September 11 Attacks (Aftermath)

The terrorist attacks that took place in the United States on September 11, 2001, represent one of the defining events of the early 21st century. Their aftermath reveals the significance of the transience and durability of material remains in the contested remembering and forgetting of historical events. On the one hand, the site of the attacks has been the subject of dispute concerning the symbolic and public health implications of its cleanup and the memorialization and reconstruction of Ground Zero. On the other hand, the circulation of human and nonhuman remains from the World Trade Center and surrounding buildings—their sifting at Fresh Kills Landfill and material conversion, sacralization, and commodification in the form of scrap metal, [Page 795]military equipment, and commemorative objects—illustrates the politics of waste and recycling and their relationship to the delicate materiality of history and memory.

On September 11, 2001, members of the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda conspired to hijack four passenger airplanes in the United States and deliberately crash them into planned targets, including the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon building in Virginia. All 246 passengers aboard the planes were killed, including 19 hijackers, along with 2,606 civilians and emergency service workers in and around the World Trade Center, and 125 at the Pentagon. The political aftermath that followed included the transformation of domestic homeland security through the Patriot Act and the War on Terror of the Bush and Obama administrations, most notably the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq by U.S.-led forces.

The term 9/11 has since come to stand for the event as a whole, understood as a dramatic turning point in recent history, and has acquired a central place in geopolitical discourse as well as in American national memory and political culture. Moreover, the continual reconciliation of 9/11 the material event with “9/11” the ever-changing and politically evocative symbol has been expressed, more than anywhere else, in the contested preservation and transformation of the remains found at Ground Zero at the site of the former World Trade Center.