ABSTRACT
The opening chapter explores terror and the sublime in the 21st century primarily through architecture and literature about architecture. It draws on key debates and criticism that emerged after the 9/11 attacks with critics such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek laying the foundations for the way in which the book will treat ideas about terror and spectacle. The chapter argues that the contemporary period is particularly evocative of the sublime, noting its connection with terror. Architecture and our environment are considered central to the operations of this terror, and a variety of terror attacks are considered in the chapter alongside America’s own response to terror (the building of Fortress America and the expansion of the Homeland Security sector seen against the destruction of buildings on September 11 and the spectacle of terror attacks since). Verticality and the skyscraper are considered alongside the 9/11 memorial Reflecting Absence, which, I argue, is evocative of a melancholic sublime that promotes a nostalgia for an invincible America imaginable only prior to the attack on the Twin Towers.
