Poroi

Shevory, Thomas

English

From  Censorship  to  Irony: Rhetorical  Responses  to  9/11

Nelson, John S

Four Forms of Terrorism: Horror, Dystopia, Thriller, and Noir

Zickmund, Susan

Constructing Political Identity: Religious Radicalism and the Rhetoric of the Iranian Revolution

Cloud, Dana L

Therapy, Silence, and War: Consolation and the End of Deliberation in the “Affected” Public

John S. Nelson 1 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
Conspectus 
Rhetorics of Response 
to 9/11 
The Aftermath of Terror 
John S. Nelson 
Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
 
     
 
 
 
The strategy of terror is a spectacularly failed one.1 
                                                                   — Caleb Carr  
     
 
1 
 
Terror, like panic, might be almost impossible to sustain.  It strikes 
and spikes with virtual simultaneity; it decays nearly as fast.  It 
consumes personal and historical moments that might last beyond 
minutes and hours to days and weeks, but it rages too hot and 
ranges too far to leave fuel for durable burns.  This, unfortunately, 
is the good news.  The bad news is that terror all too readily recurs; 
and when it doesn’t, it echoes – in some settings, seemingly 
without end. 
 
 
2 
 
As a strategy, terrorism targets bystanders, civilians, “innocents” 
in a still decent sense of the word.  That is why Caleb Carr, the 
military historian and popular novelist of note, argues that 
sustained terrorism does not succeed.2  Outrageous violence 
against noncombatants spurs people to resist terrorists 
categorically.  It mobilizes whole populations to extraordinary 
resolution, even desperation, so that they do whatever it takes over 
the long haul to destroy terrorist forces while discrediting terrorist 
causes.  Not once in history, claims Carr, has a terrorist campaign 
in war or insurgency succeeded for long.  Individuals and 
governments must not overreact and respond in kind to terrorism.  
The main hope of terrorists is to provoke self-defeating terrorism 
in return.3 
 
 
3 
 
Government terrorism might be another matter.  In people, terror 
spirals into psychosis and breakdown or atrophies into anxiety.  In 
politics, terror sometimes takes the iron enclosure, utter 
domination, and systematic inefficiency of the totalitarian regime 
as a method for turning the perversity inward, leaving terror to 
feed indefinitely on itself.  Yet experience suggests that actual 
totalitarianism falls after a few years or decades into a malaise of 
immorality too placid and pragmatic to count as terror, even 
 
John S. Nelson 2 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
though it is stoked by terrorist devices like concentration camps, 
death squads, and secret police.  These are endurable, more or less, 
because they rarely reach for most people the fever pitch of full-
fledged terror.  At least in a world providing external political 
alternatives, we have learned, regimes of terror gradually routinize 
themselves into more traditional patterns of oppression and 
exploitation.  Eventually a pervasive corruption can erode further 
the rigor of any terror, opening such regimes to reform, 
liberalization, or dissolution from within – and invasion from 
without.4  Most terror stays local in space and momentary in time. 
 
4 
 
This happens in part because terror depends on unpredictability so 
radical that it undoes itself, preventing even a pattern of surprise.  
In consequence, campaigns of terror require rapid, irregular acts 
of increasingly devilish invention.  Even then terrorist attacks 
settle more readily into unconventional warfare by such 
horrendous means as martyr bombers and street assassins.  Dread 
can ensue instead, but it differs considerably from terror.  
Conducted in dread, everyday life expects catastrophe but plods 
timidly or doggedly ahead.5 
 
 
5 
 
Terror shocks so deeply and stuns so decisively that we feel 
recovery is impossible, only to find ourselves unable later to tie its 
awful trauma to ordinary affairs.  Terror disrupts routines 
apparently beyond repair, but dissipates rapidly into daytime 
amnesia.6  The strange injunction to “return to normalcy” so as 
“not to let the terrorists win” testifies to the discombobulation 
induced by terror.  In the aftermath of terror, such exhortations go 
overnight from absurd and undoable to simply unnecessary.  The 
resulting routines might differ in detail from before, and the 
echoes of terror might unsettle us for decades in some places or 
practices, yet the terror itself can dissipate rapidly in sensation and 
consequence.  Air travel “will never be the same” after 9/11, to be 
sure, but even now does it differ significantly from before?  For all 
the economical and psychological upheaval inflicted on the airline 
industry, have the accomplices of Usama bin Laden somehow 
transformed even that part of American culture, capitalist 
transportation, or western civilization?  Not by much, if at all – 
save by rhetoric. 
 
