Dissertations / Theses on the topic '9/11 events'

My thesis argues that a shift has taken place in white supremacist rhetoric post September 11, 2001. I focus on the pre-9/11 rhetoric of Jared Taylor, the post 9/11 rhetoric of Patrick Buchanan, and identify the attacks of September 11th as a catalytic event in the history of white supremacist rhetoric. Through careful rhetorical analysis, I identify the 9/11 shift as a shift in placement vis-à-vis the political mainstream.

Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Homeland Security and Defense) )--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2005.
Thesis Advisor(s):Chris Bellavita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-113). Also available online.

Following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, many turned to the field of psychology for greater understanding of the impact of such events and guidance in supporting our citizens. This study sought to gain greater understanding of the differential impact of the September 11th attack on individuals by investigating the influence of age, psychological hardiness, and repression versus sensitization as forms of coping behavior on psychological health. Both an initial cross-sectional sample (172 young adults & 231older adults) and a short-term longitudinal follow-up (39 young adults & 58 older adults) were included in the study. Older age, psychological hardiness and the use of a repressing coping style were found to each individually relate to greater resilience/less dysfunction at both time one and two. For young adults, high hardy repressors faired best, followed by high hardy sensitizers. Low hardy young adults demonstrated similar levels of dysfunction regardless of coping style (repressions/sensitization). For older adults, coping style impacted both high and low hardy individuals equally, with high hardy repressors demonstrating greater functioning. This study attempted to gain greater insight into explanations for these and previous findings of greater resilience among older adults. In explaining the greater resilience of older adults, it seems that coping style is highly important, while hardiness and the impact of history-graded events does not explain the resilience of older adults.

This thesis features two case studies exploring the George W. Bush Administration’s (2001 – 2009) efforts to promote democracy in the Arab world, following military occupation in Iraq, and through ‘democracy support’ or ‘democracy assistance’ in Lebanon. While reviewing well rehearsed arguments that emphasise the inappropriateness of the methods employed to promote Western liberal democracy in Middle East countries and the difficulties in the way of democracy being fostered by foreign powers, it focuses on two factors that also contributed to derailing the U.S.’s plans to introduce ‘Western style’ liberal democracy to Iraq and Lebanon. The first is the adverse impact upon the U.S.’s efforts to foster democracy in Iraq caused by bureaucratic in-fighting and conflicting U.S. agency agendas. The argument is that the internecine struggles between competing U.S. agencies, not only in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, but also during the post-war occupation of that country, helped to undermine the Bush Administration’s policy there. In Lebanon the study shows that, notwithstanding the non-military approach the Bush Administration pursued there, its efforts again still fell short of the grand rhetoric which accompanied the shift in U.S. foreign policy toward democracy promotion in the aftermath of 9/11 and the 2003 Iraq war. The second factor put forward in this study as also significant in the failure of the Bush enterprise is the widespread suspicion of U.S. motives across Iraq, Lebanon and the wider Arab world. The thesis argues that such suspicions are reflective of the broader issues of credibility and trust which have bedevilled U.S. democracy promotion. The analysis to follow will show how Bush’s democracy campaign was compromised by a prevalent anti-American sentiment borne out of the deep and pervasive suspicions of U.S. motives.

This research investigates the decision making process of individuals from revealed preferences in extreme environments or life-and-death situations, from a behavioral economics perspective. The empirical analysis of revealed behavioral preferences shows how the individual decision making process can deviate from the standard self-interested or “homo economicus” model in non-standard situations. The environments examined include: elite athletes in FIFA World and Euro Cups; climbing on Everest and the Himalaya; communication during 9/11 and risk seeking after the 2011 Brisbane floods. The results reveal that the interaction of culture and environment has a significant impact on the decision process, as social behaviors and institutions are intimately intertwined, which govern the processes of human behavior and interaction. Additionally, that risk attitudes are not set and that immediate environmental factors can induce a significant shift in an individuals risk seeking behaviors.

This dissertation examines the discourses of witnesses in their response to the exigence of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I find significant clusters of terms and phrases that I read as reimagining the meaning of the attacks as well as the position of audience members who themselves rewrite the rhetorical situation or context in which the attacks take place. Traditional uses of the "rhetorical situation" model to understand the exigence of the attacks - as an objective external event that called discourse into being, a spectacular image that confused and traumatized audiences, or set of opportunities for President Bush to manipulate its meanings - continues to miss the vernacular, everyday texts of witnesses that struggle to articulate the exigence. Through conflicted and contradictory testimony analyzed in each chapter, I show how witnesses' discourses problematize the status of the exigence of the attacks, keeping its meaning open and dynamic. I conclude that audience members' discourse - the words and phrases of witnesses - may therefore be read as an "event" rather than as part of a stagnant situation. In this way, the rhetorical force of words maintains a capacity to transform the very context in which it takes place as opposed to being read by critics as just another instance of a pre-existing situation.

