POST 9/11 AMERICA: IN SEARCH OF A NARRATIVE

Abstract

For the great majority of the public, the WTC explosions were events on the TV screen, and when we watched the oft-repeated shot of frightened people running towards the camera ahead of the giant cloud of dust from the collapsing tower, was not the framing of the shot itself reminiscent of spectacular shots in catastrophe movies, a special effect which outdid all others, since reality is the best appearance of itself? (Zizek 2002: 11) The gap between the way in which they viewed themselves internally and the way in which they were perceived from the outside became wider and wider. In the middle of this historical stagnation when events had been "on strike", the attacks on the World Trade Center represent an "absolute event, the 'mother' of all events, the pure event uniting within itself all the events that have never taken place" (Baudrillard 2002: 4). Terrorism is a virus that lurks in the shadows of any system of domination waiting for its seeds to ripen in order to launch its infection on the world; it is the evil twin of the dominant power, growing in its shadow, waiting for the right moment to destabilize and take over the system; this symbolic image of the evil twin, of the double that mimics in an upside-down reflection the appearance and the values of the dominant power it secretly seeks to destroy, is strengthened by the allegory Borges created in Fauna of Mirrors in the story of the mirror people who were defeated and exiled into the mirrors, punished for their audacity to fight against the Empire and forced to reflect the image of the conquerors. Initially, the attacks on World Trade Center had been characterized as "acts of murder" (Bush 2001a), only to be recast as "acts of war" (Bush 2001b) and a "new Pearl Harbor" (Bush 2001b) the following day, justifying linguistically a war-based or military response.

Headnote

Abstract: Post 9/11 America was a nation in search of a narrative that could help it rebuild the threads that had been severed by the trauma of the attacks. The paper explores the different ways in which this shattered narrative had been reconstructed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of World Trade Centre.

Keywords: identity, narrative, representation, trauma

1. Introduction

For Zizek, in Welcome to the Desert of the Real, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 came to shatter the illusory haze in which many of the Americans were living. This illusion was artificially maintained by the capitalist doctrine of progress and prosperity and by the fake premise of safety from history's horrors that took place beyond the borders of America in the grim reality, in the desert of the Real of the Third World. America's "holiday from history" (Zizek 2002: 56), its apparent peace and equilibrium were an illusion built on all the catastrophes, the battles and the wars that were fought elsewhere. This elsewhere became a fictional land from where the ignoble face of war and evil appeared from time to time on the screens of the privileged, sheltered world of the dominant power. The evil was external, projected on the outskirts of the Real. The superpower had learnt to fight its wars in this barren space, in this historical wasteland that had no possible connection with the Virtual Reality of the Empire. The war was kept far away from the homeland haven, locked, entrapped inside the protective television screen. The terrorist attacks in the morning of September 11, broke the TV screen and penetrated the Virtual Reality of the pampered power. The threat of war was no longer an attribute of that elsewhere, of the chaotic Third World, it was now fought in America's backyard; war, history, and the Real had finally pervaded the sheltered Virtual Reality of the dominant power. The world that had been locked up inside the TV screen had burst free and had entrapped the Empire inside the confines of the screen. The dominant power had exchanged places with the desert of the Third World and moved on from watching the news to being the news.

The Americans believed in the American image they had constructed - of wealth, righteousness, exceptionalism and moral superiority on the global stage. Slowly this image became a virtual identity many adopted. Dulled by their success stories and wrapped in their affluence, the American society descended into the aseptic realm of Virtual Reality. Cocooned in a semblance of "real life deprived of the weight and inertia of materiality" (Zizek 2002: 14) they withdrew from the Real so much so that they failed to recognize it as such when history had finally forced itself on them:

Virtual Reality simply generalizes this procedure of offering a product deprived of its substance, of the hard resistant kernel of the Real. Virtual Reality is experienced as reality without being so. What happens at the end of this process of virtualization, however, is that we begin to experience the "real reality" itself as a virtual entity. For the great majority of the public, the WTC explosions were events on the TV screen, and when we watched the oft-repeated shot of frightened people running towards the camera ahead of the giant cloud of dust from the collapsing tower, was not the framing of the shot itself reminiscent of spectacular shots in catastrophe movies, a special effect which outdid all others, since reality is the best appearance of itself? (Zizek 2002: 11)

The gap between the way in which they viewed themselves internally and the way in which they were perceived from the outside became wider and wider. These two utterly incompatible images clashed in the morning of September 11. America was blown away by the sheer magnitude of the hatred directed against it. The wound inflicted by the terrorist attack was also the wound of one that unexpectedly and brutally is confronted with its own image in the mirror.

