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

Abstract

This article explores the endurance of the pervasive framing of “9/11” as a moment of temporal rupture within the United States. It argues that 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 construction’s discursive sedimentation and; second, because of its vigorous defence by successive US administrations. In making these arguments this article seeks to extend relevant contemporary 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.

Keywords:

• 9/11
• terrorism
• war on terror
• memory
• time
• constructivism

Acknowledgements

We thank the editors and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Any errors remain our own.

Notes

1. A related literature seeks to contrast constructions and realities of the threat posed by terrorism (e.g., Mueller 2005, 2006), one that connects to conceptual discussion on “threat inflation” (e.g., Kaufmann 2004; Flibbert 2006).

2. Compare, for example, Novick (1999) and Finkelstein (2003) on the Holocaust.

3. Security cultures can be understood as a shared body of assumptions, belief, norms and associated practices related to the security of the state and/or other social actors. Security cultures are thus “patterns of thought and argumentation that establish pervasive and durable security preferences by formulating concepts of the role, legitimacy and efficacy of particular approaches to protecting values. Through a process of socialisation, security cultures help establish the core assumptions, beliefs and values of decision-makers” and the general public about “how security challenges can and should be dealt with” and, more fundamentally, about what is a security challenge or what is likely to become one. This definition is developed from Williams (2007, 279).

4. Graham (2007) notes the increasing significance of the “Homeland” trope after “9/11”.

5. Where the Pearl Harbor project attempted to record the views of the “man on the street”, the 9/11 research was far more likely to be pursued in homes, schools and workplaces. Interviews were arranged and conducted in a similar, unstructured, fashion, however, albeit with marked replication of themes therein, especially as greater time elapsed since 9/11.

6. Research into flashbulb memories has shown that recollections of the experience of September 11th were increasingly brought into line with knowledge of “9/11” learned in later days and weeks. See, for example, Luminet and Curci (2009).

7. Indeed, efforts to articulate “9/11” as something other than an act of terrorism were also evident after the attacks within academia and beyond, including as a criminal or military act (see Jackson et al. 2011, 62–67).

8. And it is, of course, extremely problematic. See, for instance, Cynthia Weber’s “I am an American” project and Butler (2004).

9. See, for instance, commemorative patches in preparation at “9-11 Patch Project”.

10. This continuing importance is, of course, itself in part a product of this particular construction of temporality (see Jarvis 2009a, 60–61). Our thanks to one of the reviewers for pointing this out.

11. As one reviewer helpfully identified, this effort speaks also to recent engagements with the “vernacular” or “everyday” in International Relations and Security Studies (e.g., Jarvis and Lister 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jack Holland

Jack Holland is lecturer in International Relations at the University of Surrey. He is author of Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses after 9/11 (Routledge 2013), and his research has recently been published in European Journal of International Relations, British Journal of Politics and International Relations and Millennium Journal of International Studies. Recent books include the co-edited, Obama’s Foreign Policy: Ending the War on Terror (Routledge 2013, with Michelle Bentley) and co-authored, Security Studies: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave 2014, with Lee Jarvis).

Lee Jarvis

Lee Jarvis is a senior lecturer in International Security at the University of East Anglia. He is author of Times of Terror: Discourse, Temporality and the War on Terror and co-author (with Richard Jackson, Jeroen Gunning and Marie Breen Smyth) of Terrorism: A Critical Introduction. His research is in print or forthcoming in journals including Security Dialogue, Political Studies, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, International Relations, Terrorism and Political Violence and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.