My students taught me that everything was personal - history, politics, foreign relations - but this approach creates boundaries as well as connections
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9/11: us upside downImmediate 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.
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? Read the rest of this post...
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. Read the rest of this post...
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? Read the rest of this post...
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. Read the rest of this post...
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. Read the rest of this post...
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. Read the rest of this post...
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”? Read the rest of this post...
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’. Read the rest of this post...
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. Read the rest of this post...
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. Can these elements of the American self-image now adapt to the realities of a diverse world? Read the rest of this post...
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? Read the rest of this post...
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. Read the rest of this post...
The fourth in Todd Gitlin’s series of reflections hears the echoes of Auden and feels the aftershocks of hatred around Manhattan. Read the rest of this post...
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. Read the rest of this post...
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? Read the rest of this post...
A day after the US attacks, Max Robbins decided to volunteer in the clear-up effort. This is his personal account. Read the rest of this post...
Our North Americas editor continues his reports from New York. Read the rest of this post...
openDemocracy’s North America editor witnessed the events in New York. This is his first response. Read the rest of this post...
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