미국의 9/11 애도 작업에 관한 고찰 : 9/11추모관 건립과 테러와의 전쟁을 중심으로

The Work of Mourning of 9/11 in U. S. A

This paper explores the work of mourning of 9/11 in the United States, focusing on the project of building the National September 11 Memorial managed by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation(LMDC) and the War on Terror declared by the George W. Bush administration in the wake of 9/11. This paper first looks at the project of building the Natioanl September 11 Memorial and considers what was at stake in achieving this project. It also examines the limitations of the project. This paper argues that, in spite of the efforts to mourn the victims in significant and meaningful ways, the work of mourning in the memorial project fails at least in two respects. First, the memorial project "began so soon" right after 9/11 that the victims' families were not given enough time to mourn their loved ones. Second, the project were permeated with American nationalism and patriotism, which made the 316 non-American victims of 9/11 invisible and forgotten. Then, it goes on to examine the War on Terror because the War on Terror epitomized the failure of mourning due to these causes. In his address to the nation delivered on the very day of 9/11, President George W. Bush stated that "America was targeted for the attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world" and that the terrorists failed to threaten America into chaos. He also stated that America is in "the war against terrorism." These statements were a futile reassertion of the illusion of American invulnerability and a prohibition of mourning in favor of violent military responses to 9/11. American nationalism also underlies Bush's official naming of September 11 as "Patriot Day." The victims were sacrificed because they were at the site when terrorists attacked, which implies that their death had nothing to do with American patriotism. Naming September 11 as Patriot Day was an act of imbuing the absurdity of the victims' death with a false meaning and an act of forgetting the non-American victims. The failure of the work of mourning of 9/11 consisted in the inability to recognize human vulnerability and interdependence and the inability to mourn not only American victims but also non-American victims killed in 9/11 and the War on Terror. A meaningful and significant mourning could be possible when we realizes that all human beings are exposed to one another and their lives are interdependent on one another. September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows well demonstrated this kind of mourning. When most Americans supported violent retaliations, Peaceful Tomorrows made pleas for nonviolent responses to 9/11. Turning their grief into action for peace, its members work "to create a safer and more peaceful world for everyone," not only for Americans. Their effort to mourn in meaningful and nonviolent ways delivers the message that a disaster like 9/11 should not happen anywhere.