The Current Tragedies

[Maggie Ronkin]

   This is a cross-posting of possible interest to some readers.

     From :
     Paul Chilton <P.A.Chilton at UEA.AC.UK>

     Reply-To :
     The Discourse Studies List <DISCOURS at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>

     To :
              DISCOURS at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
        Subject :
              CDA and the events of 11 September 2001
        Date :
              Thu, 13 Sep 2001 10:11:46 +0100


Dear colleagues,

Below and as an attached file are some reflections on the the events of 11
September 2001. It is possible that some of our
American colleagues will not concur with some of the remarks. I want to
assure them, however, of our sincere sympathy and
ask them to enter into dialogue. This is a Critical Discourse Moment, if
ever there was one. It seems to me that only a radical
critique,  and transformation, of the discourse environment in which
powerful states operate will resolve issues of international
security and conflict.

Paul Chilton
**********************************************************************
Notes on 11 September 2001

1       To my American friends. I can only guess how you as Americans are
feeling after yesterday. We as mere spectators
are shocked to a degree and can only send sympathy. But also we feel concern
for the world. How will the President and the
State Department respond?

2       It is almost trivial to speak of discourse analysis in the
circumstances. But remember--what happens next will be the
outcome of talk and text (cabinet meetings, public statements, media
representations, individual utterances…), and the text
and talk will be governed by cognitive and interactive habits. Under stress
pre-wired patterns of thought come into their own.
Policies and the orders to execute them are linguistic acts with
psychological, social and ethical underpinings. These we can at
least try to be aware of as potential impediments to just and effective
response.

2.1 Context
Commentators have expressed surprise that US intelligence did not foresee
the attack. Why not? The intifada has been
raging, Palestinian anger mounting, and American policy in the Middle East
increasingly criticised. Iraq is bombed almost daily
by British and American planes. The extent to which the US is perceived as a
regional and global perpetrator of economic
and political injustice is simply ignored. One does not have to defend
inhuman actions, one certainly does not need to claim
the Palestinians are the perpetrators, to make the point that numerous
groups around the world, but particularly in the Middle
East, are being handed the materials to concoct their own scripts of
self-legitimation.

Consider too the conjuncture with the promotion of national missile defense.
The disavowed word "national" is used advisedly
here--national in motive and intention it surely is. The perceived aim--to
construct an impenetrable protective shell around the
continental United States. The perceived motive--to have a free hand for
American action world-wide.

An d consider the reach of globalization, which is perceived as sheer
americanisation. The pivots are money military might
and money, symbolised by the Pentangle and the twin Towers of the center of
world trade.

Ignoring these largely semiotic facts makes the "intelligence" gathered
irrelevant. Actually, semiotics is just a fancy term for
sensible humane political intelligence and understanding.

2.2 More context
How do American policymakers now make sense of the crisis? The context of
conceptualisation has clear historical
components. Some of these are being invoked overtly, others surely are
covertly present in a historical chain of text and talk.

Strikes at the American symbolic heartland--the president's residence--took
place in 1812. "America invulnerable" has been
a constant in policy ever since (cf. Chace and Carr 1988). In conscious
historical memory, Pearl Harbor is salient--and
almost instantaneously invoked, for its similarities and its differences, on
September 11 2001. For Brits, there is
mythologization of the Blitz, and for the US ambassador in London, the story
of Brits and Americans standing shoulder to
shoulder in World War II.

Equally of interest, in my view, is the following. In 1946 the question What
to do about the Communists? became answerable
when Kennan formulated policy in language that used a set of cognitive
(metaphorical) structures which cohered with
concepts of national security, and with (i) fundamental human
conceptualisation of secure spaces, (ii) fundamental human fears
about the penetration of secure spaces, and (iii) the virtually paranoid
belief in the ubiquity of threat (evil). Cuba is perhaps the
most salient consciously shared memory of penetration of America's sphere
and threat to the American soil. September 11,
2001 must be the most terrifying of breaches. How it is conceptualised,
coped with psychologically and politically, not just by
the US but by the rest of us, is crucial.

