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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 8, No. 10
Publication Date: October 25, 2021
DOI:10.14738/assrj.810.10982. Álvarez, J. M. S. (2021). Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the Symbolic in the Attack on New York: The
Attack on the Twin Towers on September 11th and Universal Daze. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(10). 26-39.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the
Symbolic in the Attack on New York
The Attack on the Twin Towers on September 11th and Universal
Daze
José Maurício Saldanha Álvarez
Midia and Cultural Studies, Fluminense Federal University, Brazil
of Technology, Manchester, UK
ABSTRACT
This article examines the political participation of mythology and the imaginary
and the role of the history of unexpected events. It demonstrates how the attack on
the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, determined
contextualization of the event and 'resymbolization.' Working with the concept of
the state of cinema, this article explores the possibilities of constructing modern
culture which, based on the action of images and the movies. We analyze the North
American imperial discourse, and the fabrication of a picture of the world based on
a cinematographic, symbolic, and media process was - in the duel against the bad
guy, and the American hero.
Keywords: History, Power, Imagination, Mythology, Islamite, Cinema culture.
PROLOGUE
This essay was written in the emotional moments of September and October 2001 under the
attack on the Twin Towers in New York. Its initial version, presented in October, was published
in 2001, in Portuguese, in the Revista Poiesis of the Universidade Federal Fluminense, in Brazil.
The following year, an enlarged version also addressing the war in Afghanistan and Iraq favored
the notion of cinema wars, published in French in the magazine En-Quete, 13-16, 2002, by the
Université Cocody, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Now, when the tragic event turned ten years old, I
decided to republish it in English.
Our initial objective is to debate the issue of mythology, history, how the public received the
television images filtered by the cinema culture. The amazement and amazement that still takes
us today at the new and disturbing images revealed shows how the public was, and still is,
impacted by these images of never-ending catastrophe. Our essential theoretical support was
the works of Paul Virilio, whose inventive path fascinated us at the time of writing this essay.
This hastily written essay deals with the imaginary and the state of contemporary mythology.
As top American officials and hurried philosophers follow Fukyama touting the end of history,
it is surprising that she collided with the present in 2001. Coming from the century of the
expansion of Islam, she hit the West as a counter-crusade. September 11 was an aesthetic
spectacle, and all the spectators, like in the movies, were ecstatic, moved, and calm. Even
because to the spectators, nothing can happen. The awareness of future evil, far from spoiling
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Álvarez, J. M. S. (2021). Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the Symbolic in the Attack on New York: The Attack on the Twin
Towers on September 11th and Universal Daze. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(10). 26-39.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.810.10982
the pleasure of the present, even intensified it. We employ Bodansky's definition of an adherent
of Islam who becomes a supporter of Jihad as Islamite.
INTRODUCTION
Today, dark and stormy clouds are rolling over the Middle East and rubbing their ominous
wings over Asia. Once again the war seems to renew its forces in this troubled region, taking
the particular form of the duel, an action very common in films of the North American western
genre. This offensive duplication wrote yet another scenario in the recent saga of media and
film wars. If, from what we will be able to note, September 11 corresponded to an unnamed
surprise, the new wars started by the mood of cinema, become announced chronicles, like what
happened during the duel which had a fixed time an adversary chosen on purpose. Now it will
be carried out on the "info-lanes".
The first and stealthy military operations in Afghanistan were presented to the public in the
form of nocturnal and spooky images in October 2001. Television showed North American
special troops digging through cubic houses and Afghan caves in search of it. omnipresent Bin
Laden, in one of the most complex operations of this war. The place where he is hiding,
moreover, seems to be located in the mythical Beriabad, from the movie "Sindbad, the Sailor",
a role played on screen by actor Douglas Fairbanks Junior. In this film, the Arab hero, who was
asked where the city in question was, replied that it was here, there, there, everywhere. All the
military panoply of high technology and high sophistication such as GPS, and the informational
warfgae, like its paotic vision, recurs to that enormous defensive fortresses that fall in front of
the shrewdness of some nomads. i In the North American news agency (or even the Echelon
System), or anty intelicenge agency at least succeeds in following in his footsteps. Usama Bin
Laden virtually disappeared and physically in his Beriabad-Afganistan.
