Blackness after 9/11: topographies of race and counter-terror at the 9/11 memorial museum

ABSTRACT

More than a decade after the murder of Trayvon Martin and the creation of the Black Lives Matter protest movement, extrajudicial killings have become all too commonplace in the post-9/11 landscape, mirroring two decades of racialised surveillance against Arab and Muslim populations in the name of counter-terrorism. This paper maps Blackness’ proximity to the U.S. nation-state amidst the emergence of 9/11 memory and the post-9/11 counter-terrorism imaginary. Paramount to the longest war in US history (2001–2021), for example, Black patriotism is a powerful product and purveyor of the military industrial complex’s Global War on Terror. Yet while Black heroism and sacrifice are deeply encoded within the post-9/11 imaginary at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center, the Global War on Terrorism has ushered in the re-racialisation of both Brown and Black communities, as well as the fantasy of a “post-racial” nation now firmly in ruin in the age of Trumpism and the alt-right. Analysing key artefacts and narrative scripts within the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, I argue that 9/11 memory and the Global War on Terrorism work in tandem to reproduce new/old geographies of “terror” and “threat”, investigating how Blackness has always been central to the racialised logics of counter-terrorism and state surveillance.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-Black racism
• 9/11 memory
• global war on terrorism
• Counter-terrorism
• 9/11 memorial & museum

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. As examples of this, please refer to the National Security Entry/Exit Registration System, or “Special Registration” program for Muslim and Arab immigrants, officially enacted from 2002 to 2011, as well as undercover surveillance at regional mosques, Muslim-owned businesses, and other community institutions, by the NYPD and NJSP (see Shamas and Arastu 2013).

2. “Kill the Ground Zero Mosque” was the Republic-run political ad slogan that ran during the 2010 midterm elections against the mosque.

3. The Council on American–Islamic Relations was founded in 1994.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jacque Micieli-Voutsinas

Jacque Micieli-Voutsinas is a critical museum and heritage studies scholar with research and teaching expertise on 9/11 memory and landscapes of terrorism, broadly defined. Her research program explores the evocative power of places of difficult heritage to cultivate public emotion (such as fear, empathy, and hope) and generate a collective sense of community in the wake of traumatizing events. She is particularly interested in trauma-informed museum practices and the pedagogical power of heritage landscapes to advance or impede social change. Drawing on anti-racist, queer, and feminist theories of intersectionality, affect, and emotion, her work on heritage landscapes critically interrogates dominant narratives of cultural memory and questions of historical justice. She is an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Graduate Program of Museum Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville.