The Innocence of Victimhood Versus the “Innocence of Becoming”: Nietzsche, 9/11, and the “Falling Man”

In the most photographed and videotaped day in the history of the world, the images of people jumping were the only images that became, by consensus, taboo—the only images from which Americans were proud to avert their eyes.

—Tom Junod, “The Falling Man,” Esquire Magazine, September 3, 2003

It would seem that there is very little about the events of the September 11, 2001, that has not already been said or imagined. Our understanding of these events, and especially the attacks on the Twin Towers, has been overdetermined by the seemingly endless repetition of (by now) iconic images: of planes perforating the clear, tranquil surface of those seemingly impenetrable buildings and thus opening a rupture in the Western consciousness, the reparation of which is not yet in sight. Other images also populate the post-9/11 memory: images of disbelief, of grief, and of bravery—especially with respect to the members of the New York Fire Department, who rose to the occasion of providing a sense of American resilience and fortitude, thus representing a possible future after the catastrophe. These images played a major role in enabling certain mainstream media groups in the United States to reconstruct a narrative concerning their particular place in the world and with respect to each other: a narrative about national character and identity, hope, fear, and desire. The images drawn on to illustrate this narrative were therefore of critical importance; what was needed was a strong and coherent picture of innocence: the innocence of those killed in the attacks, to be sure, but also of the American people more generally—who, after a brief period of tending to their wounds, would need to collect themselves and return to the everyday commerce of existence, secure in the belief that evil is radically external to their “way of life” and that their government will ultimately protect them.¹

Such a narrative, however, also served to exclude images that could not support the specific requirements of its coherence: equivocal images that jar against our sense of propriety, certainly now after the effects of repetition have etched within us a certain understanding of the experience of 9/11. But also, interestingly, just after the attacks and before the grooves of this understanding had been consolidated, spontaneous and diffuse acts of censorship regulated the kinds of experiences, fears, and decisions that the victims of the attacks could enact. This article addresses one such image, which proved to be disruptive of the limits of identity asserted immediately following 9/11: Richard Drew’s “Falling Man,” depicting an unknown victim of the attacks in midflight from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. This image complicates the very culturally specific notion of innocence that was invoked during the reconstruction of national identity following the terrorist attacks against America. In particular, it will be argued that the “falling man” compromised the vision of an innocence that solicits protection precisely because it is outside the sphere of action. The image represents a decision—a wild and hopeless decision but a decision nonetheless—that, from the perspective of a claim to innocence, conceived as passive and guiltless, is difficult to comprehend or acknowledge as a “proper” comportment of an innocent. The falling man reveals and embodies a traumatic horror, difficult to encounter: the horror of choosing the means of one’s own particular death in the face of a less certain but more protracted demise at the hands of another.

This article argues for a reconsideration of “innocence” that might emphasize agency and creativity above morality and victimhood and in so doing hopes to promote an understanding of those who found themselves preferring to jump than to burn on that fateful morning. Conceptual development along these lines will also affect the concept of agency in accordance with Nietzsche’s critique of morality and metaphysics. The broader project to which this essay contributes is concerned with the manner in which the application of innocence to a group can serve to erode their political agency: governments thus soothe our civic conscience while also...