 
6 
 
Like other politics, terrorism is theatrical, performative, therefore 
rhetorical.7  But terror can be so evanescent by comparison with 
other political experiences that terrorism must rely for political 
effects primarily on the rhetorics in its aftermath.  Rhetorics in 
response to terrorists acts can construct enduring meanings and 
 
John S. Nelson 3 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
effects for them, inflecting their details in relatively lasting 
directions.  The first terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, 
in 1993, attracted momentary attention in America but generated 
scant rhetoric in response and next to no public memory.  The 
embassy bombings soon to follow in other countries did not create 
in this one the echoing waves of terror sought by al Qaeda.  
Rhetorics of response seldom connected these dots with any sense 
of clarity or urgency in a specific direction.  The Washington 
Snipers kept the nation’s capital in turmoil on the edge of terror 
for days, and the Anthrax Assassin for weeks, because our 
rhetorics helped their deeds echo al Qaeda’s even after the 
conventional wisdom became that neither set of attacks tied 
organizationally or motivationally to Islamic fundamentalism 
turned anti-American. 
 
7 
 
In the aftermath of terror, our rhetorics produce the dots or don’t 
and connect them or not.  Far more than the words in our 
moments of terror, let alone the raw violations or feelings in such 
overwhelming experiences, our rhetorics in response define the 
perspectives and resolutions that emerge.  The injuries of victims, 
the grievances of terrorists, the obligations of governments, the 
strategies of media, the responsibilities of citizens:  all take firm 
shape only after terror subsides and responses ensue. 
 
 
8 
 
Rhetorics of response to 9/11 are the topic for this special issue of 
Poroi.  Insistently the contributions connect politics and art, 
economics and media, philosophy and personal reflection, 
government and popular culture.  Thomas Shevory tackles the 
interplay of commerce, music, and humor in the rhetorics that 
range “From Censorship to Irony.”  Aimee Carrillo Rowe and 
Sheena Malhotra analyze official talk and everyday media to 
disclose a “Chameleon Conservatism” that protests America’s 
political innocence and protects its hegemonic interests in the 
wake of 9/11.  In “Ground Zero, an American Origin,” Mary 
Caputi draws on Walter Benjamin’s idea of originary ruins to 
recognize in the rubble of the World Trade Center an allegory of 
consumer society in collapse.  As an electronic journal, Poroi does 
not face the page limits imposed by print, and it welcomes diverse 
articles of scholarship distinguished by insight and style.  These 
three pieces also illustrate the interdisciplinary scope of Poroi’s 
abiding passion for rhetorical analysis and invention. 
 
 
9 
 
The journal encourages unconventional contributions to 
scholarship as well.  They arise  from what its sponsoring Project 
on Rhetoric of Inquiry calls new practices of inquiry.  POROI, in  
John S. Nelson 4 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
acronymic caps, has invented rhetoric of inquiry, helped to pioneer 
multimedia scholarship, promoted cultural studies and political 
aesthetics, and supported various other initiatives that tie strongly 
to rhetorical analysis and invention.  These inspire or result from 
new forms and devices of scholarship.  Now Poroi seeks to 
spotlight these experiments in genre and method by publishing 
occasional features that deserve to inspire successors.  This issue 
introduces several: 
 
10 
 
The Conspectus takes exigencies for the present issue of the 
journal as a platform for rhetorical performance.  It introduces the 
focal contributions by engaging their mutual implications, 
individual innovations, and other implications for intellectual 
community among the writers and readers of Poroi. 
 
 
11 
 
Film Takes are exercises for appreciating the rhetorics of 
individual films or cinematic genres.  They try to be timely guides 
to viewing, as befits a world with DVDs and VCRs, but their 
scholarly ambition exceeds movie reviews that assign stars to say 
what films to see and what to skip. 
 
