Ecologies of Anxiety

Abstract

This paper examines the urban space as an ecology of anxiety in post-9/11 literature. After the atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima in August 1945, survivors testified of experiencing prior to the bombing an anticipatory trauma known as bukimirooted in the belief that a catastrophic event was forthcoming. Paul K. Saint-Amour suggests that similar experiences to bukimi are not exclusive to the residents of Hiroshima but came to structure post-war urban experience as a result of a nuclear condition wrought by the Cold War. My paper explores whether a contemporary bukimi can be identified in post-9/11 literature. The post-9/11 novel—works which directly or indirectly acknowledge the terrorist attacks—present familiar but ambiguous forms of risk engendered by the threat of terrorism and maintained in the form of an urban-originated anxiety. This anxiety is rooted in the spectre of an event that’s never total or conclusive—an event that promises witness testimony and the maintenance of traumatic memories, but which also eclipses calamitous structures (like global warming) that are gradual and continuous. To unravel this contemporary species of bukimi, my paper examines depictions of the urban space in the post-9/11 literature of Foer and McEwan.