As for the Taliban, after tasting the bitter taste of the B-52 air bombers, he disappeared,
returning to hiding places in the village and shelters inaccessible to all invaders. He made
himself as the Soviet invaders said, invisible. The result of the attack on the twin towers
produced an "event" that belongs to the 20th century as something indomitable. According to
Raymond Aron, the event made is in the sphere of the unpredictable and the unforeseen.ii
THE WAY OF MYTHOLOGY INTENT AND STORAGE OF TAGS
There is a relationship between the visual impact of 9/11 and mythology. We will dwell on
American mythology and its myths, such as the invulnerability of its territory, the remarkable
readiness of its armed forms to repel external aggressions and the enormous detection capacity
of its intelligence agencies. The shock to the credibility of their myths must be put in the context
of Greco-Roman mythology.
The latter always considered the deities to be tender beings. But it seems that, for the Greek
mythology, even the gods were mortal. And when they died the news aroused terror, stupor. It
would perhaps be important to begin with the path of Hellenic mythology, that inexhaustible
source and so rich in meaning, offered to modern man, and especially in this time of war.
Plutarch, in one of his books, tells the story of Epitherses, father of the speaker Emiliannus, who
took a boat trip to Italy. In the evening, when they landed on an island in the Aegean, the wind
stopped and the boat drifted to Paxoi Island. The majority of the passengers were still awake,
many of them drinking after supper, when suddenly a voice was heard from this island; it
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looked like someone was calling Themus (that was the helmsman's name). The terror spread;
the helmsman only answered the third call and then the voice explained, with difficulty: "When
you get to Palodes, you will announce that Great Pan died." All became astonished (in
Epitherses' words) and reasoned for a few moments as to whether to perform the injunction,
or whether to ignore it. Nonetheless, Themus said that if the wind was right he would go his
way, but if there was a lull he would bawl, then, what he had heard. When they arrived at
Palodes, and since the wind and the sea were quite calm, Themus, at the back of the boat, cried
out to land the words he had heard: "The Great Pan died." As soon as he said these words, there
were violent sobs, mingled with panic, which did not seem to come from just one man, but from
several.iii
Plutarch seems to want - in a telluric premonition - to make believe in the announcement of the
death of the classical Greco-Roman imaginary, no doubt, before nascent Christianity.
Mediterranean nature mourned the death of Pan, because the disappearance of a god is the
forerunner of the collapse of a whole mythology, of several networks of meanings which
connect it to the reality of men. We cannot forget that in the Greek language Pan means
"everything." The twin towers were "everything" because they were potent symbols of
capitalism and American power. We must also realize that mythologies are anchored in history
and located in time.iv The man produced them over time. In the same direction, Ortega y Gasset
declared that man has no nature but has a history. Since we introduced the story, we need to
make its place explicit. v
USAMA BI LADEM AND THE HOLY WAR
As the end of history was decreed, it reemerged as the true nature of man. While the West in
the first Gulf War and Kosovo employed sophisticated military technology, they consolidated
the strategic right to intervene wherever they wished. Thus occurred the deterritorialization of
the conflict. Usama bin Laden, this Saudi nomad, took advantage of the recent invention of
Western power called the secular holy war and counterattacked with jihad, or the Muslim holy
war.vi His untranslated views are near and far from Muhammad Ahmad's (1844-1885), the
Mahdi, in the Sudan of 1890. His Al Quaeda supporters, penetrated by ardent faith in Islam,
questioned all Muslim principles, founding as Protestants in the 16th century, a new faith.
