“TYRANNIC GRANDEUR” – TWIN TOWERS IN DELILLO

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how, from whose point of view and in what contexts DeLillo used to represent Twin Towers in his novels preceding the terroristic destruction of these buildings and his subsequent response to that event, the novel Falling Man. As the worldwide known emblems of New York and post-industrial, post-Fordist capitalism, the image of Twin Towers is used in Players, Mao II and Underworld, both as a place of action and as a representation of critically approached themes of serial mass production, hegemony of closed systems based on binary logic and strategy of reduplication, triumph of megalomania and defacing of urban architectural diversity.

In Players, placed in the late seventies, the appearance of WTC (transient, despite of the massiveness of the buildings) and the sense of being therein are connected with the images of flow, currents and waves in the context of the loss of certainty, permanence and the sense of history in everyday life. In Mao II, seen from the loft of a character’s apartment - in reality, but, also, in the picture Skyscreper III (R. Moskowitz) - WTC is an example of the processes of commodification/co-modification of space and place respectively. They provoke rage, nostalgia and necessity of reaction against the imperialistic arrogance in changing and subjugating both the cityscape and the citizens. In Underworld, the period of the WTC construction is evoked through the eyes of a sentient female artist on the roof,corresponding with André Kertész’s view on the buildings transposed in the photography used as the cover image for American editions of this novel.

In highlighting DeLillo’s representation of Twin Towers three theoretical frames are used: Baudrillard’s notion of monopoly as duopoly, Castells’ image of dual city and Auge’s anthropological view on placelessness, defined as non-places.