(Dis)embodied sight: September 11 and the politics of collective memory, representation, and experience

<p>During the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an extraordinary number of `everyday New Yorkers' turned out on the streets of lower Manhattan to photographically record the events as they happened. The result was a profusion of amateur images that captured not only the shock and devastation generated by the attacks, but also the vitality and urgency of the public's response to 9/11. For many, the act of photography — of 'bearing witness' to the tragedy — offered a vehicle by which to move from the personal act of `seeing' to being part of a collective working through trauma together.</p> <p>This paper addresses these public acts of personal witnessing and the subsequent efforts made to facilitate a space in which 'everyday New Yorkers' could structure their own collective memory of 9/11. In the process, it negotiates the ways in which much of the work on trauma and witnessing has failed to account for the ways in which these acts reach their audiences. How does the 'collective' suffer in the first place and how does this suffering become externalised in the form of cultural representations of trauma? More importantly, how, and to what extent, are these cultural representations shaped or informed by the social domains in which they are produced?</p>