Skip to main content
×
×
Home

Reflecting Absence, or How Ground Zero Was Purged of Its Material History (2001–2010)

  • Bob van Toor (a1) and Hanneke Ronnes (a1)
Abstract:

The development of the urban space of Ground Zero has been a long and difficult process, resulting in the removal of almost all of its material history. The material objects formerly present on the site had an important part and significant agency in the struggle between different stakeholders of Ground Zero. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Larry Silverstein, owner and leaseholder of the sixteen acres that held the Twin Towers, intended to rebuild the ten million square feet of office space that was destroyed on 9/11. This force of production asserted itself over possible modes of consumption of the space, each championed and represented by overlapping groups of people. Some wished to see the space redeveloped as a site of mourning, others as a site fit for touristic consumption, as a space for residence, or as a site representing a material past older than 9/11. It shall be argued that for these consumer groups the symbolic complexity of the site, and its potential power in political performances, was intricately connected to space and the material agency of objects remaining on Ground Zero post 2001.

Copyright
References
Hide All
Alexander, Jeffrey. 2004. “From the Depths of Despair: Performance and Counterperformance on September 11th.” Sociological Theory 22, no. 1: 88105.
Austin, John Langshaw. 1962. How to Do Things with Words? Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beauregard, Robert A. 2008. “Making an Inclusive Urbanism: New York City’s World Trade Memorial.” In A City of One’s Own, Blurring the Boundaries Between Private and Public, edited by Body-Gendrot, Sophie, Carré, Jacques, and Garbaye, Romain, 2540. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Beauregard, Robert A. 2004. “Mistakes Were Made: Rebuilding the World Trade Center, Phase 1.” International Planning Studies 9, no. 2-3: 139–53.
Blair, Carole. 1999. “Contemporary U.S. Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric’s Materiality.” In Rhetorical Bodies, edited by Selzer, Jack and Crowley, Sharon, 4453. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Blais, Allison, and Rasic, Lynn, eds. 2011. A Place of Remembrance: Official Book of the National September 11 Memorial. Washington, DC: National Geographic.
Cantwell, Anne-Marie, and Wall, Diana diZerega. 2001. Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City. New York: Yale University Press.
Casey, Edward. 1997. The Fate of Place. California: University of California Press.
Chhabra, Deepak, Healy, Robert, and Sills, Erin. 2003. “Staged Authenticity and Heritage Tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research 30, no. 3: 702–19.
Darton, Eric. 1999 [ed. 2011]. Divided We Stand: A Biography of the World Trade Center. New York: Lightning Source Inc.
Doig, Jameson W. 2001. Empire on the Hudson: Entrepreneurial Vision and Political Power at the Port of New York Authority. New York: Columbia University Press.
Doss, Erika. 2012. Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Garvin, Alexander. 1996. The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t. New York: McGraw Hill Professional.
Glanz, James, and Lipton, Eric. 2004. City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Goldberger, Paul. 2004. Up from Zero: Politics, Architecture and the Rebuilding of New York. New York: Random House.
Greenspan, Elizabeth L. 2003. “Spontaneous Memorials, Museums, and Public History: Memorialization of September 11, 2001 at the Pentagon.” The Public Historian 25, no. 2: 129–32.
Greenspan, Elizabeth L. 2013. Battle for Ground Zero. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hajer, Maarten. 2005. “Rebuilding Ground Zero. The Politics of Performance.” Planning Theory and Practice 6, no. 4: 445–64.
Haney, C. Allen, Leimer, Christina, and Lowery, Juliann. 1997. “Spontaneous Memorialization: Violent Death and Emerging Mourning Ritual.” Omega 35, no. 2: 159–71.
Holtorf, Cornelius J. 1997. “Megaliths, Monumentality and Memory.” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 14, no. 2: 4566.
Jacobs, Jane. 1964. The Life and Death of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage Books.
Jivén, G, and Larkham, P.J.. 2003. “Sense of Place, Authenticity and Character: A Commentary.” Journal of Urban Design 8, no. 1: 6781.
