The attacks of 11 September 2001 have had a profound impact for many,
altering lives, perceptions, politics and policies. The last decade saw the
construction of numerous memorials commemorating the events across the
United States. Most prominent is the National 9/11 Memorial in New York
City at Ground Zero. Highly contested in its planning and building stages, the
memorial site was designed to be a national symbol of mourning,
remembrance and resiliency, and has since become one of the city’s most
popular tourist attractions.
This thesis casts the matter of memorialising 9/11 as a performance of
remembering. It utilises an analytical frame that draws from theoretical
resources of collective memory and performance studies to examine how and
by whom public remembrances of the event are framed, performed and
maintained. Theories of social remembering render it an active process. A
performance lens used analytically allows for a recognition of
commemorative practices not as a mode of representation, but rather as a
doing, (en)acting and interacting in the moment. By understanding public
remembrance as performance, this thesis explores the implications of
thinking about public memory in those terms.
Through ethnographic methods the research unpacks the doing of public
memory in three scenarios, each with their own setting and cast of characters,
and interprets how, if and when individuals subscribe to the public and/or
official memory of the events being memorialised. The first is set at the 9/11
memorial. Although the performances at the memorial site occur in an
institutionalised, scripted and choreographed environment, the bodily
(en)acting of and at the site can shift complex boundaries and
commemorative narratives. The second provides the example of
commemorative walking/ running events as performed remembering. These
public processions are ritual-like (re)enactments that solidify and reaffirm the
politicised national commemorative master narrative of 9/11. Lastly, the
annual ritual of commemoration on the anniversary of 9/11 highlights and
intensifies the separation of official and vernacular public memory and shows
how in both settings organisers and actors utilise embodied performance
strategies to gain or regain visibility in the public sphere.

Performing remembrances of 9/11

Why do groups adopt terrorism? Major theories of terrorist radicalization assume it to be a rational process whereby groups select terrorism as the policy most likely to advance their goals. Not all terrorism is rational, however, and these theories cannot explain cases when groups pursue terrorism despite it being self-defeating. We distinguish between rational and irrational terrorism, and explain the latter using social psychology's groupthink mechanism. Although terrorists are widely assumed to be vulnerable to groupthink, empirical work on the phenomenon has focused overwhelmingly on decision-making by national executives. We firmly establish the link between groupthink and terrorist radicalization by tracing groupthink's operation through the development of the Weather Underground, an American terrorist group that emerged in the late 1960s and conducted six years of bombings against the U.S. government. All of the antecedent conditions, symptoms, and decision-making defects predicted by groupthink a...

Groupthink and Terrorist Radicalization

This article reads social movements into the story of the American carceral state in two ways. First, rather than see mass incarceration as emanating only from the war on drugs, I locate it within a broader framework of political repression of radical movements. Second, I argue that there is a new social movement against imprisonment on the rise. This burgeoning movement pursues what I call a strategy of decarceration that combines radical critique, direct action, and tangible goals for reducing the reach of the carceral state.

Social Movements and Mass Incarceration

This practice-led research project investigates sites of absence in three cities: New York (USA), Varanasi (India) and Shanghai (China). The ‘presence of absence’ is examined in these sites by means of the overarching philosophical and

The presence of absence: conceptualising absence in the city through contemporary art practice.

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Strangers at the gate : hospitality in a time of terror

Ever since 9/11, the nation has attempted to come to grips with the day and its commemoration. At each relevant site—the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania where Flight 93 crashed—memorials are either in place or in progress. Decisions about how to mark the events in which these locations figured, however, have proven anything but unifying for stakeholders. In particular, the people of New York have engaged in debates, often quite heated ones, concerning the future fate of the site of the World Trade Center bombings, an area at the north end of Manhattan’s financial district now known worldwide as Ground Zero. After a design competition in which applicants proposed plans for the land’s future use, a decision was made to go forward with Daniel Libeskind’s master site plan, which featured the Freedom Tower, an underground memorial, and Michael Arad’s plaza design for “Reflecting Absence,” a space of tribute including demarcation of the footprints of the original twi...

Reflecting Absence or Presence? Public Space and Historical Memory at Ground Zero:

Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (review)

Literature students often fear poetry explication, supposing it is beyond their intellectual reach. As with many preconceptions that surface in the classroom, this is an impression I find helpful to tackle forthrightly. Years of teaching literature have convinced me that even English majors can become timid in the face of assignments calling for poetry explication. Given this common response, I have experimented with many methods for acclimating students to poetry as a form. The activity described here has proven helpful in this regard.

Goldilocks Meets Gertrude Stein: Poetry Explication for the Verse-Averse.

(2006). The End of the Hamptons: Scenes from the Class Struggle in America's Paradise. Corey Dolgon; The Code of the City. Eran Ben-Joseph; Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space. Margaret Kohn. Urban Geography: Vol. 27, Comparative Urban Spatial Segregation: International Perspective, Part II, pp. 575-583.

The End of the Hamptons: Scenes from the Class Struggle in America's Paradise. Corey Dolgon; The Code of the City. Eran Ben-Joseph; Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space. Margaret Kohn

Author M.F. Beal was born in New York City on 6 September 1937. She attended Cornell University and Barnard College, earning her BA in 1960, and then the University of Oregon, where she received an...

Linda S. Watts

Papers

Reflecting Absence or Presence? Public Space and Historical Memory at Ground Zero:

Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (review)

Goldilocks Meets Gertrude Stein: Poetry Explication for the Verse-Averse.

The End of the Hamptons: Scenes from the Class Struggle in America's Paradise. Corey Dolgon; The Code of the City. Eran Ben-Joseph; Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space. Margaret Kohn

An interview with M.F. Beal