The Rhetoric of Terror – Reflections on 9/11 and the War on Terror Redfield

The Rhetoric of TerrorReflections on 9/11 and the War on Terror\nAuthor(s): Marc Redfield\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Fordham University Press, United States\nImprint: Fordham University Press\nISBN-13: 9780823231232, 978-0823231232\nSynopsis\nThe terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, did symbolic as well as literal damage. A trace of this cultural shock echoes in the American idiom \""9/11\"": a bare name-date conveying both a trauma (the unspeakable happened then) and a claim on our knowledge. In the first of the two interlinked essays making up The Rhetoric of Terror, Marc Redfield proposes the notion of \""virtual trauma\"" to describe the cultural wound that this name-date both deflects and relays. Virtual trauma describes the shock of an event at once terribly real and utterly mediated. In consequence, a tormented self-reflexivity has tended to characterize representations of 9/11 in texts, discussions, and films, such as World Trade Center and United 93.\n In the second half .