Terrorist Trials Under Literary Scrutiny: Literature as Counterterrorist Response

JusticeJustice Judicial trials are recognized as important steps when societies are trying to come to terms with terrorist attacks. And yet trials are often thought of either as final conclusions that can settle the matter of justice once for all or criticized as utterly insufficient, unable to reach what matters to individuals (grief, mourning, recognition and justice). In both cases, individuals are silenced as they are reduced to the status of “victims”, and their way of dealing with their own personal reconstruction being left aside. This article therefore investigates how literary responses to terrorist attacks can go beyond this conundrum and play a specific role in maintaining and developing a collective level of awareness that law, as it is performed in these very specific trials, does not cover the whole meaning of justice and injustice. Based on literary examples from three different European contexts, Norway, Germany and France, we show various literary strategies that enable reflection on the trials themselves and on the ‘sense of injustice’ (Skhlar 1990) that remains forceful and needs to be addressed after trials are brought to an end: there is still something to be reflected upon collectively once justice has tried to establish a measure for the damages suffered. Three literary texts focused on trials are explored: Endre Ruset’s Prosjektil (2012), Yannick Haenel’s Notre solitude (2021), and Kathrin Röggla’s Verfahren (2022), all belonging to the same European post 9/11 era. Our aim is to point out how a literary re-working of judicial material, ideas and versions of the past takes place, pushing the borders of what can be thought, imagined and felt after extreme experiences of crisis and rupture.