Mahdi's supporters wrote to their opponents like that of Bin Laden: "What difference(there is)
between a man who says that the land belongs to God and is inherited by whom He chooses
from among His faithful and a man who says that the country is the country of my father and
ancestors. » We do not know if in the coming months' Bin Laden will surprise the world by
calling himself Mahdi, a term that seems to belong to the Shiites, although not exclusively.vii
When the USSR entered the war trap in Afghanistan, the invasion of an atheist country against
a Muslim country aroused hatred, and jihadist ideology took shape. The US government
supported the mujahedin's actions against the USSR by sending weapons with the lethal missile
Sting. In this conflict, Usama bin Laden's ideological leadership was enormous. In his prophetic
book, John K. Cooley acknowledges that the Islamists received American support to defeat the
USSR. He warns, however, that far from being allies, they were America's deadly enemies. They
desired to expel her from Saudi Arabia, where they defiled the holy places of Islam. By this time,
Bin Lan was already an international terrorist and respected Islamist theologian. Quickly the
holy war infected the rest of the world and reached America, starting with attacks on diplomatic
representations in Africa until reaching the American shores. In 1995, the journalist John K.
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Álvarez, J. M. S. (2021). Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the Symbolic in the Attack on New York: The Attack on the Twin
Towers on September 11th and Universal Daze. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(10). 26-39.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.810.10982
Cooley landed at John Kennedy Airport. He got into a taxi driven by a Pakistani. Cooley asked if
there would be jihad in America. Yes,» he snapped, « there is jihad in America. We are many
Muslims. Here in New York, in New Jersey, everywhere. Jihad is our duty. » viii
THE PLACE OF HISTORY
Can we write the story of this Tuesday, September 11, or will we have to wait some more time?
This urgency worries some historians who, a priori, by their training and their vast
instrumental background, may be better able to judge events from a temporal perspective.
Could this exclusive practice be a misunderstanding? Jean Lacouture considered it "a dogma of
recent date" to define history as a "science of the past". ixIn this way, the place of history seems
to be that of the distance of the event in time; that of the recension we need to accomplish our
essential task: to write our side of history. Practicing the history of unexpected events brings
us back to a question of method and one that concerns our place as a historian. If history
condemns the study of the present, we will practice it as a chronicle of war, that is, an immediate
history.
And there is history. It’s not just one story. Its "reoccurrences" are many, because there are
endless and diverse stories. The story of unexpected events is full of the voices of actors who,
because of the proximity, are more piercing, more noticeable and clearer than in the long run.
If we choose the key to the immediate, it is imperative to catch up with a set of previous stories
and temporalities that led to the episode of the attack in New York. In the historical process, the
narrative act constitutes a personal narrative. By producing a present story - war chronicle -
we develop a rhetoric which, like a bridge, allows passage between successive previous stories
and establishes a personal version. Despite this, we must realize that its outcome will not be
complete, for one cannot describe all of the becoming. So, like Paul Veyne, we conclude that
history is the realm of juxtaposition. He pronounced a sort of final sentence, saying that
everything is historical. But History is also a rhetoric, a construction, it is subjective, it is not
free, it is the realm of inaccuracy.x History wants to be objective and cannot be. She wants to
revive and she can only rebuild. xi
THE ATTACK : SPEED, DROMOLOGICAL AND SPETACULAR SHOW.
After the initial attacks on isolated US offices with little media coverage, Bin Laden decided to
carry out an attack capable of demonstrating to Muslims around the world and the United States
his hatred of the oppression suffered by Islam. Attacking New York crowned its concept of
spectacular terrorism: the entire world would see the destruction of the twin towers.
When the attack on the World Trade Center took place, the initial statement simply said that an
aircraft had collided with one of the Twin Towers, which was in flames. Everything suggested
that it was an accident, due to chance. Suddenly, before our eyes, another aircraft appeared,
tragically autonomous, which plunged, hitting the second tower. Usama bin Laden was
following Napoleon's words, for whom, in order to magnetize the masses, it was necessary to
speak first of all in their eyes. The attack on the towers was magic for the eyes of the spectators.
