ABSTRACT
For feminists, narratives of 9/11 do not begin on September 11, 2001. Although most official accounts of the events constitute it as a fundamental break with the past, feminists place emphasis on locating issues on a continuum and making connections between seemingly disparate events. Even though the events of the day do, indeed, usher in a new area for some-‘‘most Americans have probably experienced something like the loss of their First-Worldism as a result of September 11 and its aftermath’’ (Butler 2004: 39)—this is not true for others who do not share the same privilege and whose everyday lives are marked by intersecting oppressions, whether in the United States or elsewhere. Where the US administration emphasized a return to normalcy as ‘‘an act of courage, a defiant refusal to live as though times had changed, that is, a refusal to show fear,’’ Delia, Moira, and the other women interviewed by Mattingly et al. (2002: 747), ‘‘repeatedly emphasize that they know how to live with fear in a racially charged environment, this was already part of their routine.’’ The loss experienced by some segments of the US population, ‘‘the loss of the prerogative, only and always, to be the one who transgresses sovereign boundaries of other states, but never to be in the position of having one’s own boundaries transgressed’’ (Butler 2004: 39) is not, therefore, a shared experience even within the United States or the West. The First World is not unified. At stake then, ‘‘is not only the hegemony of Western cultures, but also their identity as unified cultures,’’ as Trinh notes. ‘‘The West is painfully made to realize the existence of a Third World in the First World and vice versa’’ (Trinh 1989: 98).