2. 9/11 and the virus of terrorism

Until the terrorist attacks on September 11, Baudrillard had characterized the contemporary era as being an era of "weak events", one that is depleted of "symbolic events that represent a setback for globalization itself' (Baudrillard 2002: 3). In the middle of this historical stagnation when events had been "on strike", the attacks on the World Trade Center represent an "absolute event, the 'mother' of all events, the pure event uniting within itself all the events that have never taken place" (Baudrillard 2002: 4). The event constitutes a severe blow on the relation between history and power as well as on the society's abilities of analysis. All that has been said and written in connection to the attacks, all the emotional violence that has emanated worldwide as a response to the attacks are part of the "gigantic abreaction both to the event itself and to the fascination it exerts" (Baudrillard 2002: 4).

For Baudrillard, the demonization of terrorism, the moral stance adopted as a reaction to it, the alliance that was formed against it and the subconscious, almost visceral "jubilation" at the possibility of seeing this global superpower defeated, humiliated or destroyed are the two sides of the same coin. The world's fascination at witnessing the collapse of this superpower stems from the secret belief that it is precisely this superpower, which now has been humbled, that has engendered all this pandemic violence that has infected the world with the terrorist disease. Terrorism is the face of the new found "evil" humanity has set itself the task of exorcising. It is pervading, permeating the layers of society, the "everywhere" and "everything" of our world like an "obscure object of desire" (Baudrillard 2002: 6); it is the new threat that unifies and coalesces the contemporary world, reinforcing the boundaries between us and them, between our world, and their world, between the civilized and the barbaric.

There is a complicity of evil that goes beyond the anger "the disinherited and the exploited who have ended up on the wrong side of the global order" (Baudrillard 2002: 6) feel towards the superpower. This complicity of evil and hatred is shared even by those that rejoice in the same advantages as the global superpower, because there is a universal reaction of contestation and insubordination in relation to any pre-established or well-established order or power; there is a perverse will to destroy, to destabilize a power that is hegemonic and global, to "reject any system growing all the stronger as it approaches perfection or omnipotence" (Baudrillard 2002: 7). The world recoils its guilt, completely setting itself apart morally and linguistically from the immoral violence of terrorism, but Baudrillard is merciless in his analysis stating that "we can say that they did it, but we wished for it" (Baudrillard 2002: 5).

The fact that we have dreamt of this event that everyone without exception has dreamt of it - because no one can avoid dreaming of the destruction of any power that has become hegemonic to this degree - is unacceptable to the Western moral conscience. (Baudrillard 2002: 5)

Terrorism is what "haunts every world order, all hegemonic domination, for it is the world, the globe itself, which resists globalization" (Baudrillard, 2002: 12). Baudrillard sees it as inherent and inseparable from the dominant system of power springing from within its very essence. This would imply, what history has struggled to teach us all along, that every hegemonic, totalitarian, imperial system contains within itself the germs of its destruction.

This is not, then a clash of civilizations or religions, and it reaches far beyond Islam and America, on which efforts are being made to focus the conflict in order to create the delusion of a visible confrontation and a solution based on force. There is, indeed, a fundamental antagonism here, but one which points past the specter of America (which is perhaps, the epicenter, but in no sense the sole embodiment, of globalization) and the specter of Islam (which is not the embodiment of terrorism either), to triumphant globalization battling against itself. (Baudrillard 2002: 11)

Terrorism stems from the vulnerability of a system that, in its desperate struggle to gain power, has become blind to the individual responses concerning its excesses of power. Globalization strives to concentrate the power in the hands of one that stands above and in complete aloofness to species, individuals, cultures and values that are not aiding the proper functioning of the machinery created. The "terroristic situational transfer" (Baudrillard 2002: 9) of the 9/11 attacks was the revenge of the individual against the stifling globalization which allows no alternative form of thinking, no entrance into its game of power for the other, for the outsider. For Baudrillard (2002: 9), terrorism represents "terror against terror". The terror imposed by the system of radicalizing the world through force is countered by the terror of terrorism that aims to radicalize the world by sacrifice.