They never left the image like a spell, raising in its spectators, every second of transmission, the
sensation of ubiquity and of a fourth dimension, in which space and time abolished.xii
In 9/121, a French journalist, who was on a live broadcast from New York to France, warned
his compatriots that they were not attending a film. This terrible spectacle was not made by the
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cinema, nor by television: it was real. And this iconoclastic, brazen reality barbarically invaded
what Wunenburger said was the topography of television space, or that sacred place on which
were erected altars intended to make supernatural beings and gods visible. But what reality
was it? What were we witnessing? To a collision of planes? Or a succession of suicide acts or
theft system breakdowns? The television channels repeated the image of the plane, as it struck
the second tower, cutting it like a blade: it exploded like a device, scattering on the ground, in
the form of rain from incandescent waste. If the ubiquity of cinema at the time of the Great
Depression made the public forget its poverty and weakness in the face of the crisis.xiii On
September 11, the ubiquity of the images showed that they had to remember that for Bin Laden,
ages were an enemy, there were no innocents among them, they were Christians, infidels, a
legitimate target.xiv
With each repetition of the scene, everything seemed to be even more terrible. It was obvious
that nothing would prevent the tragedy because, according to Aeschylus, neither sacred
offerings, nor abundant libations, nor tears would appease the anger of the gods deprived of
the flame of the sacrifices. xv Maybe we could say Perhaps we could assert that this image
became virtual, but of a virtuality that instigates reality. The speed with which the attack on the
Towers and its collapse and the dust cloud produced were improbable and supernatural
images. xvi The cinematographic adaptation, which goes out of the individual towards the
collective domain, acts in such a way as to highlight the image, much more than the written text,
the great mythical structures which organize the imaginary space of a society. xvii
Virtual images are those which pre-exist in reality and generate reality.xviii Some time after the
event, the shock of a third aircraft which had reached the Pentagon, the headquarters, was
confirmed. of the military industrial complex, causing serious damage. The nation panicked
when it was learned that another plane had struck the ground in Pennsylvania. The terrible
images that the TV did not produce, and yet invaded him, destroyed the usual convenience
which, according to Wunenburger, required "a sitting posture, with a subtle device for orienting
the body in relation to the screen." Faced with this chain of actions without reason or control,
they quickly sought to produce a meaning that would perhaps lead to some sort of control. It
was, without a doubt, a programmed human action. But which? Human history would no longer
make sense if we forgot that men have objectives, goals, intentions.xix
Francis Fukuyama's famous theory of the end of history disturbed intellectuals and government
agents. Many thinkers secretly harbored hostility towards the dictatorship of history as the
tremendous regulating factor in human acts. For Fukuyama, the familiar map accurately
represented the world, dividing between Japan, the Asian tigers, and the United States and
Western Europe, consolidating this type of economy.xx
THE IMAGES OF CINEMA : UNEXPECTED ATTACK AND THE EXPECTED ATTACK.
At the source of the amazement and the perplexity of the New Yorkers (and world) in the face
of Tuesday, September 11, we find the culture that comes from cinema and television; televisual
image of this implacable and spectacular mold which covers the whole world through
information-electronic networks. Throughout the last decades, the predictability of the images
originating in television productions was also present, among people , than the clock, formerly.
Television, according to Wunenburger, continues to regulate the lives of populations, as the
clock once marked the life of the countryside. xxi In his opinion, the whole world today is
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Álvarez, J. M. S. (2021). Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the Symbolic in the Attack on New York: The Attack on the Twin
Towers on September 11th and Universal Daze. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(10). 26-39.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.810.10982
subjected to a globally dimensioned model which establishes the monopoly of a certain type of
gaze and image. On film and culture that there is a connection between American production
and globalized culture. This culture produced by an image-consuming market is not just
American, it's global.
Osama bin Laden acted as an authorial filmmaker would by attacking the twin towers watching
everything from his director's chair. The spectators, meanwhile, watched the attack from their
armchairs at home. September 11 was the pure cinema, and the speed of destruction of such
imposing buildings made bin Laden what Virílio calls a dromocrat, associating his hatred of the
American infidel to destructive desire operating at the speed of light. xxii
Long before, since the first decades of the twentieth century, the cinema, as agent and source of
history, according to Marc Ferro, produced a culture of images which constitutes the basis of
the cognitive perplexity which also ravaged the world, during the September 11 attack.xxiii If
television, with its continuous flow of information, manages to keep, according to
Wunenburger, millions of viewers in the same country, in front of the same hours of the day, in
front of their television sets, to see the same programs, the cinema, had also done it before.
