Ballard moves from re-staging trauma with meaning to re-staging it meaninglessly

Evidence

If the characters in The Atrocity Exhibition wanted to re-stage the founding traumatic moment of the media Sixties — the assassination of Kennedy — then Gould and his allies want to re-stage the founding traumatic moment of the media Noughties — 9/11. But where Traven/Tallis/Travis wanted to kill Kennedy again, “but this time in a way that makes sense”, Gould wants 9/11 to happen again, but in a way that doesn’t make sense. … For Gould, the (post)modern world is oppressed by an excess of Sense, a surplus of Meaning. “Kill a politician and you’re tied to the motive that made you pull the trigger. Oswald and Kennedy, Princip and the Archdukes. But kill someone at random, fire a revolver into McDonald’s — the universe stands back and holds its breath. Better still, kill fifteen people at random.” — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 154

Categorization

• FICTION: The arc from meaningful to meaningless violence re-staging offers a structure for violent fiction that deliberately rejects motive.
• XREF: connects to: The sheer volume of trauma erases event intention and interpretation. — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 3276

Broader Connections

• The sheer volume of trauma erases event intention and interpretation. #corroborates (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 3276