To start us off on this term’s focus of trauma and the “War on Terror,” our ASTU class has begun to discuss Jonathan Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This novel brings in multiple perspectives through alternating narrators, as well as visual aids to tell the story of 9/11, while also painting a complex narrative of trauma (e.g. Dresden bombings, Hiroshima, the Holocaust) in the background. This layering effect gives much for the reader to dissect, and as Andrea beautifully writes, this story “hits close to home and continues to ring loud in our memories.”

The blog posts this week touched on some central talking points such as, absence as an expression of trauma, fear culture, and finding closure after loss. Your thoughtful perspectives accompanied with personal anecdotes made it a pleasure to read.

Symbols of absence and missed connections are reoccurring in this novel, ranging from emotional disconnects such as Grandpa’s inability to connect with his son or Oskar’s distancing from his mother, to the more physical loss of the twin towers and loved ones. In Foer’s novel, Grandpa and Grandma exemplify a state of disconnect in their lost touch with the present, due to their haunting pasts. Amy had a personal take-away from reading about the traumatized characters of this book. By looking at their missed opportunities she reflected on her own life, and suggested the need to “seize the day,” so as to not live in a similar state of regret. Rowan brought up an excellent point in her post when she acknowledged all of the successful connections that were the product of Oskar’s trauma. I like this observation, because although absence and missed connections are definite themes of this text, there is an equally noticeable theme of unification. This conversation steers us into the direction of what English scholar, Ilka Saal, describes as the universal feeling of suffering and grievance that can connect us, in her close reading of this text.

Islamophobia, and the resulting fear culture, were discussed by a number of classmates, given the traces of it in our text as well as its presence in the forefront of our modern times. Robert looked critically into media portrayals of extremism and the cultivation of fear culture, stating: “despite the fact that the news organizations should be reporting the news they are in fact the leading contributor in the spread of Islamophobia.” Devon shared a similar discontent with the growing fear culture, and stated that we are unlikely to progress as a society, “if we allow this fear to stay so deeply rooted inside us.” To connect this sentiment to the broader messages in our CAP stream, another result of this media portrayal is the sort of “moral panic” that we discussed in our Sociology class. With this chronic fear, often comes an overstep in the nature of the retaliatory actions taken. Furthermore, the rhetoric of “us” vs. “them” can begin to slip into the daily vernacular of the victims, thereby serving as a twisted justification for further violence.

-Lauren