Described by Sebbag as our great initiator, cinema during the twentieth century became the
producer of versions and narratives.xxiv In the following decades, cinema, through its processes,
became a great explanatory agent, whose story was composed in time and in the processes
specific to production.
During the attack, from their seats, the audience watched in bewilderment a succession of
meaningless images, which seemed to come from raw material, in which there was still an
argument missing to become a screenplay. The astonishment, which was already enormous
after the crash of the aircraft, became apocalyptic at the image - itself apocalyptic - of the
collapsing towers. The debate about astonishment gains new light when we think of how Leo
Chaney debates the momentary in Walter Benjamin, who describes the «shock» associated with
a disturbing and constant « sudden change.» This continuous change is the experience of the
moment, and it changes dramatically.xxv
Nevertheless, in 2001, viewers of the attack on the Towers were not in theaters, which
Krakauer called the entertainment palaces.xxvi The images seen were not amusing but at least
astonished the spectators. As in the news of Pan's death, they were moved, terrified and feared
for their fate, feared for their country, felt insecure and in danger.
CINEMA: WAY OF BEING AND SEEING THE WORLD
A huge cloud arose, moved inexorably over the city, imposing dead silence on it, and muffling
sounds and noises, deadly and heavy. The horror of that day seemed to never end, unlike
disaster movies. Bellour, in front of one of these last images of a film, says that one is, for a
moment that could last a lifetime, in front of an invented, disfigured image, the strength of
which is due to that from which it fate - a drama. xxvii And yet, we still knew almost nothing;
there was absolutely no sense in the total destruction of the greatest symbols and myths of the
efficiency and raison d'être of the USA, the economic temple of free enterprise and the world
economic realm: the twin towers of the World Trade Center . From an ideological point of view,
the actors, amazed, had been educated in a perspective where the versions later developed by
cinema and television, had the power of a magic wand to make and remake history.
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Special effects in filmmaking evolved and became autonomous. In disaster cinema, par
excellence, they accepted the compromise of being more terrible than the real thing. It was the
real imagined and made. What I want to say is that despite the destruction wrought by the
simulation on the cinema and TV screen, and its dreadful result, the spectator knew, in the
depths of his soul, when he left the theater. projection, that he left the realm of fiction and
returned to reality. The towers, bridges and buildings were still there, intact. At the end of a
disaster movie, America was left untouched. This time, that calming effect did not occur. The
special effects were largely overtaken by reality, the destruction of which gave rise to a kind of
"stupidification". Ignorance and lack of information led to panic over the death of the myth, over
the death of the great Pan American. In the following months, control of information and image
production would pass into the hands of info-ways and the state of cinema.
The cinematographic image must be taken up as the touchstone of contemporary culture.xxviii It
is because on these images in their raw state, the New York population observed that their city
was under attack. refused to adopt the already known methods of restoring reality. The
relentless destruction, which began in the morning, continued until the end of the day. And the
film's concluding rites - dialogue with fiction - did not end. That is, no chivalry, no superhuman
heroes to come and save them; there was no “happy ending”. This time, the lights in the
screening room did not come on. The story was not fiction, it was reality. And he had no doubts:
the towers were gone, and the worst part was, there was a gap in space. Soon, at government
levels and in media networks, amazement gave way to the attempt to name what had just taken
place, to place it in expressible and understandable territory.
