| This dissertation argues that the orphan figures as an affective mode and means through which subjects are encouraged to see and understand themselves as ethical citizens post-9/11. The turn by parents, teachers, and others to children's literature with orphaned protagonists for its therapeutic value serves as a case in point of how imagining orphanhood can help subjects come to terms with loss post-9/11 and the necessity for renewal.;In Chapter 2, I consider the rhetorical construction of children as 'orphans' of 9/11 that functions synecdochically to teach citizen-subjects the political and social effects of 9/11 and ramifications of a future attack. In short, the nation is reconstituted as a collective of potential and real orphans. In Chapter 3, I argue that the orphaned protagonist is the condition of possibility for reading the Harry Potter series as a post-9/11 melancholic patriotic rhetoric. However, reaffirmation of paternal, generational, and cultural continuity also illustrates that the text's 'therapeutic' potential for children in a post-9/11 world lies in its inability to overcome loss for it promises adults that children will still hold onto their parents in the event of loss. In Chapter 4, I argue that the orphaned protagonists of A Series of Unfortunate Events ironically mime the features of a post-9/11 melancholic patriotic rhetoric. Certainly, the orphans in this series cry about a past, a family, and a home(land), but the text refuses to efface the children's orphanhood.;This dissertation proposes that the orphan trope offers a rhetorical lens through which subjects can come to understand why and in what ways 'loss' has become significant at the level of both the family and the nation, and how healing, consolation, and renewal can be possible both for the individual and the collective. From the Twin Towers Orphan Fund's use of the teen to popular children's literature featuring orphaned protagonists, Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events, the point of departure of these texts, which have all been characterized as post-9/11, is a real and imagined concern for the 'orphaned' child. |
