“Since September 11,” we say, or “prior to September 11”, or “in the wake of September 11”. The term ‘September 11’ is now far more than a date. Thus, while the search goes on for the authors of the attacks and repercussions of the catastrophe continue to destabilise the world, it is enlightening to explore the event in relationship to the popular fiction of fear that presaged, and perhaps inspired, the terror inscribed onto that day. For example, while Bakhtin maintained that ‘ut of the actual chronotopes of our world (which serve as the source of representation) emerge the reflected and createdchronotopes of the world represented in the text’, 4 there are indications that with the September 11 chronotope the created texts preceded the reality. Using this concept in a slightly different way, this essay will focus on the ways in which the historical space-time event of Septemis articulated in narratives written both before and after the incident, with the earlier texts linked to it in a manner that in hindsight seems both predictive and insidious. 2 Bakhtin also believed that the chronotope could be used as a medium for appreciating the interrelationships between ‘real historical time and space’ … and ‘actual historical persons’ and the expression of these into literary forms. Mikhail Bakhtin, philosopher, sociologist and literary theorist, borrowed the term chronotope from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, adapting the concept of ‘the inseparability of space and time’ to facilitate exploration of the ways in which these space-time intersections appear in artistic texts. The concept of the chronotope, meaning literally time-space, is a useful tool in efforts to engage with the enormity of September 11 and with the literature surrounding it. Yet these words, these stories that are being told, these narratives unfolding like Persian rugs before our eyes, also need to be considered within the context of their time and place. Meanwhile, towers of words have grown from the ruins in attempts to understand how such violence could erupt from the blue: to explore causes, to consider implications, to review our perceptions of what is clearly a changed world. Those monumental buildings, that once allowed de Certeau to view the labyrinthine streets of New York City as if through the solar eye of a god, continue to be mourned along with those lost in their downfall. On that unforgettable day, while the world watched appalled or applauding according to perceptions, two towering giants collapsed, clouding not only that clear sunny morning with the ashes of their demise but also the sanguine assurance of the West. When cultural theorist Michel de Certeau contemplated the wonders of Manhattan from the 110th floor of the World Trade Centre in 1984 1 he could not have imagined that less than twenty years later his exalted viewing platform would be rubble, linked by an act of terror to a moment in time and history now known simply as September 11.
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