Tuesday, October 02, 2007

I might have to consider making an exception to my general policy of crossing the street whenever I see a piece of post-9/11 writing walking in my direction. Susan Faludi's weighing in.

Ms. Faludi stopped by a fragment of landing gear from one of the planes. "We have pieces but no story," she said. "It's like a lawyer's exhibits without the brief." In this, the display mirrors the situation immediately after 9/11, she said. But then the Bush administration, aided by the media and others, cranked out a ready-made narrative that squeezed out people's experiences, she argued. Language was also co-opted, she added, mentioning how survivors and workers called the site "the pile," while the media used military lingo to rename it "ground zero."

"Personal emotional responses get channeled and harnessed into a mythological construction," she said, and people are told, "This is what you're supposed to feel."

For Ms. Faludi the official story, that prefabricated narrative, is crumbling with revelations of governmental failures and waning support for the Iraq war. She wants to provide an alternate commentary. One of the curators of the Historical Society's show, she said, drew a distinction between the artifacts on display and art: "Art is a process of stepping back and seeing what it means. That's what I'm trying to do in this book — trying to find meaning."

Via Bookslut.