2.3 Understanding the attackers' script
This will probably be sidelined, though some International Relations theory
does say we should not. The point is, those in the
"West" have no clear grasp they are confident of. This is dangerous; it is
analogous to the incomprehension of the Soviet
Union at the end of WWII, but more hazardous. Kennan, the State Department,
the national Security Council, Rand
Corporation and others gave us the communist threat, containment and
deterrence. These concepts cannot now be crudely
re-applied mutatis mutandis in the new world situation.

It would be naïve to think the workings of the attackers' mind/discourse can
be easily surmised and simply stated. But let us
hazard a few suggestions. Metonymic thinking, and processes of
culture-relative symbolisation are involved. One thing, one
detail of a script or frame stands for a whole complex gestalt. The White
House stands for America--in the perception of
both Americans and potential attackers. Metonymic thinking is probably
central to all forms of terrorist thinking and
self-legitimation. Suppose you believe that your culture, land and wealth
are under threat from American companies,
American consumer products, American globalized entertainment--you cannot
attack the individual agents of implementation,
so you attack something that is metonymically liked, that "symbolises",
stands for these implementing agents that you perceive
to harm you economically, psychologically and territorially. New York,
Manhattan stands for American culture, money,
global financial reach. The World Trade Centre not only stands (on the
skyline) for New York, it stands for the intangible
tentacles of money and culture. As for American military power, you cannot
attack American bases, aircraft, ships, vehicles,
so you attack a building that stands for it. You are not attacking the world
trade centre and the pentagon (just) because you
hope to physically eliminate the controlling centres of power.

So much is obvious. Less obvious is the possibility of other psychological
levels of symbolisation involved. The Tower as an
ancient symbol of power and arrogance. Five-sided forts are militarily
ancient; five-pointed stars have supposedly magical
properties in certain semiotic systems. (M. Casaubon Credulity & Incred.
(1672) 71 By certain pentacula, and seals and
characters to fence themselves and to make themselves invisible against all
kinds of arms and musquet bullets.  W. G. S.
Excurs. Vill. Curate 128 Had I but shown him the pentangle of Solomon…, how
the fiend would have howled at me in vain.)
This is risky territory. But consider: the pentangle of Solomon, the state
of Israel and the metonymy, surely at work in this
crisis, whereby Israel is linked to the United States.

Note also that "The Pentagon did so and so, says so and so" involves a
common metonymy in which the building stands for
the people and the organisation that work there. Of course, bombing the
building will kill the people in it and damage the
organisation, but is there some mental process by which harm can be denied
because you can think "I am just attacking a
symbol" (metonymy)?

There is much more, of far greater importance than all this, that we in the
West do not begin to understand, whether through
psychological, political, cultural or discourse analysis. In particular we
do not understand the conceptualisation and discourse
of holy war, jihad, intifada, and most crucially the discourse and
conceptualisation of self-sacrifice and the suicide mission.

3 American response: Discourse-conceptual strategies
Ordinary and Americans and policy makers will reach for pre-existing
discourses/conceptualisations. Here are some of the
probable patterns of thought and talk.
3.1 Categorize the Crisis
Essentially, the process is one of metaphorical mapping from source to
target domain.
3.1.1 It's a war. Media headlines, comment by reporters, and reported
comment of ordinary people use phrases like: "it's a
declaration of war on America". If the crisis is conceptualised as a war,
the entailments are: there is a state waging war against
us, we must defend the US against that state, we must retaliate against that
state, we must use military power... The premise
(source domain) can be unfounded. But the pressure to adopt this frame of
thought can force its adoption and lead to
militarisation, false identification of targets, provocation of states (e.g.
in the Arab world), escalation of war.
3.1.2 It's World War II. Historical analogy. Common in foreign policy
thinking, because it seems to have a rationale, but
basically metaphorical. Thus Sadam Hussein was Hitler. The analogy for the
September 11 attack is Pearl Harbor, but more
"symbolic". In general, the September attack announces a World War II
analogue. If the crisis is so conceptualised, the
entailments are: we must not appease (a strong strain in American foreign
policy principles), we must stand by our allies the
British (conversely), somebody is Hitler (and if so anti-Jewish and
anti-Israel?), the patriotic blitz mentality will prevail…

