Literature Now and Democracy to Come: Jacques Derrida, Ben Lerner, and Leaving the Atocha Station

Abstract:On March 11, 2004, Madrid was hit by devastating train bombings. The attacks and the resulting protests play an important part in Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station (2011), but the novel is not simply about them. Instead, Lerner addresses the relationship between literature and politics. Discussing the influence of John Ashbery's and Allen Grossman's work on Lerner, this article shows how the novel develops an understanding of literature as an immediate mediation between the virtual and the actual. Responding to Lerner's challenge to consider "literature now," and drawing on Jacques Derrida's work on democracy to come, the article then explores how an experience of reading is, for Lerner, an experience of temporality and of exposure to an event to come that requires a decisive, improvised response. Concluding with the novel's recontextualization of the Spanish government's response to the Madrid bombings, the article argues that an experience of literature is an experience of deciding the meaning of what is happening here and now, mirroring an experience of democratic politics.