The act of naming obeys an atavistic impulse allowing, in History, that the myth is constructed,
or even "resymbolized". To name is to make sense.xxix Resymbolize ’means to attribute a new
symbolic meaning to an old form, or even to a pre-existing form. In ancient mythologies,
assigning a name was a complex operation, which consisted of assigning meaning and mythical
readability to an event. Naming allowed the event to fit into a "Resymbolize" means to attribute
a new symbolic meaning to an old form, or even to a pre-existing form. In ancient mythologies,
assigning a name was a complex operation, which consisted of assigning meaning and mythical
readability to an event. The fact of naming allowed the event to fit into a sense of order, not to
be just intelligible; he ensured his insertion into the realm of the imaginary, by composing a
mythology. The fact of naming established a vision of the world, the effects of the world; in
short, set up the own world. The media wars, after 2001, recovered the reassuring meaning of
'scriptwriting', eliminated surprise and redeemed the state of cinema. But that's not what
happened in 2001.
In the United States, the American authorities and the television channels tried, with all force,
to name the interlocutor who attacked them. Roland Barthes, in his classic work Mythologies,
wrote that the official discourse on political themes produces a 'cosmetic' writing, because it
covers the events with a 'noise' of language.xxx To explain the context of the Algerian war, he
affirmed that the French Republic denied to the Algerian combatant the notion of interlocutor.
The North Americans named and recognized as their interlocutor a fundamentalist Islamic
terrorist. Their reaction was based on a speech that appealed to identity narratives, employing
words with galvanizing power: an act of war. Historically, when America was treacherously
attacked, God supported her in His holy anger.
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Álvarez, J. M. S. (2021). Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the Symbolic in the Attack on New York: The Attack on the Twin
Towers on September 11th and Universal Daze. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(10). 26-39.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.810.10982
HORRORS OF WAR INDOORS
War, as a process, is inserted as a historical activity or process, present in North American
history.xxxi It provides American citizens with the conviction that they are personally concerned
by a crusade. A war, according to Eliade explicitly, is a paradigmatic action, that is to say,
dangerous and heroic, it is a noble word, which presupposes both national mobilization and
identity.xxxii The word war inserted America in a historical and mythical narrative, a known
symbolic territory, producer of meaning, attributing aggregate value to countless articles of
consumption.
A few details of the attack illuminate the whole event. We know, for example, that an enormous
quantity of paper which came out of the towers, blown away by the wind, fell semi-charred
everywhere around. Another detail: the big rats. As soon as the fugitives from the burnt towers
reached the ground, a multitude of large rats were already arguing along the way; these rats,
like humans, fled imminent death. With his animal terror, they slipped past the legs of passers- by, and moved away from the towers, which had not yet collapsed. On Sunday evening, the CNN
channel took a short break from its broadcasts. As the sun set, the live broadcast of the rescue
work was replaced by the image of the Empire State Building, illuminated in blue, red and white.
Gradually, in addition to the rhetoric of war, the channels (notably CNN) began to show superb
images, in black and white, of workers and firefighters waving flags against the smoking
background. An "aura" of holiness, bestowed upon the heroes who worked in the rubble, began
to be fabricated. It was not yet known that a few of these heroes had feet of clay. Equipped with
heavy equipment, intended for the work of removing the ruins, they robbed jewelry stores
located in the partially destroyed basement. These thugs were defined by the New York Police
Chief as serious robbers, grave robbers. xxxiii With this canonization, a euphoric bubble of
patriotism stormed the American press.
THE ATTACK ON THE WORLD IN THE TWIN TOWERS : 42 NATIONALISITES OR
THOUSAND OF CONFLICTS ?
Let's go back to the imaginary. Keyword which is polysemous. It is essential to the “human
condition”, the one that allows each generation to produce definitions of man, as well as his
'self-image.'xxxiv on the death of a modern deity, of a myth, or perhaps, of several myths at once,
when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were hit, charred, demolished. Plutarch
announced the death of classical mythology, regretted with a clamor that echoed all over the
earth. In New York, different manifestations of pain made up the cosmic tears due to the death
of their myths. The constructions of the imaginary are produced by a complex mental
elaboration, intended to transform reality. xxxvThe imaginary is therefore made up of stories
which establish world effects and which found the world. It is possible to define it as an
elaborated, perfected, refined capital, and which can promote self-knowledge and the
formation of knowledge of people, things, the world. In the historical process, the production,
circulation, and use of the imaginary were 'reoccurring' at times when a soothing, restorative
explanatory picture is needed. The readings of the symbols of the past, even those of the
present, are repeated; the symbols are sometimes 're-symbolized'. "Resymbolize" means to
return to the realm of sensitivity and make the symbol again. This way, if the great Pan died, we
will find a new Pan. And US Government regained his power to act, and the new big stick
assumed a media and truth-building form.
