ABSTRACT
To successfully claim sovereign status in international politics requires the ability to produce the explosive brilliance of the sublime, as well as the recognition of the status. Sovereignty is recognized in the acknowledgement of the mutually exclusive authority over territorially defined space. Recognition thus renounces, rather than produces, a common moral or legal structure, as the latter is secondary and subordinate to the assertion of sovereignty. Approaches focusing on recognition have produced a number of fascinating insights into the social grammar of 9/11. For Paul Saurette, the Event of 9/11 can be understood as an attempt by Al-Qaeda to humiliate the United States and thereby to discipline the humiliated party behaviour. For Reinhard Wolf acts like 9/11 can be understood as attempts to gain respect for al-Qaeda, and for the Islamic community. Recognition aims at understanding the rightness of moral claims and of violence in relation to the rightness of the violence of the other.
