Reading America’s Psyche After 9/11 through Camp X-Ray

Abstract

The collapse of the World Trade Center Towers in 2001 opened a new era in world history. As a global mark, the period that followed the September 11 attacks brought more unease not only to the United States but to several countries with special damages to some Asian countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan. The dominating debris image was soon shaped and reinterpreted by the defensive attitude of the American government to launch a war against terror. Besides promoting an effective security policy by democratic means in the American sense, surveillance measures were also heightened, making Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay notorious for its dehumanizing service. Taking its departure from September 11, this paper aims to analyze the detainee camp in Guantanamo post-9/11 in its retold version in the film with the same name Camp X-Ray (2014) with a focus on the nation’s foundational rhetoric of power that does not abstain from dehumanizing attitudes. Unlike the prison system, the camp in Guantanamo for the detainees erases one’s individuality and offers endless nothingness for the one inside. Also, this reveals America’s psyche after 9/11.