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Another myth that dispelled was America's invincibility boasted in dozens of mainstream films,
showing thousands of armed aircraft ready to defend America from external threats. The ease
with which terrorists seized commercial aircraft is evidence of the routine into which the
intelligence community and defensive systems have immersed themselves. A French colonel
warned that fortresses must be resistant in times of war. During peace, its capacity to be
maintained by military technicians. The art of defense is constantly changing, and the world's
law is: to be immobilized is to die. All the military equipment and information agencies, boasted
by the films, correspond to the Cold War. So, the defense of the North American territory
resided in the bases of Asia-Pacific and Europe. The new Islamist enemy was fluid and ran a
counter-crusade in America, taking the war, as Ratzel wrote, from its borders into enemy
territory. xxxvi
The mujahedeen after the USSR departed from Afghanistan, and new power gained the world
stage when bin Laden in a fast-paced movement attacked American consulates in African
countries, obtaining media coverage and humiliating his enemy. According to Islamic sources,
commenting on bin Laden's document, the attack on the United States using the guerrilla did
not require the use of numerous combatants such as a reguilar army and security apparatus.
Victory over the United States and its humiliation may be a goal achieved by a small number of
fighters.xxxvii
To attack American territory, it was not necessary cannons, battleships, and bombers. A
spectacular target: the Twin Towers. To make it elusive and fast beings without giving the
opponent time to react. Weapons? Airliners after take-off, loaded with fuel. Virílio calls it
dromocratic intelligence will carry out a permanent assault on the world of infidels after
attacking the United States. xxxviii
MYTH, MITOLOGY AND RESSYMBOLIZATION
Myth, according to Burkhert's definition, is applied narrative.xxxix Myth, although fabricated, is
pure in nature, it produces foundational writing. Traditionally, it was a construct articulated by
the oral, by the verbal process, by the process of hearing and retelling. The narrative is a kind
of discourse, often conditioned in its sequence, by the linearity of human language. According
to Roland Barthes, the myth is a word. The myth only exists in relation to the real, taking
consistency in what is narrated. Metaphorical construction, it integrates the story. Let’s not
forget that the Greek word mythos means speech, story, conception. Although it was originally
associated with the sacred, the Hellenics themselves, since the fifth century, stripped it of its
religious and metaphysical value. The Judaic-Christian contribution, which was based on the
authority of the biblical testaments, condemned the myth to the tomb, by engraving on its
epitaph the following inscription: it is false, it is illusory.xl However, Malinovsky asserted that
myth is a vital ingredient of human civilization; far from being a vain fabulation, it is, on the
contrary, a living reality.
The 9/11 attack struck at symbols, attacked myths, forcing Americans to "resymbolize" his own
myths a few. According to the rhetoric of some Islamic opponents, the United States has been
described as the Great Satan or, alternatively, as the embodiment of the devil. In this case, the
towers often appeared in architectural rhetoric, under the metaphor of the phallus; phalluses
pointed towards the sky, rigid, brilliant, powerful. The devil's penis is crossed out. When he has
sex with a woman, he penetrates her through both the vulva and the anus. It is very likely that
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Álvarez, J. M. S. (2021). Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the Symbolic in the Attack on New York: The Attack on the Twin
Towers on September 11th and Universal Daze. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(10). 26-39.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.810.10982
the terrorists who carried out this action did not yet have a full reading of their act. It is the
critics, scholars and analysts who must address their myriad interrelated knots. On the other
hand, the destruction of the towers can therefore obey a desire to destroy a myth. Since the
terrorists saw themselves as an instrument of God, they achieved victory by castrating the Great
Satan. On the other hand, it is interesting to catch up with the information of the existence of
individuals of 42 nationalities, and of almost all the countries of the world who worked there.xli
The representation of the United States and the world is strongly linked to notions of identity.
