Towering Figures: Reading the 911 Archive

275 Pages·2011·1.62 MB·English

by  Sven Cvek

Towering Figures
Reading the
9/11 Archive
COSTERUS NEW SERIES 190
Series Editors:
C.C. Barfoot, László Sándor Chardonnens
and Theo D’haen
Towering Figures
Reading the
9/11 Archive
Sven Cvek
Amsterdam-New York, NY 2011
Cover Image by Clémentine Choubrac. FDNY Firehouse Engine 28 &
Ladder 11, Lower East Side, NYC.
Image processing by Draško Ivezić.
Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
"ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation- Paper for
documents- Requirements for permanence".
ISBN: 978-90-420-3378-8
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0076-9
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam- New York, NY 2011
Printed in the Netherlands
Dedicated to the memory of
Aldo Cvek (1953-2009)

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments 5

Introduction: Reading the 9/11 Archive 7

1 Enduring Event: Telling Stories
around September 11 18

2 Constant Replay: Community Building at
the Site/Sight of Trauma 39

3 Common Ground: Melodramas of 9/11 58

4 Shock and Own: Mediation and Expropriation
In the Shadow of No Towers 81

5 Globalizing (the) Nation 108

6 The Market Moves Us in Mysterious Ways:
Don DeLillo on 9/11 123

7 Cosmopolis: A Meditation
on Deterritorialization 151

8 Killing Politics: The Art of Recovery
in Falling Man 181

9 Good Mourning, America: Genealogies of Loss
in Against the Day 211

Conclusion 245

Bibliography 253

Index 265

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank the first readers of this manuscript: Stipe Grgas
(who supervised its inception), Sonja Bašić and Jelena Šesnić,
my colleagues from the Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences in Zagreb. Their support and friendship surpass the
covers of this book. For her timely interventions and patience, I
am also grateful to Željka Švrljuga of the University of Bergen,
Norway.
This book grew out of the doctoral dissertation I started
working on in 2006, during my Fulbright year as a visiting
scholar at New York University. My experience in the
American Studies Program at NYU’s Department of Social and
Cultural Analysis has been invaluable, and I would like to give
credit to all the people, both teachers and students, I had the
opportunity to meet and work with there. I finished writing in
February 2011 in Berlin, thanks to a research grant from the
John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies.
I am indebted to Draško Ivezić, who helped out with the
layout, and was willing to accept olive oil in place of cash.
The people to whom I owe most are my friends and my
family, because their encouragement is unyielding.
Like other, more significant ones, this endeavor too would
not have been possible without Clem: your bravery gives me
strength.