 
12 
 
Multimedia Inquiries are experiments with scholarship in 
media beyond print.  To create multimedia scholarship, they take 
advantage of the capacities of online publication to address 
rhetorics with images and sounds as well as words. 
 
 
13 
 
Myth Scapes are essays in the rhetorical analysis of familiar 
objects from popular cultures.  They treat objects as constellations 
of myths.  Like their prototypes, the “mythologies” by Roland 
Barthes, these essays tend to be snappy and playful. 
 
 
14 
 
Rhetorical Inventions are explorations of notable topics in 
forms more inventive, and often in terms more personal, than have 
become conventional for scholarship.  This is a genre of generic 
innovation, open to innumerable modes and moves of potential 
interest to scholars. 
 
 
15 
 
Strategy Studies are examinations of the ends and means, 
strategies and tactics, plus advantages and dangers in specific 
rhetorics.  They are where the disciplined work of rhetorical 
analysis proceeds in relatively traditional terms, if sometimes in 
more personal terms and modern forms. 
 
 
16 
 
Word Tours are excursions into the revealing meanings and 
connections among telling concepts.  They tap the tropal powers of  
John S. Nelson 5 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
rhetorical analysis and invention to post questions, refine 
observations, advance arguments, improve theories, and entertain 
readers. 
 
17 
 
Poroi has no ambition to publish every kind of feature in every 
issue.  Together the present issue and the next ones provide a full 
complement of the current kinds because prospective contributors 
need examples to guide and provoke them.  Evocations and 
instructions for each kind appear in the journal’s architecture, as I 
call it:  the parts of the Web site for Poroi that go beyond specific 
issues of the journal.  This supporting structure of information also 
evokes Poroi’s purposes, authors, editors, and processes for 
submission and subscription.  (Authors retain copyrights, while 
subscribers access issues new and old for free, so Poroi plays hard 
to resist.)  We encourage scholars to approach any of the Poroi 
editors about further possibilities for features, special issues, or 
specific contributions. 
 
 
18 
 
To probe rhetorics of response to the terrorist attacks on 
September 11, 2001, Dana Cloud calls on personal experience 
and conceptual invention to parse rhetorical strategies of 
“Therapy, Silence, and War.”  In a literary mode of rhetorical 
invention, Christopher Merrill, the Director of Iowa’s 
International Writing Program, chronicles echoes of 9/11 as “The 
Sound of Falling.”  I reflect on “Four Forms for Terrorism” in 
popular cinema.  Francis Beer and G. R. Boynton contribute a 
multimedia inquiry on conventions used by television in 
“Globalizing Terror.”  Russell Valentino’s word tour is the one 
feature not defined by the issue’s overarching theme, yet his stroll 
“From the Challenge of Virtue to the Challenges of Virtual” is 
bound to fascinate many among us. 
 
 
19 
 
This initial issue of the second volume relaunches Poroi after a 
hiatus for redesign.  The inaugural issue, focused on “Rhetorics of 
Biology in the Age of Biomechanical Reproduction,” is being 
republished in the updated format.  If you have yet to read it, 
another feast awaits you.  The new format has been financed by 
Iowa Graduate Dean John C. Keller and POROI Executive Director 
David Depew.  Their support enabled J. R. Boynton to conceive the 
look and construct the navigation that now brings you Poroi 
articles and features.  Thanks go to them all, and to the University 
of Iowa Libraries for continuing to publish and archive the 
journal.  Special thanks go to the associate editors, the managing 
editor, and members of the editorial board for lots and lots of 
incisive advice about the journal’s administration, architecture, 
 
John S. Nelson 6 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
and submissions. 
 
20 
 
In the aftermath of terror, our rhetorics tell the tale, pipe the tune, 
make the memories, shape the politics.  What rhetorics might lack 
in momentary bang, they can make up in political reverberation.  
Most terrorism is too volatile in detail and precarious in duration 
to define even its own meanings long term.  The one regime of 
terror that has engulfed the globe for decades is not so much 
political as military and apocalyptic.  It is the shadow of the 
doomsday weapon, one not merely of “mass destruction” but total 
annihilation. 
 
