Don DeLillo's Libra: History as Text, History as Trauma

Abstract

This article discusses Don DeLillo's Libra as historiographic metafiction in terms of the novel's exploration of the relation between historical events and narrative, and its sense that there is no access to the past that would be unmediated by language. Yet Libra grapples with issues that cannot be fully explained by a model that stresses the ‘already written’, textual nature of the historical referent. Drawing upon Slajov Žižek's reading of Lacan and the Lacanian concept of ‘the real’, I explore the novel's depiction of the Kennedy assassination as a traumatic historical event, one that eludes symbolization and poses questions about the limits of representation. I argue that DeLillo's exploration of the relation between trauma and representation gives us a powerful metaphor of the historical project itself.

Keywords:

• History
• Metafiction
• Trauma
• Symbolic
• Real
• Žižek

Notes

See Christopher M. Mott (2000), pp. 229 – 244.

All subsequent quotes from Libra will be indicated parenthetically in the text.

Here I am indebted to Thomas Carmichael (1993, p. 208).

This quote is from the ‘Author's Note’ to the Viking edition of the novel (1988). Quoted in Mott (2000, p. 243).

This point is suggested in Melley (2000, p. 194).

Here I an indebted to Terry Eagleton (2003, p. 197).

For an extended discussion of the relation between repetition and the Lacanian real, see Taylor (1987, pp. 92 – 93).

On this point I am indebted to Mary Anne Doane (1990).

The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy BBC co-production. Screened in New Zealand on 23 November 2004, Television One.