National Allegory in Teju Cole’s Open City
Datos Bibliográficos
| ID | 7285709 |
|---|---|
| Autores | Derek F Dimatteo (autor de correspondencia) |
| Año | 2024 |
| Volumen | 19 |
| Número | 2 |
| Fecha de publicación | 2024-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Sí |
| Open Access | Sí |
| Tipo | ARTICLE |
| Revista | European Journal of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Identificadores de la revista | ISSN: 1991-9336 • E-ISSN: 1991-9336 |
| Editorial | European Association for American Studies (PUBLISHER • FR) |
| DOI | 10.4000/11xay |
| OpenAlex | W4412969341 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Referencias citadas | 30 |
This article analyzes Teju Cole’s Open City as a political novel, arguing that Open City functions as a national allegory critical of the United States. This stance is facilitated by its portrayal of the protagonist Julius as suffering not a dissociative fugue but a dissociative amnesia, which I arrive at by using the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) V and a rereading of Ian Hacking to revise prior interpretations of Julius as flâneur-fugueur. Drawing on the work of Fredric Jameson, I read Julius’s amnesia-like repression of his past crimes as allegorical of his adopted nation, the USA, which tends to forget its responsibility for its own historical injustices. By selectively forgetting these injustices and traumas—even as they happen—the USA behaves with the same dissociative amnesia as Julius. Open City reflects the psychopathology of the USA on the scale of the individual and the city. Within the palimpsests of history scattered materially throughout Manhattan (and within the repressed memories of society and the individual) resides the location of national allegory in Open City
Allegory · Art · Art history · Forgetting · Linguistics · Literature · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology
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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
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A Brief Response
The Idea of “Third Generation Nigerian Literature”
African Atrocity, American Humanity
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"Jameson's Rhetoric of Otherness and the "National Allegory
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| Velocidad de citación | historical |
|---|---|
| Altamente citado | No |