Intersections or Misdirections? Problematising Crossroads of Memory in the Commemoration of 9/11

Abstract

The turn towards transculturalism engenders a focus on modes of remembrance that conceptualise memory as dialogic and diverse rather than hierarchical and linear. However, this paper expresses concern that this apparent openness will lead to the presumption that all manifestations of ‘multidirectional’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ memory are ethically-oriented, according commemorative practice a transparency that is not always merited. Particularly disquieting are overly analogical memorial endeavours that suggest unproblematic equivalence between historical events, as exemplified by the reliance upon tropes inherited from Holocaust discourse in the public memorial culture of 9/11. This paper analyses the convergence of two pre-existing cultural discourses in the American public sphere after 9/11. The first relates to the ‘Americanization’ of the Holocaust in memorial culture from the early 1990s, which critics have suggested involves a transition from viewing the Holocaust as a historical event to reading it as an affirmative national parable. The second concerns the mobilisation of the Holocaust in support of U.S. military intervention in foreign policy rhetoric in the post-Cold War period. Analysing the intersection of these discourses with the narrative of American exceptionalism, I question whether the prevalence of Holocaust tropes in 9/11's memorial culture suggests a deliberate appropriation of its master narrative of loss. I argue that, in the decade since 9/11, other memorial constellations have been ignored in favour of less problematic acts of historical analogy. Ultimately, I call for greater attention to the potential consequences of applying analogical templates of remembrance without adequate self-reflexivity. I suggest that it is not always the most visible points of connection that offer the potential for ethical modes of remembrance, but the hidden histories, the forgotten memories, whose relationship to 9/11 opens the most important claims to attention.

Notes

¹ Conceptualised in Pierre Nora's (1989) seminal work on lieux de memoire

² None of these memorials is federally funded: they have been respectively financed by money raised by the National September 11 Museum and Memorial, the Pentagon Memorial Fund, and the National Park Service.

³ The passing of the ‘Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act’ in April 2009 subsequently declared September 11 the National Day of Service and Remembrance, repositioning citizens' duties from patriotism to service in the local community.

⁴ The Act provides ‘a medal of appropriate design to be awarded by the President to the memorials established at the 3 sites honoring the men and women who perished as a result of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001’ (S.1239).

⁵ Such cosmopolitanism is foregrounded in the post-9/11 novels of Schwartz (2005) and O'Neill (2008) and problematised in the recent fiction of Waldman (2011).

⁶ A notable exception is Spiegelman (2004), whose response to 9/11 tries to disconnect traumatic experience from celebratory national narratives through intertextual reference to his earlier work on the Holocaust.

⁷ Hilene Flanzbaum argues that ‘The Diary of Anne Frank has long been the most prominent artefact in the Americanization of the Holocaust’ (Flanzbaum 1999: 1), citing the text as a key means of transforming the history of the Holocaust into ‘a story of universal appeal, about unfailing optimism and the strength of the human spirit as manifested in the face of terrible deprivations’ (3).

⁸ Finkelstein opposes Nazi holocaust, ‘the actual historical event’, to The Holocaust, ‘its ideological representation’ (Finkelstein 2003: 3).

⁹ Although this term originally referred to the decision to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty in June 2001, it is most commonly associated with the state's military policies after 9/11. Perhaps the clearest definition of its generally accepted meaning is given in the National Security Strategy of the United States (2002).

¹⁰ It thus seems as though the admission of historical guilt cited by Desch (reticence to act in the face of Nazi atrocity) facilitates a redoubled assertion of contemporary innocence.

¹¹ Foer (2006) problematizes the perpetrator-victim relationship in his post-9/11 novel, overlaying the histories of 9/11 and the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II.

¹² With the exception of Shamsie's (2009) novel depicting the interrelated of histories of destruction in Nagasaki, post-colonial Pakistan, Soviet Afghanistan and post-9/11 America.

¹³ Agamben (1998) argues that bare life positions the (desubjectified) subject at once outside the protection of the law and as the object of its most punitive elements.

¹⁴ A greater willingness to address the ‘Other’ can be seen in a number of post-9/11 aimed at teenage readerships such as Abudallah (2009), Stine (2005), and Meminger (2009), who open up connections to alternative histories. Hamid (2007) also offers a more contextualized perspective by setting his narratives outside the heavily emotional climate of the United States.