ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the recovery and memorialisation of the dead in the War on Terror era, specifically focusing on ritualised practices surrounding the reconstruction of Manhattan’s World Trade Center (WTC). At times, that reconstruction seemed impossible. Overlapping political jurisdictions, combined with competing claims of land ownership, made the task a daunting one. While overlapping economic agendas were a serious obstacle to the reconstruction project, they were solved in the traditional manner – legal wrangling and financial compensation. However, the claims of the families regarding the sacredness of the site were a more difficult obstacle for city planners to manoeuvre around. The families considered the site a burial ground and commanded powerful influence with the media. They could seriously damage the credibility of any reconstruction proposal of which they didn’t approve. This chapter argues that two broad processes were used to dispossess the families of their claim to the Ground Zero site and to enable reconstruction. Rituals of perpetual forensic recovery and the production of relics from WTC rubble transferred affective resonance into material objects. The ritualised transfer of affect, followed by curation and display, makes the relic into a sacred object – relieving, and designifying, the site itself.
