• bloggling
• memory
• war rhetoric

Thank you everyone at the Blogora for the opportunity to guest blog here. Like Joe, I'm feeling some uncertainty about contributing "good ideas," but I'm excited to engage in conversation here!

"As Martin Walser puts it, as 'long as something is, it is not, what it will have been. When something is over, one is not anymore the one to whom it happened... Although the past, when it was the present, did not exist, it now imposes itself, as if it had existed in the way in which it imposes itself now'" (Zehfuss 518).

In "Forget September 11" (Third World Quarterly 24.3), Maja Zehfuss argues that we should — well — forget September 11. Why? Because thus far its memory has been deployed in order to curtail civil liberties in "the West" (a term she questions) and to create an "us v. them" mentality, legitimizing wars abroad. Following Derrida's logic on forgiving, Zehfuss would rather have us forgive the unforgiveable (for to forgive only the forgiveable makes forgiving meaningless!).

Zehfuss's view stands in stark contrast to recent "movements" to make 9/11 a holiday. I counted about 15 Facebook groups devoted to making 9/11 a national holiday of some sort (and no surprise, a few including getting off of school in their title). Additionally, there is a "cause" on Facebook to make 9/11 a national holiday (my cousin is the 630,187th person to join the cause, which was created by a high school student). This is all despite the fact that Congress and Bush made it a holiday years ago: Patriot Day (Wikipedia).

(I don't want to overstate the membership of these groups and causes; it's fairly evident that some people are members just to disrupt the groups and argue in favor of conspiracy theories — fun!.)

Zehfuss also makes the point that the rhetoric of remembering 9/11 has seriously limited what it means to be a citizen. When Bush said on 20 September 2001, "I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children," he evoked a paternalistic government that would protect citizens; politics was not the venue of citizenry (525).

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