9/11: us upside down: all articles

Immediate responses: openDemocracy’s North America editor, Todd Gitlin, writing from Ground Zero with dignity and moral passion. Ariel Dorfman drawing parallels with the Chilean tragedy. Lindsay Waters registering the end of an era of evasion. Godfrey Hodgson wondering whether the US would awake to humility. For Eric Darton, Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros, the link between the architectural fundamentalism of the WTC and the nihilism of its destroyers offers discomfiting truths.

Sunday 6th October

Shattered faith

Rana Sarkar, 6 October 2002

The disaster of 11 September has had a traumatising impact on the global class of business professionals, reported here by one of their number. As existential fear succeeds confident modernity, can a restored idealism help repair the emotional fragments?

Wednesday 18th September

You and me: looking forward from Kenya and New York

Patrick Mono Mbura and Jacqueline Berrien, 18 September 2002

A poem from a New Yorker who is not a professional poet, and a statement from a Kenyan who is not a professional writer. They do not know each other, but their responses resonate and echo the feelings of the many.

Tuesday 17th September

The addiction of optimism

Rana Sarkar, 17 September 2002

Even in New York, even after 9/11 and corporate scandal, an atmosphere of frenetic consumerism and hype grips the social elite. Is the cult of the happy ending just too endemic to let go?

Wednesday 27th February

The end of the modern world

Nikos A. Salingaros and Michael W. Mehaffy, 27 February 2002

The 20th century ushered in a historic era of optimism for the rational, “modern” future of humanity. As the century fades into history, that modernist dream lies in pieces — but new outlines are emerging for a wiser, more hopeful future.

Wednesday 23rd January

The American challenge: waking to dream again

Lindsay Waters, 23 January 2002

Does America need even more than critical self-examination after its ejection from the previous decade's slumber? An experienced observer argues that a deeper transformation is needed, through the recuperation of art as a source of imaginative truth.

Wednesday 19th December

Only connect : lessons from Harvard

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, 19 December 2001

At one of the United States’ leading universities, 9/11 and the subsequent drive to war impacted on a student community with experience of mobilisation against wage poverty. How did it react to these events in a national atmosphere of conformist patriotism? The complex political and intellectual pattern of an academic environment in time of crisis is examined here from the inside.

Thursday 29th November

What we do with words

Jeffrey C. Isaac, 29 November 2001

Making a clear declaration about major public events is not just wordplay, but an act of civic responsibility. And being attentive to the complex meanings inside such declarations is part of the public intelligence that distinguishes a democratic society. What, then, does it mean to say “I am a supporter of the war”?

Thursday 8th November

The Janus face of architectural terrorism: Minoru Yamasaki, Mohammad Atta and the World Trade Center

Eric Darton, 8 November 2001

Two years ago, a study of the World Trade Center argued that the ideas embodied in the twin towers’ creation – immense, highly abstract, and distanced from the experience of ordinary life – were shared by the terrorists who tried to destroy them. After 11 September, a detailed comparison between the WTC’s chief architect and the head of the suicide hijackers provides further chilling evidence of these connective ‘daydreams of domination’.

Wednesday 17th October

Big government is back

Bob Borosage, 17 October 2001

The 11 September crisis in the US may have huge domestic as well as foreign policy consequences. The combination of a sustained war and deepening economic pressures make strong government essential. This is bad news for conservatives.

Tuesday 9th October

The last September 11th

Ariel Dorfman, 9 October 2001

On the same date twenty-eight years apart, the two American cities which shaped Ariel Dorfman’s life – New York and Santiago – have now suffered catastrophe. But does their terrible fate also offer the chance to repair our shared, damaged humanity?

The ordinariness of American feelings

Todd Gitlin, 9 October 2001

Much of the world outside America has reacted to 11 September with criticism of the country as well as sympathy. Some of it seems impelled by a denial of the human normality of Americans’ post-disaster emotional cycle. A global conversation between equals is precluded when rational political criticism falls before the confirmation of prejudice.

Can America go modest?

Godfrey Hodgson, 9 October 2001

The closer you come to America, the more complex and interesting the country becomes. Immigration, the frontier and exceptionalism have informed and underpinned the realities of power. Godfrey Hodgson asks whether these elements of the American self-image now adapt to the realities of a diverse world.

Monday 24th September

Grasping ruins

Todd Gitlin, 24 September 2001

The fourth in Todd Gitlin’s series of reflections hears the echoes of Auden and feels the aftershocks of hatred around Manhattan.

Sunday 16th September

Taking it slowly

Todd Gitlin, 16 September 2001

Everyday heroism prompts us to re-think our notions of “heartland.” This is our Americas Editor’s third piece from New York in the aftermath. Now it’s clear: there’s more than one America.

Friday 14th September

Real and imagined enemies

Arvind Rajagopal, 14 September 2001

The superpower shakes, and the openness of its domestic society with it. As another New Yorker explains, tension around foreigners and immigrants was immediate and all-too-popular. But there are deeper questions: are innocence and omnipotence compatible?

Thursday 13th September