Wound Traces: American Crime Narrative Treatments of 9/11 Trauma and the War on Terror

This thesis provides a critical exploration of the role that American crime narratives of the early post-9/11 period played as sites of concerted critical engagement with the politics of 9/11 and the resulting war on terror, evaluating their engagement with terror war ideologies and rhetoric, criticisms of anti-terror legislation, and the application of state power at home and abroad after 9/11. Through examination of a selection of early post-9/11 American crime genre texts, a case is made for crime genre practitioners in literature and primetime TV drama having succeeded in providing an account of 9/11 trauma and the war on terror that avoids the shortcomings that critics have found in representation of 9/11 in popular culture; crime genre texts articulate a response to the physical, emotional and psychological traumas of 9/11 that takes account of the deeper-lying historical and political causes and consequences of the 9/11 attacks – a contrast to the 9/11 novel and prominent 9/11 feature films. This thesis adds knowledge to cultural studies and literary criticism on 9/11 and its social and political aftermath in America, whilst also filling a gap in scholarship pertaining specifically to critical evaluations of the American crime genre’s engagement with the foreign and domestic policies of the George W. Bush administration and the social realities of life on the ground in America after 9/11, including articulations of the emotional and psychological trauma of 9/11 and resultant anxieties of a nation at a time of crisis