Coeternal 9/11

How will 9/11 go down in history? Will it be registered as a postmodern crusade between America and Islamic powers? (In one of the commemoratory albums doing rounds on Youtube, the wreckage of the erstwhile WTO buildings look like a garlanded cross). Or as the first edition of battles in the postcoldwar era where frontiers are blurred and immaterial? Or as a watershed in the American centered discursive formations of power? Will posterity hail it as the herald of a new anti-imperial struggle? Or will it remain a gruesome reminder of the incidence and intensity of terrorism? A memorial to the world with strata percolated with venom? For an event that unveiled and demonstrated, in no unclear terms, the intricate intermingling of politics, religion and economics, future interpretations come dime a dozen.

Whatever be the future of that fateful day, it seems indisputable that 9/11 has already transcended and crucibled different opinions and entrenched itself as an eloquent and immortal billboard of the Transnational. It was a mental global village that the twin towers tumbled into, not a space with spatial and temporal constraints. This precisely is why any question as to the nationality of the deceased—including that of the nine “terrorists”—becomes irrelevant, if not irreverent. People were panicking not over the collapse of a skyscraper in a far off land but in the very next street. The premature demise of a building in the strongest nation on the earth was emblematic of the strongest incentive that prods the current world--trade. What could be better than fall of the World Trade Center then!

In the aftermath of the death of the towers, there emanated from the U.S. itself a few arguments that questioned the veracity of the bugbear of Islamic terrorism. In fact there were quite a good number of well-researched articles and features that sought to show the extent to which the federal government colluded and connived in orchestrating the heinous act, with the intention of bringing about political-religious consolidation. Revealingly, none of them gained currency outside the country. The offbeat responses that refused to swallow theories stuffed with “conventional wisdom” were largely shrugged off or played down altogether overseas (India was brilliant here!). Even the celebrity status of Noam Chomsky would not suffice to drill the shell of belief in official American explanations!! Chomsky is correct in linguistics, maybe so in other issues, but not here!! Why? The theory and praxis of the battle waged by the U.S. and its allies are not bounded to, located in or controlled by the physical/geographical space of any nation but takes place in a mental domain marked out by a strong sense of internationalism. We just don’t care about and think in terms of the bright cartographical contours but would rather get into the shoes of an international warrior. It is only after 9/11 that the term ‘terrorist’ (the terrorist of one nation is the patriot of the other, you know) assumes international signifying potential and terrorism becomes a meticulously planned activity, masterminded by a highly centralized, exclusive and esoteric coterie headquartered somewhere in the Middle East. There are explosions and suicide attacks anywhere; but if you look through the magnifying glass of Sherlock Holmes, you can’t miss the common hologram ‘Made in Iraq.’ (Just like products for the world market are owned by American firms, designed in India and manufactured in China!!!). The same period witnesses certain names, sartorial habits and appearances become objects of fear and suspicion in milling international airports and bustling railway terminals. If Hollywood heroes flexed their muscles and single-handedly annihilated creepy extra terrestrials in the preceding decades, the currents ones fight against terrorism—come hell or high water—and keep the country intact. Not to be outdone, Bollywood has fared better by interspersing cinematic texts with tall, bearded terrorists swaggering in and out or waiting with the patience of a python in the quest to grind Shining India into pieces.
To be sure, the shockwaves sent out by 9/11 have not been lost in art and literature either. Arguably, nothing betrays the traces of the new international conscience and its multiple manifestations more emphatically than the film 11'09"01 September 11 (2002). What weaves these short visuals, triggered by the panic of the event, into a coherent whole is a host of universal concerns, fears and anxieties. The not-so-good individual narratives by directors like Samira Makhmalbaf, Mira Nair, Claude Lelouch and Youssef Chahine have nothing in themselves to stake the claim of a movie.

Wait a minute. Stop and look inward. See how the blog universe swells by the minute. Is it such a long a shot to say 9/11 has catalyzed the growth of a universal writer/reader community, wrenched from local colors, cultural ethos and personal concerns clubbed with the urge for self expression? Is an Indian, for that matter any national, crouching behind an IP address an Indian in the traditional sense of the word? He is in a fluffy virtual space that could be literally everywhere. Still better to say he is a fluffy space impossible to locate and penetrate.
(Translation of 9/11. www.hksanthosh.blogspot.com)