A NEW GRADUATE STUDENT'S PERSPECTIVE
By Alice O'Driscoll, 09/17/2001
| Little did I imagine that my first week of graduate study at MIT
would be marked by these appalling terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Centre and the Pentagon. These events of unprecedented magnitude
in the U.S. have left me stunned, wondering how to make sense of it
all? Highly charged phrases such as "attack on America" emanate from
television sets and radios, images of carnage assault us from every
angle, from on-line sources - accounts of the pain of citizens who
have been injured, burned in the inferno, or suffered great loss,
make my eyes well up with tears.
Debris fills the gaping hole that was the WTC but is now the grave of so many, the dust filling the air and making us blind - we have to depend on the media to convey to us a multitude of narratives, punctuated by an emerging rhetoric of war and revenge, as we together strive to see through the dust clouds, and decipher that which seems to be unfathomable. The images I see on our screens are those of the Hollywood disaster movie - an aircraft careering into the side of an 110 storey tower block, people leaping to their death from the upper floors, terrified citizens on the ground running from a tidal wave of smoke as it tries to envelope and suffocate them, as though they are fleeing from King Kong. I can hardly believe what happened on Tuesday, 11 September and I am struggling as I write this piece because I remain lost for words. During the past few days in my research for re:constructions I have heard so many stories of courage, heroism, loss and tragedy,broken families and broken dreams, so many moving stories being told that I find myself sharing in the profound sadness of others. Where do I hear these narratives...not merely on the radio, the television and in the newspapers, but on the Internet, and on the memorial wall in Lobby 10 at MIT. The memorial wall is rather like a microcosm of our global society, encompassing the diversity of opinion. Some of the messages written by angry students express sentiments that reflect Bush's resolve to fight terrorism with war. These messages clutter up the spaces elsewhere on the paper where others have written the names of loved ones and friends lost in the tragedy. Rather like the paper, the networks of digital media and traditional media criss-cross our planet at this precarious time in a chaotic frenzy of speculation, analysis, rumour, and myth, desperately trying to apply some sort of meaning or explanation on to the hitherto unimaginable horror of Tuesday's attacks, but often generating confusion and misunderstanding. re:constructions seeks to reorganize some of these opinions and stories, to fill in the gaps of uncertainty, seeking to understand the machine by which we receive and share this information. After reading personal accounts, the reality begins to kick in. I observe the haunting image of the New York skyline, the billowing smoke, the absence of the twin towers - so tangible an absence that, for me, and for many others, they are still there - rather like phantom limbs, still painful because the brain continues to process messages from the severed nerves - the nerves which represent the physical limb to the brain. To take this metaphor one step further, the World Trade Centre may be gone, but the brain of America continues to function, and so much hinges on how Bush responds to this terrorism, that America is arguably more powerful than ever. Bush is declaring that America is at war and, likewise, news media and vernacular commentary both use the term "third world war" yet, at the same time, the world has united together in mourning and in support of the US. Diverse communities have come together across the globe as evidenced by the pictures to be seen elsewhere on this web site. The paradoxical imminence of a third world war and the drawing together across the globe of the different nations. The question I find myself asking is whether it is possible to wage war against an enemy as elusive as Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group? According to BBC on-line's Jonathan Marcus "the Pentagon is preparing for the long-haul". Furthermore, Tony Blair is also declaring that the U.K. is "at war with terrorism" and, despite the UK's long running threat of terrorism from the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Blair considers the attack on the World Trade Centre to be "the worst terrorist attack there has been on British citizens since the Second World War". I'm sure that it is the worst attack on all nationalities who were hurt in one way or another on that fateful day. I only yearn for peace. Alice is a first-year graduate student in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. She is a citizen of the United Kingdom. Related Links BBC New York Times
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