| St. John the Divine Chapel, Columbia University, September 20, 2001
By 6:40 p.m., the only seating to be found was in the balconies upstairs. Concerned moms from the Upper West Side squeezed into wooden benches alongside nervous first-years, one of whom confessed to the other, “I applied to Yale because of Barbara Bush. How cool would it have been to have Thanksgiving at the White House?” In the spirit of Vietnam-era teach-ins, concerned graduate students at Columbia had invited eight professors from Columbia, NYU and Rutgers to offer “Critical Perspectives on The World Trade Center” and when the introductory speaker got up, the room became silent as, well, a church. There was no debate about the horror of the spectacle. But there were various interpretations about what the event meant. Hamid Dabashi, professor of Persian Literature and Sociology of Culture at Columbia, offered his psychoanalytic interpretation, denouncing 9/11 as “the castration of capitalism that is a bonanza for the Bush presidency.” Gayatri Spivak, professor of humanities at Columbia and well-known postcolonial critic also talked the hijackings as a “symbolic” event that “damaged our imagination” because “we could’ve been in those planes or in those buildings... But, is terror the only way to make a symbolic point?” Susan Sturm, a law professor at Columbia, also thought that the moment opened up questions rather than produced definite edicts. “What is the rule of law? What kind of accountability is there for government?” she asked. She confessed that she was only in the preliminary stages of thinking about what happens to the legitimacy of legal codes in a time of crisis, but she did feel that we must bring together “what we espouse and what we do in the sites in which we live. We need to think about what we can do to claim ourselves as legal actors in these situations.” Mahmood Mamdani, professor of anthropology, political science, and African Studies at Columbia, echoed Sturm’s feeling that “we must act however tentative the thought about the act.” The crashes at the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania are particularly salient, said Mamdani, because the world is not used to seeing mainstream America as victim. “It’s not the scale of the slaughter but the place of the slaughter that stunned: major metropolises in the only superpower left.” But even if he thought the terrorists were wrong, America could be wrong, too: “If the response is marked by vengeance and moments of terror, it’s likely to fall into state-unleashed terrorism.” It’s the long-term situation we must consider, said Partha Chaterjee, a visiting professor of anthropology at Columbia, because sending U.S. bombers to Afghanistan threatens not only the immediate region, but also South Asia, and indeed the entire tenuous global political balance. Pointing out the greenbacks funneled to the Mujahadin and the Taliban, Chatterjee thundered, “Has America accepted responsibility for what it’s done to the region and what that region is doing to the world?” So what are we to do in the face of local suffering and global injustice? Take it to the World Court, said one anthropologist who believed in the functioning of our established framework. Look into our own institutions, said the law professor, who believed in reforming the framework. Take responsibility and vocalize dissent, said the activist, who believed that critique could overcome terrorism. No one offered concrete tactical plans, but everyone asserted the need for changes in consciousness. “We must consider the roots of terrorism,” said Spivak. “We are parts of the imperial power.” “Sympathy” must be our response, said Mamdani. “The danger is to exceptionalize one’s own tragedy. Those who die elsewhere are no different from those who died in the Twin Towers.” Spivak also admonished Americans about holding on too much to a concept of ourselves as the exceptional City upon a Hill. “Remember, people think of the United States as arrogant bullies even when we’re helping other people. Remember, we’re like other people.” She leaned over the lectern. “We need to be able to imagine other people can protect us and we do not always have to ‘lead.’” It was past 9 p.m. when Spivak, the last speaker, finished. The furious clapping was like a collective amen.
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Also Inthefray > Part one | Monday, October 8, 2001 Part two | Tuesday, October 9, 2001
Washington, DC, September 19, 2001 Twin Towers Job Link Center, Jamaica, Queens, September 19, 2001 St. John the Divine Chapel, Columbia University, September 20, 2001 |