Kirchhoff, Michael David. 2007. “Material Agency: A Theoretical Framework for Ascribing Agency to Material Culture.” Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 13, no. 3, http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v13n3/kirchoff.html.
Kirchhoff, Michael David. 1998. Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 2003. “Kodak Moments, Flashbulb Memories: Reflections on 9/11.” The Drama Review 47, no. 1: 1118.
Knappett, Carl, and Malafouris, Lambros, eds. 2010. Material Agency: Towards a Non- Anthropocentric Approach. New York: Springer.
Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Appadurai, Arjun, 6491. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Langewiesche, William. 2003. American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center. New York: Macmillan.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. London: Blackwell.
Lisle, Debbie. 2004. “Gazing at Ground Zero: Tourism, Voyeurism and Spectacle.” Journal for Cultural Research 8, no. 1: 321.
Mosco, Vincent. 2007. “The Empire at Ground Zero.” In Urban Communication: Production, Text, Context, edited by Gibson, Timothy A. and Lowes, Mark, 199216. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield.
Peckham, Robert Shannan, ed. 2003. Rethinking Heritage: Cultures and Politics in Europe. London: I.B.Tauris.
Richardson, Miles. 2001. “The Gift of Presence: The Act of Leaving Artifacts at Shrines, Memorials, and Other Tragedies.” In Textures of Place: Exploring Humanist Geographies, edited by Adams, Paul C., Hoelscher, Steven, and Till, Karen E., 257–72. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Sack, Robert D. 1993. “The Power of Place and Space.” Geographical Review 83, no. 3: 326–29.
Sanderson, Eric, ed. 2009. The Mannahatta Project: A Natural History of New York City. New York: Abrams.
Santino, Jack, ed. 2006. Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Senie, Harriet. 2006. “Mourning in Protest: Spontaneous Memorials and the Sacralization of Public Space.” In Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death, edited by Santino, Jack, 4156. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Simmel, Georg. 2002 [1903]. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” In The Blackwell City Reader, edited by Bridge, Gary and Watson, Sophie, 1119. Oxford: Blackwell.
Shafernich, Sandra M. 1993. “On-Site Museums, Open-Air Museums, Museum Villages and Living History Museums: Reconstructions and Period Rooms in the United States and the United Kingdom.” Museum Management and Curatorship 12, no. 1: 4361.
Soja, Edward W. 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso.
Solecki, Ralph S. 1974. “The ‘Tiger,’ an Early Dutch 17th Century Ship, and an Abortive Salvage Attempt.” Journal of Field Archaeology 1, no. 1/2: 110–16.
Stone, Philip R. 2006. “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions.” TOURISM: An Interdisciplinary International Journal 54, no. 2: 145–60.
Sturken, Marita. 2004. “The Aesthetics of Absence: Rebuilding Ground Zero.” American Ethnologist 31, no. 3: 311–25.
Sturken, Marita. 2007. Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. New York: Duke University Press.
Urry, John. 1995. Consuming Places. London: Routledge.
Violi, P. 2012. “Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory: Tuol Sleng, Villa Grimaldi and the Bologna Ustica Museum.” Theory, Culture & Society 29, no. 1: 3675.
Wallace, Mike. 2002. A New Deal for New York. New York: Bell & Weiland Publishers.
Wirth, Louis. 1938. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” The American Journal of Sociology 44, no. 1: 124.
Zuber, Devin. 2006. “Flânerie at Ground Zero: Aesthetic Countermemories in Lower Manhattan.” American Quarterly 58, no. 2: 269–99.
Recommend this journal

Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this journal to your organisation's collection.

International Journal of Cultural Property
  • ISSN: 0940-7391
  • EISSN: 1465-7317
  • URL: /core/journals/international-journal-of-cultural-property
Please enter your name
Please enter a valid email address
Who would you like to send this to? *
×

Metrics

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 3
Total number of PDF views: 54 *
Loading metrics...

Abstract views

Total abstract views: 334 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 12th June 2018. This data will be updated every 24 hours.