Recollecting the Vanishing Forms of 9/11: Twenty Years of Ruptures, Ripples, and Reflections

Abstract

The events of 9/11 have been vanishing from memories. Yet it was a pivotal event in world history and in many families’ individual life cycles. Enduring losses and ruptures have rippled into both intensely personal moments and our sociopolitical processes. We vowed initially never to forget. But the problem we faced in the aftermath of the terrifying attacks became how best to remember. Twenty years later the author reflects on those historical events from her perspective as the Consulting Psychologist to Thinc Design, the exhibition design team for the National September 11 Memorial Museum. Using now her senses attuned to the 9/11 trauma narrative and its effects on group processes, as well as her habit of thinking about memory as multi-directional dialogue among disparate-in-time meanings, she attempts to locate 9/11 in a historical constellation with Hiroshima, the War on Terror, Latin American 9/11, COVID, Black Lives Matter, dissociated grief and grievance, and the 1/6 US Capital Insurrection.