ABSTRACT
In the months since the events of 11 September 2001, a sizeable body of literature has accumulated on the events, their causes and effects. Some of this literature has been overtly opportunistic, to quickly meet the public demand for broad analysis and easy answers. Countless magazine pieces and newspaper op-eds have synthesised conventional policy analyses-sometimes employing eclectic approaches such as psychiatry, anthropology, and diverse branches of cultural studies, to offer creative, if sometimes obscure, interpretations. A few have been carefully researched and/or have benefited from insider information, though it is a truism that it will take many more months and years and research before a more coherent picture of the impact of 9/11 on international politics can start to take shape. This essay offers an early opportunity to survey the general contours of the first wave of post-9/11 literature, and to pick up on a specific strand of thought, which, while rarely alluded to directly, can be seen to flow through much of the ink spilt on the causes of 9/11 so far: namely, the emerging ‘neo-medieval’ dynamics of the international system.
