"Night fell on a different world": experiencing, constructing and remembering 9/11

Jack Holland, Lee Jarvis
2014 Critical Studies on Terrorism  
This article explores the endurance of the pervasive framing of Ô9/11Õ as a moment of temporal rupture within the United States. It argues this has persisted despite the existence of plausible competitor narratives for two reasons. First, because it resonated with public experiences of the events predating this constructionÕs discursive sedimentation. And, second, because of its vigorous defence by successive US administrations. In making these arguments this article seeks to extend relevant
more » ... temporary research in three ways. First, by reflecting on new empirical material drawn from the Library of Congress Witness and Response Collection, thus offering additional insight into public understandings of 11 September 2011 in the immediacy of the events. Second, by drawing on insights from social memory studies to explore the persistence of specific constructions of 9/11. And, third, by outlining the importance of categories of experience and endurance for constructivist International Relations more broadly. ! 2! Ten years ago, America confronted one of our darkest nights. Mighty towers crumbled. Black smoke billowed up from the Pentagon. Airplane wreckage smoldered on a Pennsylvania field. Friends and neighbors, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters Ð they were taken from us with a heartbreaking swiftness and cruelty. And on September 12, 2001, we awoke to a world in which evil was closer at hand, and uncertainty clouded our future. In the decade since, much has changed for Americans. WeÕve known war and recession, passionate debates and political divides. We can never get back the lives that were lost on that day or the Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in the wars that followed (Obama, 2011). This presentation of September 11th as a tragic and unforeseen bringer of a new, fallen, world will be instantly familiar to followers of US political rhetoric throughout the decade since those attacks. Augmented, on this occasion, by related remembrance activities including ceremonies at the four crash sites, the ringing of New YorkÕs ÔBell of HopeÕ, and the televised reading of victimsÕ names, ObamaÕs remarks contribute to the reinforcement of 9/11Õs now relatively uncontested status as both exceptional event and temporal rupture. Once more are the attacks positioned here as unforeseen, unpredicted; an event almost, if not entirely, sui generis. Once more, moreover, are they positioned as a marker of transition to a present of evil and uncertainty radically incommensurate with the immediate past. This very specific, but particularly widespread temporal positioning of the events of 11 September 2001 has, unsurprisingly, attracted much academic commentary. Within this, a great deal of attention has been paid to three questions in particular. First, how was Ô9/11Õ produced in this way within political language, popular culture and other discursive activities (Collins and Glover
doi:10.1080/17539153.2014.886396 fatcat:stxgrtljbrhydjibphb5s3in64