Interpretations of "Ground Zero,": Responds
Cohen, Mitchell
QUOTATION MARKS can substitute for political argument. Recall how parts of the pre-postmodern left addressed what they called bourgeois democracy. First, the word democracy was placed in quotes....
...Terror— targeted murder of civilians to attain political DISSENT / Fall 2003 n 8 5 ARGUMENTS or military goals—threatens Americans and other people around the globe...
...In those of American citizens, for starters...
...Ray expends much effort discussing "something" that is trying to "say itself" (as he puts it) through the use by Americans of the words "ground zero...
...We know it is real because three thousand innocents died on 9/11, for example...
...Now, I think that economic inequalities and social suffering are real, corrode democracy, and should be redressed politically...
...Ray writes that the tragedy of 9/11 should serve as an invitation to discuss the stains on American history, but he never invites a hard analysis by the left of the declaration of war by Islamic fundamentalists against Americans (and "Crusaders and Jews") and its resultant three thousand deaths...
...The result is odd...
...MITCHELL COHEN is co-editor of Dissent and teaches political theory at Baruch College of the City University of New York...
...Sometimes a "cigar" is just a cigar...
...Now, a primary responsibility of any government is its citizens' safety...
...Surely he'd think otherwise if he addressed the arguments I made about Iraq...
...Then the subject was changed...
...At least one, please, since none concerned 9/11...
...He places "reality" and "terror" in quotes...
...As I recall, most Americans, and certainly most people in New York, where I was during and after 9/11, associated the terrible events with Pearl Harbor, not Hiroshima...
...Does he think that the Twin Towers would still stand today had Hiroshima not been bombed in 1945...
...Ray questions whether we on the left should speak of an American "we," but then recommends that Americans should use the tragedy of 9/11 "to work through a shared past...
...By Ray's logic, my capacity for self-criticism must be in multiple arrest...
...Alas, I hoped that my plural loyalties, because they complicate life, had the opposite effect...
...Because of the very phrase "ground zero...
...Not in quotes are wound, trauma, psychic scars, my fellow leftists, universal justice, terror bombing when applied to Hiroshima, and notably, unconscious meaning...
...Not if his rhetorical strategy replicates the old pattern of argument-by-quotation-marks, albeit in postmodern and Freudian habit...
...But what of Ray's three questions...
...This signaled that democracy's reality was counterfeit if its origins were bourgeois...
...Why Hiroshima...
...It is a selective invitation list...
...How to acknowledge this reality...
...If the "we" is "we Americans," then he thinks "self-critique" stops, but there seems to be no comparable hazard when he speaks of "my fellow leftists...
...The pattern of Ray's argument suggests to me a problem with its content...
...If religious fanatics attack them and the left says, (1) We are not part of your "we," but do let us lead you...
...86 n DISSENT / Fall 2003...
...But I also think that forms of government really matter—for political, not just socio-economic reasons...
...Does my discussion of "bourgeois" democracy seem distant from Gene Ray's concerns...
...So, too, "credibility," "ground zero," "leftist patriotism," "anti-Americanism," and "we," together with "we Americans...
...Why not Vietnam...
...Why discuss the fundamentalists when you can change the subject to Hiroshima...
...I suppose that this stuttering "it" dwells in the unconscious of the non-we...
...Now, that'll be a boon to internationalism...
...Not to mention national mental health...
...Or slavery...
...Well, I belong to many "we's"—a human we, a left we, an American we, a New York we, a Jewish we, a professorial we, a trade union we, a Dissent we...
...Ray says he "cannot help thinking" that my position on Iraq was tied to 9/11...
...then don't be surprised if those citizens turn to the John Ashcrofts of the world...
...2) You will be safer only if universal justice resolves all the world's problems (which, we know, are all the fault of your "we" anyway...
...One can think that bombing Hiroshima (fifty-eight years ago) was wrong while recognizing that the phrase "ground zero" simply indicated the site of a devastating surprise attack, not a repressed "it" needing articulation...
...So I recognize that "bourgeois" democracy, for all its need of amendment, permits the possibility of a decent political regime with social democracy...
...It has not persuaded citizens that it would do well in power...
...By addressing it for what it is and not by putting it in postmodern quotes...
...The left has failed to set America's priorities for a long time...
...AND SOMETIMES "victims" are victims...
...Instead of comparing the workings of bourgeois "democratic" government to Europe's ancien regime or—cough, cough—to "proletarian democratic dictatorship," instead of discussing how insufficiently representative institutions might be made more representative, conversation was redirected to the ills of capitalism...
...It" seems to be the memory of Hiroshima, but if so I believe that he is either changing the subject— I thought it was the events of the past two years—or freely associating...
...For whom is "terror" a real threat, he asks...
...and (3) Please engage in national psychotherapy to expiate your unconscious guilt...
...In whose eyes do scoffers lose credibility...
...The quotation marks suggest which words are not truly "grounded...
Vol. 50 • September 2003 • No. 4
