Ethical interruptions in Don Delillo's Mao II and Falling Man

Abstract

The primary objective of this thesis is to read Don DeLillos commitment to terrorism in Mao II and Falling Man as a commitment to experiences of the limit that interrupt the place of the self and open it for ethical possibilities. Through Jacques Derridas notion of experiences of the impossible or experiences of the limit, this thesis will argue that at the heart of DeLillos concern with terrorism is the writers ethical commitment or responsible urge to overshadow the violence inherent in the very structural dynamics that preserve and protect the place of the self in its relation to the other. The ethical possibility that I argue for is denoted in the way DeLillo blurs and dismantles the closures and limits that separate the violent from the non-violent, the legitimate from the illegitimate and the self from the other and re-inscribes them as constructed around the same logic of violence they seek to avoid. In other words, the ethical implication of DeLillos concern with terrorism that I argue for is denoted in the way he opens his texts to what language is usually hostile to, to what is usually excluded, concealed and evaded. By re-staging the root structure of terror as residing in the structural dynamics of closures, DeLillo makes the interruption of closure his theme and opens his texts to something new to come beyond the horizon and the limits of the same.