 
21 
 
In the wake of the Cold War, that terror takes a different form than 
in the second half of the twentieth century.  No more do we face 
the MADness of a superpower showdown between the USA and 
the USSR.  The new specter is a sabotage of civilization by suitcase 
bombs that provoke longer-range missiles from a profusion of 
regional conflicts that escalate beyond all restraint.  The terror of 
nuclear annihilation endures, now augmented by doomsday germs 
and poisons. 
 
 
22 
 
Perhaps this is why we have found it so hard to invent effective 
rhetorics for facing the terrors of a humanly imposed apocalypse.  
So far those are the stuff of nightmares rather than rhetorics.  They 
stay repressed in everyday politics and foreign policies, but express 
themselves in profound disturbances of popular music, image, and 
language.8  In invention is analysis, and in analysis invention.  As 
we analyze rhetorics of response to 9/11, might we begin as well to 
invent rhetorics for taming the total terrorism of our times:  the 
terror to end all terror – and everything else?  At least to me, the 
particulars in the present issue imply no optimism on this further 
question.  Might a few of the forms hold out nonetheless a 
modicum of hope? 
 
 
 
 
© John S. Nelson, 2003. 
 
 
 
 Notes  
 
 
 
1     Caleb Carr, The Lessons of Terror, New York, Random House, 
2002, p. 11.  
 
 
 
2     Carr’s terror-tory includes novels of crime, detection, and 
political prophecy in the guise of a techno-thriller:  The Alienist, 
New York, Bantam Books, 1994; The Angel of Darkness, New 
York, Ballantine Books, 1997; Killing Time, New York, Warner 
 
John S. Nelson 7 Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
Books, 2000. 
 
 
 
3     See Nicholas Lemann, “What Terrorists Want:  Is There a 
Better Way to Defeat Al Qaeda?” New Yorker, 77, 33, October, 29, 
2001, pp. 36-41.  
 
 
 
4     See Michael Walzer, “On ‘Failed Totalitarianism’,” 1984 
Revisited:  Totalitarianism in Our Century, Irving Howe, ed., New 
York, Harper and Row, 1983, pp. 103-121; John S. Nelson, 
“Orwell’s Political Myths and Ours,” The Orwellian Moment, 
Robert L. Savage, James E. Combs, and Dan D. Nimmo, eds., 
Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Press, 1989, pp. 11-44. 
 
 
 
 
5     See Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread, Walter Lowrie, 
trs., Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1944.  
 
 
 
6     Hannah Arendt observed a comparable dynamic in the wake of 
totalitarian regimes:  “The Aftermath of Nazi Rule,” Commentary, 
10, 4, October, 1950, pp. 342-353.  
 
 
 
7     See Gabriel Weimann and Conrad Winn, The Theater of 
Terror, New York, Longman, 1994; Ferdinand Mount, The Theatre 
of Politics, New York, Schocken Books, 1972.  Also see Robert 
Hariman, Political Style, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 
1995; John S. Nelson, Tropes of Politics, Madison, University of 
Wisconsin Press, 1998. 
 
 
 
 
8     See Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear:  A History of Images, 
Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1988.  Also see 
Gunther Anders, “Reflections on the H-Bomb,” Norbert Guterman, 
tr., Dissent, 3, 2, Spring, 1956, pp. 146-155; Ron Rosenbaum, “The 
Subterranean World of the Bomb,” Harper’s Magazine, 256, 1534, 
March, 1978, pp. 85-105. 
 
                        
 


Rhetorics of Response to 9/11: The Aftermath of Terror

Cowboys or Vampire Killers? The Bush Gang Rides Again, or American Figures in Foreign Affairs

Not a member yet

From Censorship to Irony: Rhetorical Responses to 9/11

Four Forms of Terrorism: Horror, Dystopia, Thriller, and Noir

Constructing Political Identity: Religious Radicalism and the Rhetoric of the Iranian Revolution

Therapy, Silence, and War: Consolation and the End of Deliberation in the “Affected” Public

Rhetorics of Response to 9/11: The Aftermath of Terror

Cowboys or Vampire Killers? The Bush Gang Rides Again, or American Figures in Foreign Affairs

The Globalization of Rhetoric and the Argument from Disciplinary Consequences

Chameleon Conservatism: Post-9/11 Rhetorics of Innocence

The Globalization of Rhetoric and Its Discontents

Ground Zero, an American Origin

222

250