Altering the “Inner Life of the Culture”: Monstrous Memory and the Persistence of 9/11

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Notes

Thanks to Nancy Chater, Kathleen Gallagher, Angela MacDonald, and Jenny Peto for helpful comments on previous drafts of this article.

DeLillo, Don Mao II (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 41.

DeLillo, Don, “In the Ruins of the Future,” The Guardian (December 22, 2001) (first published in Harpers, December 2001).

Duck and Cover was a short educational film produced in 1951 by the United States federal government's Civil Defense branch shortly after the Soviet Union began nuclear testing. On December 6, 2006 it was posted to YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = CoK_L2DXpOI. (accessed May 19, 2008). Such films were often followed by classroom drills during which students were expected to “duck and cover” under their desks.

Williams, Raymond, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1977).

Spiegelman, Art, In the Shadows of No Towers (New York: Pantheon, 2004).

Williams, 132.

Rayner, Timothy, “Time and the Event: Reflections on September 11, 2001,” Theory and Event 5:4 (2001).

Gallagher, Kathleen, personal communication.

DeLillo, 2001.

Ibid.

The one-minute video of Quintera Yazzie's response to the events of September 11, 2001 can be seen on the following website: http://www.itvs.org/9.11/dsl/1.html. (accessed May 19, 2008). Also of interest are the viewer comments on this video that at the time of this writing span a six-year period.

Simon, Roger I., Rosenberg, Sharon, and Eppert, Claudia “The Pedagogical Encounter of Historical Remembrance,” in Simon, Roger I., Rosenberg, Sharon, and Eppert, Claudia (Eds.), Between Hope and Despair: Pedagogy and the Remembrance of Historical Trauma (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 1–8.

Simpson, David, 9/11: The Culture of Commemoration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 139.

Marshall Clark, Mary, “The September 11, 2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project: A First Report,” The Journal of American History 89: (September 2002), 569–579.

Marshall Clark, 573.

Marshall Clark, 571.

Stone, Oliver, The World Trade Center (Paramount Pictures, 2006).

King, Jr., Martin Luther, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 62–63.

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition) (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004).

Jacobson, Sid and Colon, Ernie, The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006).

McKenna, Terence, The Secret History of 9/11, CBC Television, Toronto. First aired Sunday September 10, 2006.

Cunningham, David L., The Path to 9/11, Marc Platt Productions, 2006.

Habermas, Jürgen, “Fundamentalism and Terror: A Dialogue with Jürgen Habermas,” in Borradori, Giovanna, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

McEwen, Ian, Saturday (London: Random House, 2005).

Foer, Jonathan Safran, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).

See, Carolyn, There Will Never Be Another You (New York: Random House, 2006).

Weingarten, Gene, “Fear Itself: Learning to Live in the Age of Terrorism,” Washington Post (August 22, 2004), W18.

Chachine, Youssef, Gitai, Amos, et al, 11‘09’' 01 - September 11, CIH Shorts, 2002.

Moore, Oliver, “Quit Crying, Musharraf Tells Canada,” The Globe and Mail A1 (September 26, 2006).

Butler, Judith, “Violence, Mourning, Politics,” in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso, 2004), 19–49.

Simpson, David, 166.

Welty, Adele, Speech presented during the panel discussion: “Five Years Ago: 9/11 Survivors and Families” in Ann Arbor, MI, September 20, 2006. http://www.peacefultomorrows.org/article.php?id=733. (accessed May 19, 2008).

September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Mission Statement, September 11, 2006. 9/11/06. http://www.peacefultomorrows.org/article.php?id=698. (accessed May 19, 2008).

“Terror Victims from Around the World Announce Historic Coalition with 9/11 Families.” http://www.peacefultomorrows.org/article.php?id=694. (accessed May 19, 2008).

Butler, 49.

The question of the origin of moral responsibility has a long and contentious history. In this instance I am siding with Emmanuel Levinas who writes of the ethical in the moment of encounter with another, in a passive moment of subjection in which one is literally seized by the encounter with the face of the other. For a helpful discussion of issues of moral philosophy implicit in my argument in this article, see Catherine Chalier What Ought I to Do?: Morality in Kant and Levinas, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).

Warner, Michael, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002); Calhoun, Craig, “Imagining Solidarity: Cosmopolitanism, Constitutional Patriotism, and the Public Sphere,” Public Culture 14:1 (January 2002), 147–171.

For an extensive account of cultural politics of terrorism and its ties to the operation of state power see Giroux, Henry, Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism: Global Uncertainty and the Challenge of the New Media (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2006).

Debord, Guy, “Comments on the Society of the Spectacle” (pp. 13–19) cited in Boal, Iain, Clark, T. J., Matthews, Joseph, and Watts, Michael, “The State, The Spectacle, and September 11th” in Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (2nd ed.) (New York: Verso, 2006), 22.

Boal, Iain, Clark, T. J., Matthews, Joseph, and Watts, Michael, “The State, The Spectacle, and September 11th,” In Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (2nd ed.) (New York: Verso, 2006), 31.

Butler, 27.

Britten, T. and Lyle, G., “We Don't Need Another Hero,” Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Sound Track (1985). http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tinaturner/wedontneedanotherhero.html. (accessed May 19, 2008).

Thanks to Angela MacDonald for reiterating this insight in her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.