|
February
27, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas
CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
Lt. Col.
Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
February 27,
2002
Tragedy Defies Representation
in WTC Memorial
By John Troyer
The year 2002 is a palindrome--meaning a word
or number decipherable the same way backward and forward. Palindromes
in calendar years are often the subject of mathematical proofs
demonstrating the rarity of their occurrence.
I have begun contemplating another palindromic
year, 1991. I could say many things about 1991: America started
the year at war in the Middle East under the leadership of President
George Bush; Saddam Hussein was described as evil by aforementioned
President Bush in speeches to the nation; and the approval ratings
for presidential policy were astronomically high for a period
of months.
The past and present have an uncanny
relationship when palindromes are involved, yet the distinct
historical qualities produced by 10 years of change (or lack
of it) do create important cultural differences. My interest
in palindromes, however, is not entirely in years or governmental
policy; rather, I am focused on how remembering events from
the past function backward and forward in the space of memory.
In the impossibly quick duration of days
since the events on Sept. 11, a persistent and uncomfortable
question has lingered in my mind: now what? Since January, I
have repeatedly pondered not so much what to write but how to
begin writing a critique of the historical moment in which
the U.S. populace finds itself.
I am not so quick to roll heroically
onward for the sake of forced normalcy and social productivity.
What remains unclear in my mind is how much, if at all, life
has changed in most of America. The people who died in New York,
Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania most certainly left behind
family members in a radically different state of everyday life.
But for the rest of the United States,
I remain unsure. The one location I do believe intense critical
thinking needs to focus-- for a moment at least-- is the crater
left by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.
In recent months, The New York Times
has run a series of stories on the difficulties in designing
and creating a memorial in Manhattan at the site of the collapsed
World Trade Center towers. Discussions about the national requirement
for a memorial began almost immediately after the events of
Sept. 11 and will continue for many months, and probably years,
to come.
Round-the-clock crews clearing the area
have worked at a rapid and unprecedented rate, emptying the
area where the towers once stood. The quick removal of debris
has forced the uncomfortable question I find myself contemplating:
now what?
What kind of memorial-- or maybe it should
be a monument-- can or should be built for the people who died
in New York because of the events related to Sept. 11? Should
said memorial and monument consider the people who also died
in Washington, D.C., and the Pentagon?
What kind of designed object or place
can adequately articulate such a drastic and indescribably chaotic
moment? Proposals for various memorial designs have begun pouring
into City Hall in New York. I want to make my own suggestion.
Leave the hole created by the collapsed
towers as the memorial-- unmodified and unaltered.
Do not build a park with aesthetically
pleasing gardens or commission new sculptures to represent the
dead. Most importantly-- and I am being entirely serious-- do
not build a gift shop.
Leave the void created on Sept. 11 as
an absence that reminds everybody who stares into it of what
happened. No video screens reproducing television images of
buildings collapsing 1,000 times a day, no tour guides pointing
to where offices once stood, no long speeches by an A-list
collection of intellectuals and politicians describing how a
new memorial park will prevent Americans from ever forgetting
what happened on Sept. 11.
Building a memorial of vast size and
sentimentality only guarantees all will be forgotten, securing
the events of Sept. 11 a footnote in history books. Building
a new office tower complex on the site also guarantees a covering
over of the past. If the physical devastation is covered over,
the need to understand how and why such events could transpire
will be lost in the design.
Memorial designs have a tendency to give
explanations and produce meanings legitimating design choices.
A vast crater in the ground like the one in Manhattan resists
being easily explained away, and that is exactly what a memorial
should do: produce a critique of historical conditions.
Maya Lin's Vietnam War Memorial in Washington,
D.C., is the rare design that makes a person think about the
countless names and deaths listed one after the other. Simple
as the design is, it is difficult to forget or ignore the historical
moment called the Vietnam War.
Likewise in Sarajevo, the capital of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, craters produced in the city by bombing
during the war have been filled in with a hardened, red putty.
The medium-to-large red splotches are flush with the sidewalk,
and pedestrians easily glide over the areas. Signs do not adorn
each of the filled in craters, and a person is left to ask,
as I did, why are red splotches covering the street? The answer
I received caught me off guard: "It is national memorial.
Those are the places where many people were killed during the
war, so we remember that it happened." The areas of red
are everywhere in Sarajevo, as if a giant fountain pen had been
shaken, covering the city in macabre ink-spots.
Ultimately, the questions regarding the
design of a memorial in New York (and Washington, D.C., and
Pennsylvania) will have to deal with two questions: What must
be forgotten and what must be remembered.
As a side note, I am indebted to the
writings of Michel de Certeau ("Heterologies," "The
Practice of Everyday Life" and "The Writing of History")
as texts providing significant insight into these topics. National
Public Radio has begun a series of interesting segments with
the "Lost and Found Sound" project producing a Sonic
Memorial recording the aural memories of the World Trade Center
towers. The NPR project is a compelling argument against concrete
memorials: how the space of memory is filled with voices and
sounds
impossible to design into an object.
Critics will say I am being entirely
impractical-- overlooking the need for office space in Manhattan
and a place for people to remember the dead. Maybe I am being
impractical, but then I would argue the original World Trade
Center towers were equally impractical-- buildings too big
for any memorial to capture in well designed sentiment. What
remains of the impractical towers, a large crater in the center
of America's financial stronghold, says more about hubris than
any dedication to the dead.
On Sept. 11, 2112, when most of us who
lived the 111 years previous are long dead, perhaps a small
group of people will gather around a large hole in downtown
Manhattan (built over, around and beyond) to stare into the
void and wonder
how it all happened.
Most of the details will have also died,
and the official body count will remain the one statistic of
importance. Maybe, just maybe, a person will stare into the
absence and stop to ask: How was this not preventable? That
is what I hope a palindrome can accomplish.
John Troyer
is a columnist for the Daily Minnesotan. He can be reached at:
troy0005@tc.umn.edu
|