ABSTRACT
Barely a week aer the September 11th aack on the World Trade Center, Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German composer, observed that “what happened there […] is the biggest work of art there has ever been.” Stockhausen’s comments immediately ignited outrage even as he aempted to explain that he was referring to the creative destruction at work in epic confrontations. With distance, it is possible to understand that if a work of art is thought to be great because it has completely realized its ambition, producing an eect that spectators experience as unprecedented, singular, or life-changing, then Stockhausen’s comments are less provocative. Understanding terrorism as a symbolic and performative act through which political power asserts itself provides a critical framework with which to approach a phenomenon that oen has appeared to exceed civic discourse. Simply put: according to Brian Jenkins, author of International Terrorism, “Terrorism is theater” (1975, 4).
