September 11, 2001 as a Cultural Trauma
A Case Study through Popular Culture
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Beschreibung
This book investigates the September 11, 2001 attacks as a case study of cultural trauma, as well as how the use of widely-distributed, easily-accessible forms of popular culture can similarly focalize evaluation of other moments of acute and profoundly troubling historical change. The attacks confounded the traditionally dominant narrative of the American Dream, which has persistently and pervasively featured optimism and belief in a just world that affirms and rewards self-determination. This shattering of a worldview fundamental to mainstream experience and cultural understanding in the United States has manifested as a cultural trauma throughout popular culture in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Popular press oral histories, literary fiction, television, and film are among the multiple, ubiquitous sites evidencing preoccupations with existential crisis, vulnerability, and moral ambivalence, with fate, no-win scenarios, and anti-heroes now pervading commonly-toldand readily-accessible stories. Christine Muller examines how popular culture affords sites for culturally-traumatic events to manifest and how readers, viewers, and other audiences negotiate their fallout.
This book investigates the September 11, 2001 attacks as a case study of cultural trauma, as well as how the use of widely-distributed, easily-accessible forms of popular culture can similarly focalize evaluation of other moments of acute and profoundly troubling historical change. The attacks confounded the traditionally dominant narrative of the American Dream, which has persistently and pervasively featured optimism and belief in a just world that affirms and rewards self-determination. This shattering of a worldview fundamental to mainstream experience and cultural understanding in the United States has manifested as a cultural trauma throughout popular culture in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Popular press oral histories, literary fiction, television, and film are among the multiple, ubiquitous sites evidencing preoccupations with existential crisis, vulnerability, and moral ambivalence, with fate, no-win scenarios, and anti-heroes now pervading commonly-toldand readily-accessible stories. Christine Muller examines how popular culture affords sites for culturally-traumatic events to manifest and how readers, viewers, and other audiences negotiate their fallout.
Analyzes multiple popular culture forms in context with one another to illustrate how diverse media create a wider manifestation of cultural trauma over time Evidences how popular culture serves as a site for regarding and negotiating September 11 as a cultural trauma while suggesting how cultural trauma might be recognized and negotiated at other times of stark cultural change Distinguishes cultural trauma as an intersubjective phenomenon from psychological trauma and its individualized emphasis
Autor*in
Christine Muller
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