Terrorism is a virus that lurks in the shadows of any system of domination waiting for its seeds to ripen in order to launch its infection on the world; it is the evil twin of the dominant power, growing in its shadow, waiting for the right moment to destabilize and take over the system; this symbolic image of the evil twin, of the double that mimics in an upside-down reflection the appearance and the values of the dominant power it secretly seeks to destroy, is strengthened by the allegory Borges created in Fauna of Mirrors in the story of the mirror people who were defeated and exiled into the mirrors, punished for their audacity to fight against the Empire and forced to reflect the image of the conquerors. The defeated were "stripped of their power and of their forms and reduced to mere slavish reflections" (Borges 1974: 68). Elowever, the entrapment in the mirror is not eternal. A day will come when the mirror people will look less and less like us; they will no longer reflect our faces and our actions; they will no longer imitate us; the barriers of glass and metal of their mirror prisons will be shattered and they will attack the Empire again.

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 have given rise to a "fourth world war" waged against the excesses of power of an arrogant hegemony and against the reality of an imperial global capitalism that was becoming more and more threatening to other realities and which was casting a colonial monopoly on everyday life. Terrorism was the evil that infiltrated the world the moment the balance of power was upset. With the decline of Communism after the end of the Cold War, there was virtually no other force that could counter the rapid and sole ascension of the supremacy of the positive power. During the Cold War, the two superpowers that became symbolic exponents of Good and Evil had constantly functioned as a counter force for the other, maintaining in this way the equilibrium between the terror exerted and a constant balance of powers. The global triumph of liberal power gave birth to a "ghostly enemy, infiltrating itself throughout the whole planet, slipping in everywhere like a virus, welling up from all the interstices of power: Islam" (Baudrillard 2002: 15).

The 9/11 attacks come to represent a new kind of terrorism, one that has found the vulnerable spot of the system and has learned how to use it against it. Terrorists learned all the rules of the game and how to defeat the system by using its own weapons. They created a spectacle of horror using the modern technology of computer networks, airplanes, media and all the weapons associated with the democratic, capitalist Western world, and succeeded in disrupting the system from within, creating the horror of an attack that was broadcasted globally. The spectre of the "live" attack traumatized a global audience creating the feeling that the entire Western culture and capitalism as well as the globalization system itself were under assault. Not only did they become immersed in the capitalist culture they were seeking to destroy, they also succeeded in turning "their own deaths into an absolute weapon against a system that operates on the basis of the exclusion of death, a system whose ideal is an ideal of zero deaths" (Baudrillard 2002: 16). Using their own deaths as the supreme weapon in the battle against a world that has made continuous attempts at shielding itself against pain and death, the terrorists inverted the relationship between the dominant and the dominated, between master and slave. In the past, the master was the keeper of death, the slave was the one that seemed forever doomed to life and labor. The terrorist attacks have brought a change in that relation of power, exposing our vulnerability in relation to death. Those who use death as an ultimate weapon in the war against power, those who do not make survival their sole aim of living are, symbolically, the new masters.

The world-wide media coverage of the event gave it a global, universal scale. This global spectacle of horror arrested the image of the event, multiplying it on thousands of screens around the world; the excessive repetition of the surrealist moment of the impact revealed the trauma that had engulfed the psyche of a terrified audience that watched in disbelief as the Twin Towers collapsed in on themselves in a symbolic act, which for Baudrillard is suggestive of the system's internal fragility and which resembles a suicide of the entire system of the dominant power.

3. 9/11 - In search of a narrative

Traumatic incidents often leave traumatized individuals and communities at a loss for words, incapable of representing linguistically the horror they have experienced. The linguistic void augments the numbness experienced by the traumatized and the panic of not being able to comprehend the nature of the wound that had maimed them. Everyone that was watching the attacks on the World Trade Center seemed engulfed by this "linguistic paralysis or void of meaning" (Morgan 2009: 26). One of the dominant features of the discourse of World Trade Center survivors was confusion. Although, the moment the second plane hit the South Tower, it became evident that the massive attack that had killed thousands of people was deliberate, most observers failed to grasp the meaning of the events in terms of how it was going to affect the future of the country. Uncertainty and confusion were also prevalent in the discourse offered by the media on the morning of September 11; uncertainty concerning the reasons for such an attack; uncertainty regarding the identity of the attackers; uncertainty and panic not knowing what to expect next, whether or not there were going to be more attacks. The uncertainty and the paranoia of an imminent attack that could strike anywhere and at any given moment took hold of the nation. America was a nation in search of a narrative that could help it rebuild the threads that kept it united.

