9.11: Before, After, and In Between

[Dave Monroe]

>From James Der Derian, "9.11: Before, After, and In
Between," Social Science Research Council, "After
Sept. 11: Perspectives from the Social Sciences" ... 

"Before 9.11 and after 9.11: all social scientists,
save perhaps the most recalcitrant positivists waiting
for more data points to come in, must now survey
international as well as domestic politics by this
temporal rift. Yet we seem stuck, it is uncertain for
how long, in a dangerous interim that thwarts
scholarly inquiry.... there is very little about 9-11
that is safe to say. Unless one is firmly situated in
a patriotic, ideological, or religious position (which
at home and abroad are increasingly one and the same),
it is intellectually difficult and even politically
dangerous to assess the meaning of a conflict that
phase-shifts with every news cycle, from ‘Terror
Attack’ to ‘America Fights Back’; from a ‘crusade’ to
a ‘counter-terror campaign’; from ‘the first war of
the 21st century’ to a fairly conventional combination
of humanitarian intervention and remote killing; from
infowar to real war; from kinetic terror to bioterror.

"Under such conditions, I believe the immediate task
of the social scientist and all concerned individuals
is to uncover what is dangerous to think and say. Or
as Walter Benjamin put it best, ‘in times of terror,
when everyone is something of a conspirator.'

"Detective work and some courage is needed because
questions about the root causes or political
intentions of the terrorist act have been either
silenced by charges of ‘moral equivalency’, or,
rendered moot by claims that the exceptional nature of
the act does not require explanation. It quickly
became accepted wisdom, from President Bush on down,
that evil was to blame, and that the appropriate
political and intellectual focus should be on how best
to eradicate evil....

[...]

"By funneling the experience through the image of
American exceptionalism, 9.11 quickly took on an
exceptional ahistoricity. For the most part, history
was only invoked - mainly in the sepia tones of the
Second World War - to prepare America for the
sacrifice and suffering that lay ahead....

[...]

"Under such forced circumstances, of being beyond
experience, outside of history, and between wars, 9.11
does not easily yield to philosophical, political or
social inquiry. I believe the best the academician can
do is to thickly describe, robustly interrogate, and
directly challenge the authorized truths and official
actions of all parties who are positing a world view
of absolute differences in need of final solutions. I
do so here by first challenging the now common
assumption that 9.11 is an exceptional event beyond
history and theory, especially those theories tainted,
as Edward Rothstein claimed in the New York Times, by
‘postmodernism’ and ‘post-colonialism’. Second, I
examine the representations, technologies, and
strategies of network wars that have eluded mainstream
journalism and traditional social science. I finish by
uncovering what I consider to be the main dangers
presented by the counter/terror of 9-11...."

http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/der_derian.htm

http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/

http://www.ssrc.org/

Just one of those things someone sent along to me I
thought some of you might be interested in, is all ...

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