Terrorism in American Memory - by Marita Sturken (Paperback)

About the Book

"This book examines the role of cultural memory in the post-9/11 era of American culture, an era that begins with 9/11 memorialization and ends with battles over the memory of racial injustice. The book argues that 9/11 was a shaping force in the two decades that followed, and that the post-9/11 era came to a close in the disruption of the global pandemic and protests of 2020. The post-9/11 era thus begins with the numerous nationalistic memorial projects of 9/11 and ends with the radical intervention of the lynching memorial and Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, a project that dramatically rewrites the national script of American history. The book looks in depth at the proliferation of 9/11 memorials, with thousands of memorials built from the bent steel of the twin towers throughout the country, the 9/11 museum in New York, and the architectural rebuilding of lower Manhattan as an intermix of memorialization, securitization, commercialization, and starchitecture. It analyzes the erasure of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the memory projects that have aimed to render their human and economic costs visible. Finally, it analyzes the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum as a project of memory activism that aims to memorialize the legacies of slavery and lynching as a means to intervene into the consequences of mass incarceration in the present"--

Book Synopsis

The role of cultural memory in American identity

Terrorism in American Memory argues that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and all that followed in its wake were the primary force shaping United States politics and culture in the post-9/11 era. Marita Sturken maintains that during the past two decades, when the country was subjected to terrorist attacks and promulgated ongoing wars of aggression, we have veered into increasingly polarized factions and been extraordinarily preoccupied with memorialization and the politics of memory.

The post-9/11 era began with a hunger for memorialization and it ended with massive protests over police brutality that demanded the destruction of historical monuments honoring racist historical figures. Sturken argues that memory is both the battleground and the site for negotiations of national identity because it is a field through which the past is experienced in the present. The paradox of these last two decades is that it gave rise to an era of intensely nationalistic politics in response to global terrorism at the same time that it released the containment of the ghosts of terrorism embedded within US history. And within that disruption, new stories emerged, new memories were unearthed, and the story of the nation is being rewritten. For these reasons, this book argues that the post-9/11 era has come to an end, and we are now in a new still undefined era with new priorities and national demands.

An era preoccupied with memory thus begins with the memorial projects of 9/11 and ends with the radical intervention of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, informally known as the Lynching Memorial, in Montgomery, Alabama, a project that, unlike the nationalistic 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York, dramatically rewrites the national script of American history. Woven within analyses of memorialization, memorials, memory museums, art projects on memory, and architectural projects is a discussion about design and architecture, the increased creation of memorials as experiences, and the role of architecture as national symbolism and renewal. Terrorism in American Memory sheds light on the struggles over who is memorialized, who is forgotten, and what that politics of memory reveals about the United States as an imaginary and a nation.

Review Quotes

"Marita Sturken's compelling new book charts a significant shift in how many Americans today understand national identity and purpose. Terror remains an active component, but activist memory projects focused on racial terrorism suggest heightened interests in reckoning with national histories of inequity and injustice."-- "Erika Doss, author of Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America"

"There is no scholar better suited to undertake an analysis of the modes of memorialization in the post-9/11 era and their relationship to US national identity. In her deft analysis, Sturken painstakingly articulates the state of memory politics in the contemporary US. This is a must read for anyone interested in memorial forms and the cultural work they perform."-- "Alison Landsberg, author of Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge"

"Revealing debates about how to memorialize the last two decades of enormous social disruption ... from 9/11 to Black Lives Matter ... [This book is] a relevant discussion of what sacredness of space means in terms of education, culture, and economics."-- "Kirkus Reviews"

"Sturken presents an intriguing and impassioned argument that helps to document through words and images the recent decades of the 'memory boom'"--J. K. Dabbs, University of Minnesota--Morris "CHOICE"

About the Author

Marita Sturken is Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. She is the author of Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (1997), Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (with Lisa Cartwright, third edition 2018), and Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism From Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (2007), and is the former editor of American Quarterly.