The September 11, 2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project: A First Report

Abstract

One of the dilemmas in the debate over whether memory or history dominates the interpretation of major events is that few opportunities exist to study how people reconstruct the past before a dominant public narrative has been created by those who have a vested interest in defining the political meaning of events. Oral historians have often claimed that the lived experience of history is more complex than subsequent interpretations reveal. Rarely do we have the opportunity to document the historic evidence of that complexity through first-person interviews collected close to a historical event that has the power to transform our ideas about history. As a result, debates over the relationships between memory and history and between individual and collective memory often remain abstract and theoretical. In the case of an episode such as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which immediately stirred a public debate over the ultimate significance of the events for American history and foreign policy, the stakes over how and by whom memory is shaped were particularly high. Given the nature of the attacks and the need for government response to them, it is no surprise that an official public interpretation of the meaning of September 11 was generated soon after the events occurred. This dominant account portrayed a nation unified in grief; it allowed government officials to claim that there is a public consensus that September 11 was a turning point in the nation's history that has clear implications for national and foreign policy. It is important to remember that this consensus was constructed not by those who lived through the terrorist attacks and their aftermath, but by those who observed it and had political reasons to interpret it as they did.