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Through an analysis of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement (2001), this essay considers the potentialities and limitations of narrative, and of representation more generally, as means of capturing and conveying the accelerated and intensely traumatic character of mechanized warfare. I show how the unflinchingly detailed depictions of mutilated bodies that feature in the novel's re-creation of the German Blitzkrieg go some way toward evoking a traumatic encounter with the realm of pure, volatile materiality that Jacques Lacan terms the "real." I note, though, that for Lacan and other theorists it is a characteristic of the most overwhelming experiences that they are not experienced directly, but rather outstrip the capacity of the subject to apprehend and assimilate them as they occur. As Paul Virilio's analysis of twentieth-century warfare makes clear, such events were produced on an unprecedentedly massive scale during the Second World War. I argue that in Atonement these conditions are most effectively evoked when the text relinquishes its aspirations to pure, contemporaneous presence and instead employs tactics of evasion, elision, and belatedness. I conclude by suggesting that, under certain circumstances, McEwan's novel may not merely evoke a traumatic encounter but may also be productive of symptoms associated with this experience in their actuality.

That we live in a time of unprecedented and ever-increasing change is both a shibboleth of our age and the more-or-less explicit justification for all manner of "strategic" actions. The seldom, if ever, questioned assumption is that our now is more ephemeral, more evanescent, than any that preceded it. In this essay, we subject this assumption to some critical scrutiny, utilizing a range of empirical detail. In the face of this assay we find the assumption to be considerably wanting. We suggest that what we are actually witnessing is mere acceleration, which we distinguish as intensification along a preexisting trajectory, parading as more substantive and radical movement away from a preexisting trajectory. Deploying Deleuze's (2004) terms we are, we suggest, in thrall to representation of the same at the expense of repetition of difference. Our consumption by acceleration, we argue, both occludes the lack of substantive change actually occurring while simultaneously delimiting possibilities of thinking of and enacting the truly radical. We also consider how this setup is maintained, thus attempting to shed some light on why we are seemingly running to stand still. As the Red Queen said, "it's necessary to run faster even to stay in the one place."