It was this collective silence and this linguistic void that began to be filled with the discourse and the narrative articulated by the administration. President Bush, who had the authority to speak on behalf of the nation, began to construct a specific interpretation of the events, which soon acquired a dominant position and became the narrative that was politically and socially accepted when talking about what had occurred on 9/11: who the attackers were, why they had done it, what would happen in the future and what would be the response of the country.

Initially, the attacks on World Trade Center had been characterized as "acts of murder" (Bush 2001a), only to be recast as "acts of war" (Bush 2001b) and a "new Pearl Harbor" (Bush 2001b) the following day, justifying linguistically a war-based or military response. The day itself was constructed from a discursive point of view as a moment of temporal and historical rupture, being described as a "day like no other, the day the world changed or the beginning of a new age of terror" (Jarvis 2008: 254). The exceptional quality of the attack and the horror of its brutality constituted the main features that were responsible for creating the subnarrative that was going to promote new ways of dealing with this new kind of enemy, arguing that the old rules and approaches used so far were no longer relevant when having to face the new threat of terrorism. At the same time the attacks were also viewed as part of a historical continuity, since the country had been attacked by totalitarian enemies before, especially during the Second World War and the Cold War. The administration tapped on the American history to request the same collective, joint effort from the nation in order to defeat the new enemy.

Another thread that played an important part in the narrative America was offered, spoke of a massive, global terrorist threat. This terrorist menace endangered not only America, but the entire civilized world, its democracy and freedom, the fundamental human rights and "our entire way of life" (Bush 2001a). The terrorist paranoia was further enhanced and supported by the administration that attested the existence of thousands of fanatical, ruthless, barbaric, well-resourced terrorist killers waiting for an opportunity to strike again. Terrorist cells were reported in countries all over the world, further attacks were imminent and in addition to this there seemed that terrorists had every intention to use weapons of mass destruction in American cities. The threat of acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction became an extremely sensitive issue in the developing of the dominant narrative. Iraq and other members of what became known as the "axis of evil" (Bush 2002) was identified as the main supporter of terrorists and fear became to be formulated that Iraq could provide them with the weapons of mass destruction. The political importance of the discourse that identified Iraq as another possible enemy was tremendous, since it refocused the threat that was jeopardizing the national stability and well-being of America, from an amorphous and more or less anonymous group of individuals to a territory with well defined borders that could be attacked using traditional military means.

The terrorist paranoia took new proportions when the new enemy was also identified as the enemy within. This subnarrative of the "enemy within" (Bush 2002) of the terrorist cells that were "living in our communities" (Bush 2002), that were "ticking time-bombs" (Bush 2002) just waiting to go off was a very important part of the narrative orchestrated by the US administration, meant to create distrust, fear and suspicion among the members of the community; having this threat in mind, the citizens were much easier to manipulate into accepting the new measures the government put forth, which restricted civil liberties, increased the surveillance on US citizens and immigrants and which lead to a further militarization of the American society. All these measures were accepted by the nation as part of the actions necessary to counter the threat of this enemy within.

Another image, which surfaced from the narrative that became the dominant narrative concerning the 9/11 attacks, was the image creating the profile of the enemy. The rhetoric of the enemy is a cognitive and linguistic construct which generates a stereotype portrait of the enemy that embodies all that is in sharp contradiction with the national identity of a state and its values. The schema of the enemy is predominantly negative and fighting against the danger of this new-found evil that threatened the American way of life helped to create a sense of cohesion and a shared identity among the citizens of America. The enemy is often perceived as a "moral threat to freedom, a germ infecting the body politic, a plague upon the liberty of humankind, and a barbarian intent upon destroying civilization" (Morgan 2009: 54).

