Flânerie and the transnational deterritorialization of 9/11 in Teju Cole’s "Open City"

• Melodia Festa, Beatrice ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Verona

     University of Verona

     Verona, Italia

     
• Localización: REDEN [Nueva época]: Revista Española de Estudios Norteamericanos, ISSN-e 2695-4168, Vol. 4, Nº. 1, 2022, págs. 91-109
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Even though Teju Cole’s debut novel, Open City, has often been analyzed within the spectrum of themes such as racialization and ethnicity, its relevance in the post-9/11 canon is worthy of attention. As such, this contribution seeks to examine the salience of September 11 and the role of the protagonist, as post-9/11 flâneur, considering how Cole’s novel reframes the political and transnational implications of 9/11 drawing from flânerie to offer a wider viewpoint on the national and interracial implications of the attacks. As the article aims to show, the narrative adopts flânerie as a strategy to ponder on the post-9/11 phenomenon memorializing the attacks in New York and consequently reterritorializing terrorism in Brussels to engage in an international perspective. Aligning with the contention that post-9/11 narratives have been concerned with revising the city as the origin of a discussion on the attacks, the essay aims to show how Cole leans toward a universalist view of the event so that the novel engages with the transcontinental impact of 9/11. This article's ultimate intent is to consider the flâneur as the thread that guides to a broader challenging discussion on the significance of 9/11 respatializing the consequences of the terrorist attacks beyond the United States.