Geopoetics of terror(ISM): Spatiality and visuality in two 'post-9 /11' novels

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Jarett Kobek's ATTA (2011), portraying one of the terrorists of September 11th, and Nick Flynn's The Ticking is the Bomb (2010), focusing on the ensuing 'War on Terror', are the first texts responding directly to the global effects of 9/11. Both do so by mapping and 'producing' urban and global space through relationality, and by recomplicating and recontemplating the iconic media images of the event. While analysing Flynn's and Kobek's novels with the help of spatial and visual theory, this paper is also an attempt to redefine the notion of geopoetics, drawing on de Certeau's notion of space, Fredric Jameson's call for a 'cognitive mapping', and Michel Serres's concept of topology.