3.2 More discourse/conceptual strategies
3.2.1 Polarise. America represents "The West", "The Free World" (this is the
Cold War expression), "Free Democracies"
(the more recent phrase, adopted by the British prime minister). The
conceptual process restores the bi-polar geopolitical
map, familiar to American strategists, and anyway cognitively "natural",
since a war prototypically has just two sides. There is
a ready-made script for bi-polar conflicts. It is also a metonymic
process--whereby one element (the USA) stands for
another entity--a supposed collectivity labelled "free democracies", whose
real-world referent, however, is not determinate.
What is wrong with polarisation? The entity "free democracies" cannot be
simply determined, nor can its complement set. It
risks recycling old (Cold War) scripts that will be dysfunctional. It buys
into manichaean irrationality.
3.2.2 Rally round the flag. No need to comment on this… The Senators meeting
President Bush on 12 September are
reported to have "spontaneously" broken into "God Bless America".
Presidential speeches will seek to stimulate patriotic
feeling. This is doubtless humanly understandable and necessary: its dangers
are that its conceptual corollaries are:
militarization, polarization, revenge scripts.
3.2.3 Take Revenge. Warnings have already been made against adopting "an eye
for an eye" legitimations of military
response. The dangers are that this is a pre-existing script, requires no
detailed ethical justification for many people i.e. it is
itself regarded by many as ethically axiomatic), responds to "gut" feelings.
Further, it can be bolstered by rationalisations
taken from International Relations discourse/concepts--specifically Realism,
the doctrine according to which expression of
power is what maintains international order. Supported in popular discourse
by phraseology: "force is the only thing they
respect".
3.2.4 The global policeman, and the outlaw script. These are already
perceptible in public discourse. They are old Cold War
metaphors, in which the US is supposed to be the sole arbiter and enforcer
of global law and order, because it is the sole
superpower. The cultural roots of the outlaw script make it powerful
domestically. America is the sheriff, the terrorist concept
assimilates easily to the wild west outlaw concept. If America is a
policeman, or the sheriff, the entailments are: there is
someone breaking the law, who must be chased and caught. In the language of
the wild west used by Bush in his early
post-crisis speeches--"we must hunt down those folks responsible". Then
"punishment" must be inflicted.
3.2.5 Evil. Some discourse presupposes an entity labelled "Evil", or the
"forces of Evil". Maybe this is conceptually linked in
American domestic discourses to various religious discourses/concepts.
3.2.6 I leave on one side aside categorisations such as "it's world war
III", "it's the end of the world" and "it's a James Bond
movie", potent as these scripts might be for certain individuals and groups.
3.2.7 Find a target. This is the most serious problem. Since there is no
evident perpetrator at the beginning of the crisis, effort
will be put into asserting that there is an identifiable, unitary enemy. The
preference will be for that enemy to be a state. All the
scripts and concepts likely to be mobilised posit some perpetrating agent or
agents. The pressure to identify specific
real-world referents is enormous;the credibility of the presidency depends
on it.. There will be a two-track discursive solution
to this problem. One well-tried discursive route is:  like the communist
after World War II, the terrorist is one whose centre is
everywhere and whose periphery is nowhere. The enemy will be imagined is
lurking everywhere. That schema entails the
"tightening" internal security checks. The other, and extremely dangerous,
conceptual strategy is another essentially metonymic
mental and discursive move. President Bush already on 12 September stated
that the US would "make no distinction
between the terrorists who commit these acts and those who harbor them".
This is a discourse move of the utmost
significance, one that seems designed to adjust conceptualisations. It was
repeated by several spokespersons, including Colin
Powell, during the day of 12 September.

If the premise is the metonymic mapping of perpetrator onto person(s)
harbouring the perpetrator (the latter notion
awkwardly lexicalised during the discourse as "harborer"), then the
entailments are very serious. Given the militarization, the
container, and other scripts likely to work together, "harbourers" can be
targeted because they are identified with the
perpetrators. It is likely that Afghanistan's hosting of Osama bin Laden is
at issue here. Discursive effort will be put into
establishing bin Laden as the perpetrator, whatever the evidence. It is of
course possible that some state could in fact be
protecting, promoting and sponsoring attacks. The serious point here, is
that even if evidence for such connections is not at
hand, the metonymic semiotic is powerful enough, given other factors (such
as policymakers' perception of an urgent need to
satisfy public feeling) to drive retaliatory attacks on some superficially
plausible target. There is a record of this type of
thinking leading incorrect identification of targets. Proportionality would
be overridden. The political and military
consequences could be disastrous.

