Introduction

This is a special issue of Theory & Event.

In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon on 11 September the editorial board of Theory & Event convened electronically to discuss the wisdom of devoting a symposium to this event. Our discussion soon revealed that there are many pitfalls involved in attempting to assess, however tentatively, the meanings and implications of this event or even to circumscribe its parameters. For those of us based in the United States, the din of battle cries and sobs of bereavement, commingled in ways that startled even the most jaded of us, was both an incitement to respond and a reason to refrain from hasty analysis and judgment. Those of us outside the US were also effected, often in unexpected ways, by these events and the responses they evoked. How could we respond to what had happened in reasoned and measured tones? How could we decline to respond, if only to try to bring other voices into play in the face of what appears to be the exploitation of a tragedy to consolidate an ever more right-leaning power in the United States? How could we respond in a way that did not simply exploit the tragedy in the interests of a left-leaning power? The ethical question of what it means to theorize such events, what it is for theory to be coequal to the event‚ has rarely been posed with such global reach, such force and such immediacy.

Beyond the parochial concerns of the Americans among us, other troubling questions arose in our online discussions. Who would be asked to speak and in the name of whom? Could we ask colleagues and friends from Middle Eastern nations to contribute, knowing the prices they might pay for voicing their sense of things? Could we speak in their stead should they not choose to speak here?

In the end, we concluded that we should try to do what we could with the resources we have. Four of us agreed to be the special editors of this issue. By the beginning of October we had issued a general announcement concerning the special issue and, with the help of our colleagues on the editorial board, had solicited others to write for this issue.

The conclusions our authors have reached in their contributions to this special issue should be understood as tentative, provisional, experimental thoughts. Moreover, in the range of foci these contributions develop, it becomes clear that this event was too large, too complex in its conditioning factors, its meanings, its implications, and its ramifications, to be captured by one angle of vision, one history, one theoretical framework or one set of inquiries. In an event of this magnitude, there can be no comprehensive or final account. Hence this symposium.

We thank our contributors for what we believe is an extraordinary set of responses to what 11 September has revealed. We look forward to further responses and invite our readers to use this special issue as a springboard for further thinking, comment and criticism.