Analogical Holocaust Memory after 9/11

Abstract

Building upon recent critical attempts to foreground the comparative properties of memory, this chapter examines the ways in which cultural and political discourses have sought to construct analogical frames of reference for 9/11. I focus upon the widespread recourse to the Holocaust as a point of reference for September 11, investigating the convergence of two pre-existing cultural discourses in the American public sphere: the ‘Americanisation’ of the Holocaust in memorial culture from the early 1990s, and the mobilisation of the Holocaust in support of US military intervention in foreign policy rhetoric in the post-Cold War period. Contrary to recent critical attempts to construct ethical paradigms of transcultural memory, in these discourses recourse to Holocaust memory paradoxically results in a renationalisation of American memorial culture and a corresponding reassertion of American exceptionalism. In the decade since September 11, the pre-eminence of the Holocaust has ensured that certain memorial constellations have been ignored and the traces of their paths erased in favour of less problematic acts of historical analogy. Accordingly, I suggest that it is not always the most visible points of connection that offer the potential for ethical modes of remembrance, but the hidden histories, the forgotten memories, whose relationship to 9/11 presents the most important claims to attention.