'Tired of 9/11': Remembering as a dogma and creed
Is it possible to have a commemoration that includes alternative meanings of 9/11 and that produces alternative forms of solidarity and public memory?
Last Sunday the Moroccan-Dutch goalkeeper of a Dutch soccer team, Khalid Sinouh, tweeted he wanted ‘to concentrate on the present’ and that he ‘felt a little tired of all that 9/11 propaganda’ and closed it with ‘pffff’. The soccer team, Philips Sports Association (PSV) distanced itself from his statements and emphasized the goalkeeper made his statement as a private person (and therefore not as a representative of PSV). Although he received a lot of criticism for his remarks, he is certainly not the only one who feels like that. To a certain extent he is not at all off with his qualification of the ceremonies and the media attention as a form of propaganda. As David Rieff explains:
After 9/11: The limits of remembrance—By David Rieff (Harper’s Magazine)
[…] the purpose of such ceremonials is what the great nineteenth-century French historian of nationalism Ernest Renan called the creation of “large-scale solidarity.” It is about the reaffirming of group loyalty rather than the establishing of historical accuracy, let alone the presenting of an event in all its moral and political complexity. The ceremonies commemorating the tenth anniversary of 9/11 will take place in this spirit.
It is important not to exaggerate. Whatever meaning history eventually assigns to the attacks of 9/11—and though they are often conflated, history is the antithesis of remembrance—it is highly unlikely that these commemorative events will do any harm to America as a society, even if there is not likely to be very much to learn from it either, any more than there is from eulogies at a funeral. And in an important sense, for the relatives and friends of those who died on that day, remembrance will surely afford some measure of recognition and consolation, though of course not of closure, which is one of the more malign and corrosive psychological fantasies of our age. (The Latin phrase “De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” “Of the dead speak only well,” has often been parodied with the quip, “De mortuis nil nisi bunkum,” but this is wrong. There is nothing admirable about candor during a commemoration, just something childish and conceited.) Remembrance is not valued for shedding much light on the truth in all its nuance and ambiguity. And that is entirely appropriate. The problem is both the degree to which remembrance nourishes illusions about how long human beings can remember and, far more seriously, the potentially grave political and historical consequences it can engender. After all, to remember may not just mean to grieve; it may also mean to harbor a vision of securing justice or vengeance long after it is time to put the guns away.
Part of what happens in this production of memory and solidarity is the monopolization of the meaning of ‘9/11’. I saw many people on twitter saying now is not the time of saying but let’s think of the thousands of children in Africa dying or let’s think about the victims of the War on Terror. If we say our thoughts go to the victims of 9/11, we of course mean to victims of the terrorist attack that hit the US that day, not other people in the US or elsewhere. According to Rieff we have to ask ourselves what the use and the risks are of the kind of collective memory that is produced by the commemorations and therefore we might have to consider that at some times ‘forgetting may actually preferable to remembering’ because remembering can inflame as well because it shows a world caught in arms, hate, and fear. This is something Jeremy F. Walton points out when addressing a similar issue:
Remembering Differently: Coping with 9/11 Fatigue « The Revealer
remembrance of the deleterious and violent effects of American discourse and policy following September 11, 2001. Examples of post-9/11 American perniciousness are legion, from water-boarding to Abu Ghraib, from abuses of the Patriot Act to Valerie Plame. Allow me to remember one more: the story of Ibrahim Türkmen, a Turkish imam who was living in Passaic, New Jersey on September 11, 2001. Türkmen had left Turkey several years earlier to pursue both educational and business opportunities in the United States. Soon after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Türkmen’s landlord reported him to the FBI; as she later related, she had rented an apartment to several Middle Eastern men, and “would feel awful if her tenants were involved in terrorism and she didn’t call.” Despite his (eventually) manifest innocence, Türkmen was promptly apprehended and spent approximately five months in custody. He claims that he was tortured during his incarceration; a memoir detailing his experience will soon be published in Turkey. The cause of remembering 9/11 differently here would benefit greatly from more such memoirs in English, too. In the brief story of Ibrahim Türkmen, we witness the havoc that the intersection of metastasized, xenophobic paranoia and state power can wreak.
So, yes, I’m tired of 9/11. Exhausted by it. But this fatigue should not constitute the alibi for indifference, solipsism, or cynicism.
Where Rieff contemplates about not remembering or even forgiving and forgetting, Walton opts for ‘remembering differently’. This is not easy. The negative, and sometimes downright hostile, comments on the tweets of the Moroccan-Dutch goalie show that we ought to remember 9/11 in a particular way; with our thoughts focused on one particular event, one particular category of victims or as Walton puts it; 9/11 as a creed and dogma. Looking at the speech of the Dutch PM Rutte for example. He stated in his remembrance speech that 9/11 is a ‘black day’ where the ‘unthinkable’ happened and where nearly 3.000 people died because of a ‘series of coward terror attacks’ that not only hit the US but ‘hit the world in its heart’. According to him the ‘democratic values that bind us can never be surrendered to blind hate and fundamentalism’. He emphasized the shared interests between the US and the Dutch: “Against terrorism and in favor of freedom of choice and democratic rights of people everywhere across the world. Like we did after 9/11 in Irak, Afghanistan and recently Libya.” The tweet of the Moroccan-Dutch goalie where he pointed to ‘hunger in Africa, Syria, Palestinians, Irak and need I continue’ provides a glimp of a different repertoire of remembering that to a certain extent is opposed to the official one and that, as said, created a lot of turmoil. He was reprimanded by his club. Is it possible to have a commemoration that includes alternative meanings of 9/11 and that produces alternative forms of solidarity and public memory?
Note: Photograph: Thomas Hoepker/Magnum. See The meaning of 9/11’s most controversial photo by Jonathan Jones