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ABSTRACT
This paper offers a critical rhetorical analysis of the counterterrorist arguments that were presented by 9/11 families and their representatives when they sued Saudi Arabians for their role in the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. By drawing from Foucault’s concept of governmentality, and by extending the work of critical security studies scholars who critique populist support for the Global War on Terrorism, the authors argue that supporters of the eventual passage of a bill known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act were able to interrogate official notions of <sovereign immunity>. By taking advantage of their social capital, their victimage status that was based on their traumatic experiences, and their moral authority, empowered 9/11 family members allowed the National September 11 Memorial and Memorial Museum to function as a governmentality that helped produce contested public memories and particular types of subjectivities. Visitors and defenders of this hallowed site were invited to become freedom fighters who vigilantly engaged in counterterrorist practices by questioning more official historiographies and public memories of 9/11 as they sued Saudi conspirators.
Notes
1 See, for example, James Joyner, “How Perpetual War Became US Ideology,” The Atlantic, May 11, 2011, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/05/how-perpetual-war-became-us-ideology/238600/ (accessed 13 June 2018).
2 Cristina Resher Fominaya and Rosemary Barberet, “The Right to Commemoration and ‘Ideal Victims’: The Puzzle of Victim Satisfaction with State-Led Commemoration after 9/11 and 3/11,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 11, no. 2 (2018): 1–24. doi:10.1080/17539153.2018.1433952.
3 See James Rosen, “Families of 9/11 Victims Might Soon Get Day in Court against Saudi Officials,” The Miami Herald, last modified 23 February 2017, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article134393744.html (accessed June 13, 2018).
4 Edward S. Casey, “Public Memory in Place and Time,” in Framing Public Memory, ed. Kendall Phillips (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 17.
5 Ibid.
6 Fominaya and Barberet, “The Right to Commemoration.”
7 Throughout this essay, we follow what we call the “University of Iowa school” practice of placing carrots around key ideographs that appear in salient public controversies. As we outline the various ideographs that have been a part of the Foucauldian dispositifs that have shaped the contested texture of memories at Ground Zero, we pay homage to the work of Professor McGee. See Michael Calvin McGee, “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link between Rhetoric and Ideology,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 66, no. 1 (1980): 1–16. doi:10.1080/00335638009383499.
8 Rosen, “Families of 9/11 Victims,” paragraph 11.
9 Seung Min Kim, “Congress Hands Obama First Veto Override,” Politico, last modified 28 September 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/senate-jasta-228841 (accessed 13 June 2018).
10 Karoun Demirjian and Juliet Eilperin, “Congress Overrides Obama’s Veto of 9/11 Bill,” The Washington Post, last modified 28 September 2016, paragraphs 6, 8, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/09/27/senate-poised-to-vote-to-override-obamas-veto-of-911-bill/?utm_term=.c658f1ec4e5a (accessed 13 June 2018).
11 Michel Foucault, “8 March 1978,” in Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977–78, ed. Michel Sennellart, trans. Graham Burchell (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 235.
12 Marita Sturken, “The 9/11 Memorial Museum and the Remaking of Ground Zero,” American Quarterly 67, no. 2 (June, 2015): 471.
13 Karen W. Baptist, “Incompatible Identities: Memory and Experience at the National September 9/11 Memorial and Museum,” Emotion, Space and Society 15 (2015): 3–4.
14 James Young, “The Memorial’s Arc: Between Berlin’s Denkmal and New York City’s 9/11 Memorial,” Memory Studies 9, no. 3 (2016): 325–31.
15 Ibid., 325–26.
16 William Walters, “Drone Strikes, Dingpolitik and Beyond: Furthering the Debate on Materiality and Security,” Security Dialogue 45, no. 2 (2014): 101–18. Some of this type of critical security work has also influenced the work of architects interested in the study of social justice and space and place. See, for example, Eyal Weizman et al., “Forensic Architecture,” Architectural Design 80, no. 5 (2010): 58–63. doi:10.1002/ad.113.
17 Greg Dickinson, Carole Blair, and Brian L. Ott, eds., Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2010).
18 9/11 Commission, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Commission on Terrorist Attack, 2004), 346.
19 Steven Brill, “Is America any Safer?” The Atlantic, 16 September 2016, paragraph 241, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/are-we-any-safer/492761/ (accessed 13 June 2018).
20 Kevin Fagan, “The Next Wave of Terror,” The San Francisco Chronicle, last modified 28 October 2001, paragraph 1, http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/The-next-wave-of-terror-Scenario-planners-2865787.php (accessed 13 June 2018).
21 Brill, “Any Safer?” paragraph 93.
22 Charlotte Heath-Kelly, Death and Security: Memory and Mortality at the Bombsite (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2017), 28.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Heath-Kelly, Death and Security, 13, 51, 120.
26 Tony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” New Formations 5 (1988): 73–102.
27 Heath-Kelly, Death and Security, 5.
28 Ibid., 5, 57–92.
29 Nancy Dillon, “WTC Museum Panned. Focus on Attack, Kin Urge,” New York Daily News, last modified 21 June 2005, paragraph 8, http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/wtc-museum-panned-focus-attack-kin-urge-article-1.572628 (accessed 13 June 2018).
30 David Dunlap, “Freedom Museum is Headed for Showdown at Ground Zero,” The New York Times, last modified 22 September 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/nyregion/freedom-museum-is-headed-for-showdown-at-ground-zero.html (accessed 13 June 2018).
