Affective Boundaries: Death, Mediation, and Virtual Space in Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011)

Authors

  • Wesley Moore University of Erlangen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.388

Keywords:

death, virtuality, space, art, affect, mediation, terrorism, material, communications media

Abstract

In the following article, I examine contemporary conceptions of authenticity in Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011). I focus on how virtual and material encounters with death affect the protagonist, Adam Gordon and discuss what these encounters communicate regarding the relationship between experience and mediation. Turning to the writings of Andreas Reckwitz, Fredric Jameson, and Manuel Castells, I investigate death’s virtual expressions and pervasiveness in contemporary postindustrial societies versus its more rare and affective presence in material space. Through this context, I argue that Atocha Station privileges literature that foregrounds its own form as a medium, over eliciting affect in readers. Nevertheless, I conclude that the novel does leave space for affect by narrating an encounter with death through the aesthetic of a chat log.

 

Author Biography

Wesley Moore, University of Erlangen

Wesley Moore holds a B.A. in German Studies and an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of South Carolina, as well as an M.A. in North American Studies at the University of Erlangen. Currently, he is a doctoral candidate and a member of the research training group “Literature and the Public Sphere” at the University of Erlangen. He is writing his dissertation on Ben Lerner, Jennifer Egan, and Ruth Ozeki, claiming they produce an aesthetics of attention in their novels that promote extended engagement with literature as a counterpoint to the distracting effects of recent communications technologies. His research interests include 20th and 21st-century US fiction and poetry, narratology, mediation, and globalization.

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Published

2024-08-09

How to Cite

Moore, Wesley. “Affective Boundaries: Death, Mediation, and Virtual Space in Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011)”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, Aug. 2024, pp. 4-17, doi:10.5283/copas.388.

Issue

Vol. 25 No. 1 (2024)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Wesley Moore

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.