9/11: The culture of commemoration

"After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a general sense that the world was different settled upon a grieving nation; the events of that day were received as cataclysmic disruptions of an ordered world. In 9/11 David Simpson refutes this claim and examines the complex and paradoxical character of American public discourse since that September morning, considering the ways in which the event has been aestheticized, exploited, an appropriated, while "Ground Zero" itself remains the contested site of an effort at adequate commemoration."