There is still the controversy which goes beyond the limits of the pulpit and which affects
freedom of expression and constitutional guarantees. And there is also Professor Ward
Churchill who declared, recently - unleashing a virulent United States campaign against him -
that there were no innocents in the towers, and that, in a way, all those whom there were
culprits.xlii
MENTAL MAPPING : THE IMAGO MUNDI.
One of the ways to 'mythologize' the world and people is to insert them into a network of
signifieds. The identifying representation is the map. A cartography locates in space a territory
inhabited by men, who remain divided between the "US", with whom God is found, and "THE
OTHERS", who do not count on the help of God. This practice is very old. Cartography was used
to trade, to wage war, to give, to separate, to produce world effects, to establish the world.
Colonial cartography, such as the graphic operation described by Michel de Certeau, allowed
the metropolitan power to know the colony from its own spatial references.xliii
In the twentieth century, mind maps were produced; their explanatory function and introducer
of sigifications completely changed real geography. It established a new geographic narrative,
a mental construct filled with ideological belonging. From an identity belonging. Or, according
to Said, an "imaginary geography".xliv In his polemic book, Samuel Huntingdon considers it
appropriate to discuss the maps that portray the new images of the Cold Post-War Powers. It
highlights the importance of updated and detailed maps to reflect realism. Maps confirm the
perceptions of the world as being indispensable guides in relations and international political
practices.xlv
We find, in recent history, several examples of a cartography that establishes stories and
meanings of the world. A parody of this process was produced by Surrealism, whose mappa
mundi, full of hilarity, pointed out the continents and countries which were engaged in its vision
of art and of the world.xlvi The rhetoric card in pink, made in Portugal by Salazar, celebrated an
imperial 'self-image': “we are a small country, and yet, if we join our overseas provinces, our
territorial extension will make us bigger than Europe ”. North American President Ronald
Reagan produced an ideologically aligned world map during the Cold War era, highlighting
what was "ours", that is, the US, and the countries allied with it. , and what was "theirs", or else,
the part dominated by the Communists.
In the weeks following September 11, the mind map of the world shifted. We built a cartography
that divides the world. On the one hand, there are the countries which love freedom and order,
which are good, on the good side, generous, white (or almost), Christian, civilized. Their
champion and figurehead is the USA; then come their allies. On the other side is the evil world,
poor, dirty, uneducated, lawless, cunning. Full of exotic multitudes, agitated, who vociferated.
Contrary to what we believe, the presence of Islam as a symbol of evil is a recent image for the
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Álvarez, J. M. S. (2021). Between the Real and The Imaginary: The Construction of the Symbolic in the Attack on New York: The Attack on the Twin
Towers on September 11th and Universal Daze. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(10). 26-39.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.810.10982
CONCLUSION
The death of myths and mythology demise of the imagination of men; is a sign of a profound
alteration in their lives. The myth originates in complex mental operations which result from
the actions of the men of history. Often re-symbolized, it takes on a new face. In the New York
attack, witness tears demonstrate the certainty of the end of an era, a painful change. The place
of history is not only that of the long term, of the temporal perspective. It is also that of the
emergency, the chronicle of the war.
In a world dominated by images from cinema and television, which order, simulate, and
"spectacular" reality, the present appeared before the astonished audience. The
'mythologization' of conflicts acquired the face of a geographical map that identifies opponents.
Furthermore, it symbolically demonstrates the origin, production, circulation-reception of
myths: mythology, since the beginning of the twentieth century, recovered in the history of
culture, an increasingly important role. Perhaps September 11, 2001, was that matrix event', a
phrase coined by Roy Ladurie to describe l’événement matrice, a transformative event - which
opened the doors to a more urgent release of the imagination.l
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