For nearly half a century, America had found its enemy in the representation of the red menace embodied by the Soviet Union. The end of the Second World War represented a shift from the threats to territorial integrity America had faced to threats that endangered America's ideology and way of life. The Soviet Union represented a threat to democracy and capitalism. For nearly 40 years, the United States' foreign policy was involved in the ideological battle of preventing the spread of communism to other parts of the world. The political rhetoric focused on building a discourse that had as its purpose identifying the Soviet Union and communism as the arch enemy of the United States. This narrative was unquestioned by the American people. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the rhetoric of the enemy lost the prominence it once had in the American political discourse, and the slot which had previously been filled by the communist other remained vacant. The portrait of the red enemy had united the American society in their fight against a common enemy, the Soviet Union and communism. United against a common threat, the United States developed a powerful national identity that was in antithesis to anything the Soviet Union stood for. The Americans believed in individual rights and freedoms, in private property and the free market, promoting less involvement of the government in the lives of the individuals.

The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 rekindled the enemy rhetoric and finally attributed it the face of radical Islamic terrorism. Many of the stereotypes that had once been part of the discourse against the red enemy were reactivated. The administration's discourse characterized terrorists as "evil, savage, cruel, cowardly, inhuman, hate-filled, perverted, alien" (Morgan 2009: 27) and the reason for their actions lay within their barbaric character, prone to evil and destruction, and not in any rational, historical or political motives. Later on, terrorists became part of a more elaborate construction that threatened the civilized world. They became part of "radical Islam" (Bush 2005) or "Islamism" (Bush 2005) or "Islamofascism" (Bush 2005). Americans were described as the victims of "evil and despicable acts of terror" (Bush 2001a) and their portrait was in sharp contrast to the portrait of the terrorist other. Americans were "innocent, good, heroic, decent, and united" (Morgan 2009: 28). These attributes were in direct correlation to many of the cultural elements that have described the American society, like the "cult of innocence" (Morgan 2009: 28), the religious notions of good and evil, hero-worship, militarized patriotism, which formed some of the Western world's metanarratives, like the eternal struggle between good and evil and between civilization and barbarism.

The narrative that filled the linguistic vacuum and the collective silence of the people following the attacks on World Trade Center prepared the nation for war. It had become obvious that America's response to the attack was going to be a "war on terror" (Bush 2001c), as the only possible and legitimate answer to these "acts of war" (Bush 2001b). America had to once again rise up to the task and respond to its "historic calling as an exceptional nation" (Morgan 2009: 28) to protect the free, civilized, democratic world from totalitarianism. In this way, the war on terror continued the line of action established by the United States in the Second World War and the Cold War. The war was a defensive war, a war of last resort and a completely winnable war. The fact that it was also a "new and different war" (Bush, 2001c) suggested that it should be supported by new means and by a new mentality and that it should include measures such as the preemptive attack on Iraq, the handing over of prisoners to countries where torture is allowed, the Guantanamo detention camp, the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques or torture" (Morgan 2009: 28).

The narrative presented by the administration became very soon the dominant and unanimously accepted interpretation of the events. It became part of the political and cultural life in America and was embedded into its social and political institutions. Although subsequent information revealed a manipulation of the intelligence leading up to the Iraq war and massive controversy regarding the discovery of measures of torture and rendition, the administration official narrative still remained the dominant and widely accepted discourse.

4. Conclusion

Now that America has finally been confronted with its illusion of being an island safe in its distance from the violence of war and terror, Zizek talks about the importance of its response and about the immorality of adopting the rhetoric of the victim. He considers that America was given the opportunity to break out from its highly hypocritical protective bubble that has blinded it in connection to the world and should risk

stepping through the fantasmatic screen that separates it from the Outside World, accepting its arrival in the Real World, making the long-overdue move from 'A thing like this shouldn't happen here!' to 'A thing like this should not happen anywhere! (Zizek 2002: 49)

The only way to make sure that the horror of the 9/11 attacks will never happen again in America is to make sure that such horror and destruction will not happen anywhere else in the world. America should learn the lesson of humility and should accept that it is part of the world that has produced the background which gave birth to the 9/11 violence, and, therefore, that it is vulnerable. The response should not be the furious and aggressive retaliation that we have witnessed in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor the "forceful reassertion of the exceptional role of the USA as a global policemen" (Zizek 2002: 49) since the resentment against America had stemmed precisely from this abuse of power and not from the lack of it.

References

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