3.3 Close the container
In my view the CONTAINER schema (its elements are inside, outside, centre,
periphery) is the fundamental conceptual
source for "national security". (On such schemata, see Johnson, The Body in
the Mind, etc.)The human mind is possibly
prewired for spatial relations (up-down, trajectory, contained spaces); in
any case territorial enclosure is embedded
historically in the discourse of communities, and metaphorized in the
defence doctrines of nation states, and in the discourses
of national sovereignty. For a couple of decades some scholars have pointed
to the irrelevance of thinking based on the
notion of the impenetrable shell of defence. Yet (national) missile defense
is the continuing and potent manifestation of this
type of discourse/conceptualisation.

The discursive knee-jerk will be to close the container ("tighten
security"). If the state and its security are a container, the
entailments are: close the container, seal routes of entry (and maybe exit),
establish a "roof" to defend against missiles,
establish internal surveillance to defend against subversion and
undermining. This logic, involving billions of dollars of
expenditure on research, an inestimable cost in ill-will, has lead to an
unaccomplished an possibly unaccomplishable quest for
a defense "shield". The September 11 attack made this logic, as so far
implemented, totally beside the point. Nonetheless, it is
probable, such is the cognitive strength of the container schema, that
policymakers will simply seek to stop the gaps, by
seeking to install low-level anti-aircraft detection and defense systems for
key installations. This already the case for some
buildings.

Why this line of thought will lead to unworkable policy? The technology of
fool-proof and complete anti-missile and
anti-aircraft defense is in doubt. The "holes" in the container uncountable
and unforeseeable. There would be endless
expenditure--and it should be noted contracts for the military-industrial
complex, which, it can still be argued, drive the entire
vicious circle. More importantly, it leaves untouched the problem of
political causation--what drives people to select the US
as a target in the first place. Indeed, it would ratchet the up the
mechanism of provocation by reinforcing the perception that
America is seeking further invulnerable dominance. It would leave the search
for political and economic solutions low on the
priority list.

Paul Chilton
12 September 2001

>From: "Richard J. Senghas" <Richard.Senghas at sonoma.edu>
>To: Linganth List <linganth at cc.rochester.edu>
>Subject: The Current Tragedies
>Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 22:28:59 -0700
>
>Hello Linganth Folk,
>
>No doubt many of you are still dealing with a wave of complex reactions to
>the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To our colleagues
>in
>New York City: I imagine this has been an horrific experience. I hope you
>all are safe and sound.
>
>I believe we anthropologists have an opportunity to make a very positive
>contribution right now. I'm interested in hearing about what analyses that
>some of you might be doing on the current crisis involving the terrorist
>attacks on US targets. Anything worth sharing? Has anyone got pointers to
>good materials to use to help (lay) folk make sense of this whole thing?
>I'm
>particularly interested in resources anyone might be using for
>undergraduate
>coursework.
>
>I'm finding one of my biggest challenges this week is getting people to
>recognize that these actions can't be simultaneously well-coordinated and
>executed attacks AND be merely senseless violence. The trick is how to
>present the various positions as understandable (I'm saying nothing about
>excusable at this point) so that we can work for structural changes that
>could prevent the likelihood that anyone would resort to    such brutal
>forms of "communication". Also, I find myself worrying about the
>possibility
>of misdirected backlash against minority groups and positions. How do we
>prevent escalation of the violence? The stakes have been far too high for
>far too long; we must circumvent this feedback loop.
>
>To our many subscribers outside of the US: what's the view of all this from
>where you are?
>
>And finally, as list administrator, I take the liberty of offering this
>list
>as a channel of support for any of you directly affected by the these
>tragedies. Feel free to put out calls for assistance, especially if your
>needs might draw on subscribers professional expertise in cross-cultural
>and
>communicative.
>
>Peace,
>
>-Richard
>=====================================================================

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