noah, brianne, tippy, and i visited ground zero today (capitalization not required) and we (or i) felt a little disappointed. the area was nothing like the memorial space we (or i) had expected; the sky was clear, traffic flowed smoothly, and a few individuals attempted to sell world trade center memorabilia – a genre which, by the way, has nothing to do with memory. it was business as usual.
perhaps the restoration of the everyday may be construed as a political event in itself. insofar as the sanctity of 9/11 has vaporized from the daily new york imaginary, it seems as though 11 september 2001 becomes a date like any other. as noah points out in the paper he will present tomorrow, the translation of “11 september 2001″ into “9/11″ erases from the domain of the sensible all other events that happened on that day as well as on 11 september of other years. perhaps this emergence of an everyday bears witness to 9/11 finally passing into the past.
what political possibilities for critiquing us global hegemony enacted through violences that contradict the promises of democracy and for extending a wider respect to absolute alterity are becoming possible in the birth of a post-9/11 world?
