solidarity to Schisms, Cara Cilano conceptualizes September 11 as a moment “characterized by unfathomable vulnerability and the possibility of a better future” (13). She argues that the event, while traumatic, might have served as impetus to reconfigure American self-perceptions. Instead, she contends, the US squandered the utopian potential of this moment. For while the country became the immediate beneficiary of world-wide sympathy and fellowfeeling, in the months that ensued, this goodwill was eroded by an administration that succumbed to fear and anxiety, and insisted on flexing its military might.1 Cilano remains optimistic, however, because she reads European fictional discourse on 9/11 as emblematic of a desire for a melding of divergent positions. These narratives act as a productive counter-flow to American unilateralism, their critique intending to keep America’s sense of itself unbalanced, thus providing fuel for self-reflection, analysis, and renewal: “Unsettledness is necessary in this conceptual framework, for the work of democracy is always in process, always aware of the stultification brought about by reification” (19-20). She further identifies a sense of turning inward and a solidifying of boundaries, encapsulated in an emphasis placed on home that emerged in the aftermath, contending this drive “entails a tightening of identifications intended to align people ideologically based on appeals to a manufactured sense of cultural nativity” (19). She advocates for a disruption of this reifying of nationalist imperatives at the expense of cosmopolitan ones: “To be uncomfortable in one’s 1 Gauthier: French Fiction, Empathy, and the Utopian Potential of 9/11 Published by New Prairie Press 114 STT at least seven novels and two graphic narratives deal specifically with these cataclysmic events. Four of these texts—Christian Garcin’s La jubilation des hasards (2005) ‘The Jubilation of Chance,’ Didier Goupil’s Le jour de mon retour sur terre (2003) ‘The Day of my Return to Earth,’ Luc Lang’s 11 septembre mon amour (2003), and Frederic Beigbeder’s Windows on the World (2003)—provide fertile ground for testing the soundness and validity of Cilano’s hypothesis.2 Each text demonstrates, in its own way, that the impulse to construct a counternarrative emanates from a range of desires not easily characterized: seeking to help the US recover from the tragedy, critiquing American flaws and failures, responding to perceived demonstrations of uncritical collegiality towards the United States, or trumpeting French superiority. So we might question the degree to which the French responses to 9/11 and its aftermath are reflective of a global reaction from solidarity to schisms, and in what ways they express uniquely French concerns. These texts—with the exception of Beigbeder’s Windows on the World—have not been translated into English. This inaccessibility may point to the extensiveness of American insularity, but may designate the true audience for whom these texts are intended. If the latter then these novels do not become part of a larger, global dialogue (as Cilano suggests), but rather serve to assert that which differentiates France from the US. And if these texts appeal primarily to French readers, it is because they speak of contemporary France itself, of its self-proclaimed role as resister and regulator of the global ambitions of the US, but also of its anxiety concerning its own decline or growing inconsequentiality. This moment can be conceived as an opportunity for reconfiguring the geopolitical landscape, but the question remains: Is it being grasped with a 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 37, Iss. 1 [2013], Art. 7 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol37/iss1/7 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1798