A ‘Map of Trauma Whose Borders Are Still Missing’

This chapter focusses on the slippages between discussions of primary and secondary witnessing in relation to 9/11, and argues that, as a result, 9/11 testimony has been obscured in a supposedly global process of witnessing. A national, and potentially international, sense of 'narcissistic wound' grates, with the particularities of survivors in Lower Manhattan applying for emergency aid, dealing with insurance claims, and working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Hence Nancy K. Miller refers to 'a map of trauma whose borders are still missing' in relation to accounts of the aftermath of 9/11. As with 'Aubade 2', Nikki Moustaki's poem in Poetry after 9/11 responds to Felman and Laub's conception of the testimonial difficulties of representation. The chapter attempts to distinguish between different modes of witnessing in relation to 9/11 could be criticized as insensitive to those that suffered secondary trauma, with an unseemly concern with fine categorical distinctions, and ultimately irrelevant in an era of global witnesses.