31 Casey, “Public Memory,” 30.
32 Theresa Ann Donofrio, “Ground Zero and Place-Making Authority: The Conservative Metaphors in 9/11 Families’ ‘Take Back the Memorial’ Rhetoric,” Western Journal of Communication 74, no. 2 (2010): 156. doi:10.1080/10570311003614492.
33 Ibid., 157.
34 Ibid., 164.
35 See Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
36 Donofrio, “Take Back the Memorial.”
37 Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York, NY: Verso, 2006).
38 See Michel Foucault, “Omnes Et Singulatim,” in The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Nikolas Rose (New York, NY: The New Press, 2003), 263–78.
39 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 235.
40 Barbara Biesecker, “No Time for Mourning: The Rhetorical Production of the Melancholic Citizen-Subject in the War on Terror,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 40, no. 1 (2007): 147–69.
41 Ibid., 152.
42 Ibid., 152.
43 Caleb Hannah, “One Man’s Quest to Prove Saudi Arabia Bankrolled 9/11,” Politico, last modified 7 April 2017, paragraph 4, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/saudi-arabia-911-lawyer-214996 (accessed 13 June 2018).
44 Jim Sciutto, Ryan Browne, Deirdre Walsh, “Congress Releases Secret ‘28 Pages’ on Alleged Saudi 9/11 Ties,” CNN, lasted modified 15 July 2016, paragraph 3, http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/15/politics/congress-releases-28-pages-saudis-9-11/index.html (accessed 13 June 2018).
45 Ibid., paragraph 4.
46 Ibid., paragraph 13.
47 Brandon Jones, “Congress Unites to Override Obama’s Veto of 9/11 Victim Bill, JASTA, Allowing Families to Sue Saudis,” The Global Dispatch, last modified 28 September 2016, paragraph 16, http://www.theglobaldispatch.com/congress-unites-to-override-obamas-veto-of-911-victim-bill-jasta-allowing-families-to-sue-saudis-69366/ (accessed 13 June 2018).
48 Ibid., paragraph 6.
49 Min Kim, “Congress Hands Obama First,” paragraph 4.
50 Ibid., paragraph 8.
51 Ibid., paragraph 15.
52 Ibid., paragraph 14.
53 Ibid., paragraph 18.
54 Ibid., paragraph 20.
55 Max Greenwood and Akbar Shahid Ahmed, “Barack Obama Makes Last-Minute Push to Block Saudi 9/11 Bill,” Huffington Post, last modified 28 September 2016, paragraph 4, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/barack-obama-jasta-letter_us_57ebd8d3e4b082aad9b81a75 (accessed 13 June 2018).
56 Callum Patton, “Saudis Paid Veterans to Oppose Bill,” Newsweek, 11 May 2017, paragraph 9, http://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia-paid-veterans-lobby-congress-against-911-lawsuit-law-607655 (accessed 13 June 2018).
57 Paul Sperry, “Vets Say They Were Duped into Helping Saudi Arabia Dodge Payouts to 9/11 Victims,” New York Post, last modified 5 March 2017, paragraph 10, https://nypost.com/2017/03/05/vets-say-they-were-duped-into-helping-saudi-arabia-dodge-payouts-to-911-victims/ (accessed 13 June 2018).
58 Patton, “Saudis Paid Veterans,” paragraph 10.
59 Zee News, “Pakistan Banks Sent Funds to UAE to Finance 9/11, 26/11 Terror Attacks,” Zeenews, last modified June 27, 2017, http://zeenews.india.com/asia/pakistan-banks-sent-funds-to-uae-to-finance-9/11-26/11-terror-attacks-2019256.html (accessed 13 June 2018).
60 Ibid., paragraph 6.
61 Ibid., paragraph 10.
62 Jonathan Stempel, “Saudi Arabia Seeks to End US Lawsuits Over September 11 Attacks,” Reuters, last modified 1 August 2017, paragraph 11, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-sept11/saudi-arabia-seeks-to-end-u-s-lawsuits-over-sept-11-attacks-idUSKBN1AH4RL (accessed 13 June 2018).
63 Ben Hubbard and David D. Kirkpatrick, “The Upstart Saudi Prince Who’s Throwing Caution to the Wind,” The New York Times, last modified 14 November 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-mohammedbin-salman.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-columnregion®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news (accessed 13 June 2018).
64 For other rhetorical analyses that share some affinities with our poststructural or postmodern analyses, see Carole Blair, Marsha S. Jeppeson, and Enrico Pucci Jr. “Public Memorializing in Postmodernity: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial as Prototype,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 77, no. 3 (1991): 263–88; Greg Dickinson, Brian L. Ott, and Eric Aoki, “Spaces of Remembering and Forgetting: The Reverent Eye/I at the Plains Indian Museum,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3, no. 1 (2006): 27–47; Carole Blair and Neil Michel, “Reproducing Civil Rights Tactics: The Rhetorical Performances of the Civil Rights Memorial,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 30, no. 2 (2000): 31–55.
65 Paul Elliott Johnson, “The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump’s Demagoguery,” Women’s Studies in Communication 40, no. 3 (2017): 230.
66 Butler, Precarious Life.
67 Fominaya and Berberet, “The Right to Commemoration,” 30–31.
68 Claire Sisco King, “It Cuts Both Ways: Fight Club, Masculinity, and Abject Hegemony,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6, no. 4 (2009): 366–85.
69 Kendall R. Phillips and G. Mitchell Reyes, eds., Global Memoryscapes: Contesting Remembrance in a Transnational Age (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2011).