From September 11th, 2001 to 9-11: From Void to Crisis

Abstract

This paper draws on interviews conducted in the days and weeks after the events of September 11th, 2001, analyzing the transition from “September 11th, 2001” to “9‐11.” That is, from the discursive void that immediately followed the acts of terrorism in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania to the apparently self‐evident crisis that the events came to represent in the following days and weeks. First, the paper redresses persistent oversights of discourse‐oriented work by recognizing and investigating both the agency of the US general public and the context that official responses were articulated in. Second, the paper serves to denaturalize the construction of 9‐11 as crisis, questioning the first and pre‐requisite stage of the emerging discourse of the “War on Terror.” Theorizing void, crisis and their relationship enables an understanding of how the War on Terror was possible and opens a critical space for its contestation.

Affect is what states make of it: articulating everyday experiences of 9/11

“…Contra Campbell, for example, who argues that "there is nothing outside of discourse" (Campbell, 1998: 4), we suggest that September 11 th provides us with an interesting empirical case study precisely because of those initial moments after 9/11 in which witnesses gasped, but could not find the words to articulate their feelings (Holland, 2009;Morris, 2004;Troyer, 2001), hint at an important avenue of enquiry, which has been made apparent by the work of scientist colleagues (Damasio 1999).…”

“…Official narratives that spoke of an attack on a way of life may have sounded odd or even meaningless to non-American ears, but in a nation that experienced a profound sense of trauma, as life ceased to operate along the lines cultural expectations demanded (Edkins 2003), such narratives helped to fill the awkward and uneasy void in meaning generated by September 11 th (Campbell, 2001;Holland, 2009;Nabers, 2009). For many Americans, on September 11 th the certainties of American security culture were seen to no longer hold true; cultural expectations about how the world should work and America's place in that world were invalidated.…”

Dominance through Coercion: Strategic Rhetorical Balancing and the Tactics of Justification in Afghanistan and Libya

“…This is evidenced in the records of the Witness and Response Collection of the Library of Congress. Interviews with 'ordinary Americans' reveal (humanitarian) concerns that were initially apparent-fears about the moral equivalency of killing innocent Afghans, for example-were slowly downplayed, in line with the Bush Administration's increased emphasis on the humanitarian rationale for war (Holland 2009). While this strategic rhetorical balancing was unlikely to be fundamental to the prosecution of intervention (due to the upwelling of public support for intervention in pursuit of the national interest), it was certainly useful in curtailing the concerns of potential (ethical) objectors.…”

“Lest We Forget”: The Politics of Memory and Australian Military Intervention1

“…Mirroring literature on the notion of crisis (see, for example, Croft 2006), traumatic experiences can be seen as shaking existing discourses of community and security, providing opportunities for strategic intervention to give (new) meaning to that experience or to fold it into existing narratives. In the context of the attacks of September 11, 2001, for example, the notion that “the world changed,” that events were unable to be articulated or defined through existing frameworks of meaning (Fierke 2004; Holland 2009), or that new forms of governance were required to respond to new vulnerabilities can all be viewed as crucial manifestations of—and responses to—a traumatic experience.…”