An Allegory Of Disaster:Narrativity And Being In Delillo’s Falling Man

Faling Man is Don DeLillo’s contemplation on the terrorism in the post-9/11 era.However,this novel is not merely confined to the representation of terrorism.Rather,DeLillo launches his ontological discussion on the existential conditions of human beings through the postmodern disaster.This paper attempts a Heideggerian reading on Falling Man through the philosopher’s ontology and aesthetics plus Ricoeur’s study of narrativity.The present work is going to probe into the narrativity and Being of this 9/11 fiction so as to broach the subject that how it could be possible to narrate out Dasein’s authentic Being and self.In Ricoeur’s narrative analysis,the narrativity is underpinned upon temporality.Heidegger,likewise,in his ontology,has built Being upon time.In this sense,this paper is to discuss narrativity and Being by recourse to temporality.This thesis could be divided into two parts.On the one hand,it studies the narrativity of individual;on the other band,the narrativity of art is put under discussion.The first part inaugurates its study of the narrativity of the individual from trauma studies,for the Siamese twins of disaster and trauma determine that a survivor’s Being must resort to narrative.Thus,In the light of the trauma studies of LaCapra and Freud,the narrativity of the traumatised individual consists of melancholy narrative and mourning narrative.Since the melancholy narrative is cemented with the past,the present falls into a representation of the compulsory repetition of the past.Only the mourning narrative is capable of ridding of the past so as to re-construct Dasein by futural narrative.If the trauma was treated as a metaphor for Being,the fascination of the past of the traumatised in Falling Man,resulted from the melancholy narrative,would jilt Dasein into thrown-ness.Dasein,in Heidegger’s view,is enculturated in the socio-cultural context.The postmodern context is the very narrative loop which enmeshes Dasein in inauthentic Being as the melancholy narrative throws the traumatised into the past.The contextual loop DeLillo criticises is a postmodern cognisance constructed through the technological destitution,ideological meta-narrative,and consumerism.In DeLillo’s circular narrative,ideology epistemologically fabricates the disaster and trauma for the individual whose political identities,as the traumatised,are moulded under the constructivism of history,education,and mass media which,in fact,conceal the individual’s authentic Being and self.Consequently,in the narrative loop only melancholy narrative flourishes where mourning is a political taboo.The circular narrative designed by DeLillo in Falling Man exposes the nugatory narrative of the individual.As a result,the melancholia of Dasein is the narrative for its inauthentic Being and absent self.Since the narrative loop nullifies the individual narrative,the authentic Being and self are held at bay.The art,however,interpolated into Falling Man through DeLillo is tinged with possible messianism.Consequently,the second part of this paper is devoted to the aesthetic study of the artistic narrativity in DeLillo’s text by dint of ontology.Ricoeur mainly divides narrativity into two categories:one is diegesis,the other is the dramatic.The diegesis in Falling Man incorporates verbal narrative and visual narrative.Nevertheless,these two narratives,in essence,cling to melancholy narrative.In DeLillo’s text,the verbal narrative,including poetry and daily discourses,is not poetic nor holy in terms of Heideggerian aesthetics as the diegetic fails to re-build a poetic dwelling.The visual narrative,i.e.the ekphrasis to Morandi’s natura morta,is eroded by the ideology and vitiated by the consumerism.The picture,unfortunately,falls into a commodity instead of being a Heideggerian work of art.In this case,the un-concealment of authentic Being and self relies on the performance art of Falling Man.Lianne’s three encounters with Falling Man are intermezzi in which his venturous leap as the dramatic narrates out a Trauerspiel,mourning play,within the text.By virtue of Benjamin’s study of the mourning play,this paper is to argue that the dramatic of the performance artist in Falling Man has plotted the art of mourning play.The narrativity of Trauerspiel not only transcends the narrative loop,but also serves as a mourning narrative.The dramatic of Falling Man,hence,works through the trauma as well as un-conceals authentic Being and self for Dasein.DeLillo weaves his Falling Man into an artistic allegory through the narrativity of art in order to bring forth the messianism for the un-concealment of the authentic Being and self under the aegis of true art.