ABSTRACT
On September 11, 2001, (9/11) amidst attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a new context was set for considerations of identity and culture. The idea that the world will never be the same again has become commonplace and part of a now taken-for-granted discourse. ‘9/11’, as the attacks have come to be known, is often described as the “day that shook the world” (Hawthorne & Winter, 2002, p. xvii), with the popular press post-9/11 repeatedly claiming that the world has changed in profound and lasting ways (Sullivan, 2002; Eccleston, 2003). So great has been the attention given to this notion that, according to Murphet (2003), the target of the attack, Ground Zero, is now one of the great consecrated fetishes of our time. In a similar vein, Jones (2003) claims that the term ‘September 11’ has become more than a date. ‘Since September 11’, we say, ‘prior to September 11’, or ‘in the wake of September 11’. September 11 is thus an historical moment from which the cultural forces and identities that emerged may be examined.
