Addendum: Synecdoche not surrogate

I apologize in advance for what is far too long to be a blog post. 

In class today, I broached the idea that perhaps some of the diverse issues we have with taking a critical approach to 9/11 could be attributed to a rupture in Joseph Roach's theory of surrogation. I posit that we may have followed a course of synecdochial behavior instead, and this course is one that does not allow for distance and critical interpretation.

Let me begin with a reiteration of my understanding of Roach (please do let me know if I'm misrepresenting here). He argues that when a society suffers a loss - through death or absence - "survivors attempt to fit satisfactory alternates. . . . The process requires many trials and at least as many errors" (2-3). When this process is unsatisfactory, "selective memory requires public enactments of forgetting, either to blur the obvious discontinuities . . . or to exaggerate them in order to mystify a previous Golden Age." This process is a continuum and therefore involves steps forward and backward toward forgetting/accepting, toward creating a narrative of the time before the surrogation was necessary. 

Now, let's examine the process of remembering 9/11. As we discussed in class today, there was very little forgetting. Rather, images of the event (Debord-style) were everywhere, leaving the event open, fresh, and unsentimentalized. The memorials were representative rather than replacements: the twin lights shining up, pictures of the actual people who were lost, sculptures of falling people. These weren't surrogates - they were synechdoches. This is even clearer when one considers the fact that actual pieces of the buildings, twisted metal and concrete, were used for memorials around the country. True, there were also images of the first responders, so perhaps my model isn't perfect, but I maintain (with little data at hand) that those images are generally site-specific and represent specific groups of firefighters, specific people. (One exception would be this statue, but as it was commissioned before the attacks and adopted by the city in their honor, I'm not sure it fits either.)

Following this line of reasoning, we are never allowed distance from the event. When we see its representations, we see the actual event, the actual people's images, not their replacements (setting aside the argument that an image is a kind of replacement). Does this constant returning to the day, as opposed to the effects of the day, explain why we have trouble with critical distance? Just consider the way we've named it. We define it with data - the date 9/11 - not with a name like "D-Day" or "Pearl Harbor." A date invokes universality - a "where were you?" conversation. This is opposed to the name of a place, which is only as evocative as how well you know it. 

Harry Elam, Jr., in his entry to the Forum on Tragedy, discusses the fact that many of those who were lost were never found; the site became an actual tomb rather than a memorial (like the Vietnam War memorial, for example). He says that the "visible invisibility of this communal entombment captured our collective sensibilities" (102). I would argue that there is no invisibility - this entombment is always present, always visible. When we visit Ground Zero, we are visiting the dead. To return to Amy's question, I don't know that there is a shared language for such an experience, but if we ascribe to Roach's viewpoint, perhaps we should start with a process of surrogation? Perhaps we should rethink our images of the day not as towers and falling people but as something (I realize this is too vague to be productive) more abstract, yet still respectful and meaningful?