Syndrome, Symptom, Trauma-chains in Post-9/11 Novels: Safran Foer, Ken Kalfus and Don DeLillo

Perhaps Slavoj Zizek's famous or notorious exhortation ‘Enjoy Your Symptom!' set forth in a 1992 book of that title, containing his Lacanian analyses of Hollywood film, should more properly, esp. post 9/11, be formulated ‘enjoy your syndrome!' Certainly a whole new batch of trauma literature and trauma films has appeared, as American culture has attempted to come to terms with the cruel fact that apparently not everyone in the world loves the American way of life. While psychoanalytical theory can go some way toward explaining this new turn towards the proliferation of trauma literature, a larger cultural criticism is required to fully understand the development in question.