The Dialectics of Disaster
Excerpt
My irreverence for the media goes so far, I have to admit, as even to doubt the fundamental lessons it has sought to draw for us: that America changed forever on September 11, that America lost its innocence, that things will never be the same again, et cetera. The history of the superstate is as bloody as anyone else's national history; and these observations about innocence and experience (they were also affirmed during the Watergate scandal) have more to do with media innocence than with any personal kind; more in common with the widespread diffusion of public violence and pornography than with a private cynicism that has probably existed since the dawn of human history. What is shocking then is not the information itself, but that one can talk about it publicly.
If anything has changed forever, et cetera, it is that, as has also been widely observed, a minority president has been legitimized. His outrageous fiscal mission has been submissively adopted; and his zany (and expensive) arms proposal, along with the more sinister extension of the surveillance state, are promoted in the name of a universal revival of patriotism, certified by just that feeling of universal shock, grief, mourning, and the resultant indignation, that we have been examining.
The South Atlantic Quarterly 101:2, Spring 2002.
Copyright © 2002 by Duke University Press.