As a result of the 9/11 terror attacks, a new and far-reaching form of security governance has emerged within the United States under the heading of 'homeland security'. While this mode of security has brought with it a range of domestic counter-terrorism efforts, such as new methods of preparedness in the event of attacks on American cities, as well as mechanisms to seize and cut off terrorist assets, it has also predominantly been oriented towards the development of a new legal, institutional and technological regime responsible for the management and risk assessment of individual identity and the identities of foreign nationals passing through U.S. borders. Although this mode of security provides new powers as well as more flexible and collaborative methods for U.S. customs, law enforcement and intelligence to address the threat of terrorism, it has also created political controversy. This controversy has rested upon the perception that homeland security methods embody an unchecked extension of executive power negatively impacting the rights and liberties of the individuals that these very security techniques were established to protect. In order to interrogate this controversy and analyse how this new form of security performs within an extended field of sovereign power, this thesis takes into account the laws, policies and technologies – biometric, datamining, database – that shape this new form of security at the border. This new form of security arguably not only embodies a mobilisation and empowerment of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies which understand terrorism as catastrophic and generational, but it can fundamentally be seen as creating a new infrastructure that allows U.S. security institutions to become more 'informationally' aware of the identities of individuals entering and exiting the country. How U.S. security institutions access such identity information, along with how this data is used, is what constitutes the new social and political reality at the border.

In and out of memory: exploring the tension between remembering and forgetting when recalling 9/11, a traumatic event. My research is an unravelling of a traumatic memory to describe, understand and answer questions about the 'trauma body.' In my research, I put forward the idea that traumatic memories are detached memories with an emotional resonance that fixes them historically in a specific place and time, unwieldy anchors for a body that is neither here (present), nor there (in the past). I analyse this paradox from philosophical and psychoanalytical perspectives. Through a layered arts practice of text, sonic art work, and moving and still imagery I examine the tension where trauma meets memory, whether in an attempt to forget, or an effort to remember. Memory in this context is perceived as crucial towards understanding oneself socially, culturally and personally, whilst trauma is understood as an experience borne by the act of ‘leaving,’ wherein the mind’s coping mechanism overwhelmed by shocking external events fractures or splits. I began this process by revisiting a journal written on the day of and days following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. A journal that had remained closed and unread until starting my research in 2012. My aim was to deconstruct my memory of this traumatic event, lay it to rest and explore the latent witnessing that defies assimilation into a narrative. I employ autoethnography as a methodology to facilitate a greater understanding of trauma and its wider cultural implications, overlaying my personal memories upon a well-established collective memory of 9/11. Autoethnography, in this instance, is a reformulation of ethnography or anthropology, an in-depth examination of context incorporating cross-disciplinary approaches. With an emphasis on self-reflection and subjective participation, as both the artist and the owner of certain memories, my intention was to engage a larger epistemological discussion of the meeting place of trauma and memory.

Comment parle-t-on de quelque chose lorsque l'on n'est pas sûr de savoir de quoi il s'agit? Comment construit-on du sens au beau milieu d'une crise sémantique? Et Pourquoi? Cette thèse envisage la production linguistique dans un corpus choisi pour sa haute spécificité: le direct de CNN le 11 septembre 2001. La première partie décrit et justifie le choix de la situation de l'événement en cours et la constitution du corpus, qui bénéficiera d'une double approche, inductive et déductive. La seconde partie analyse les cadres du discours contraints par la situation et contraignant les productions: le direct télévisé et l'interaction y sont caractérisés et analysés. La typologie des profils sociodiscursifs conduit à une analyse en termes de modes de discours. La troisième partie envisage les contraintes cognitives, en intégrant les apports de la psycholinguistique. Négociation de la référence, construction du common ground, structuration de l'information y sont considérés dans le corpus, qui présents bien souvent une déviation par rapport à la situation en langue générale. Une conclusion revient sur le parcours théorique et méthodologique qui aura été nécessaire ainsi que sur certaines conclusions d'analyses
How do we talk about something when we do not know what it is we are talking about? How do you construct meaning when it escapes? And why do we dot that? The dissertation explores linguistic production in a corpus chosen because it is highly specific: CNN's live broadcast on 9/11. The first describes and justifies this choice in terms of the situation of an ongoing event and in terms of corpus methodology; since its analysis blends inductive and deductive approaches. The second part considers frames of discourse as constrained by the situation and constraining linguistic productions: the TV live broadcast and the interaction are characterized and analyzed. Sociodiscursive profiles emerge that correlate modes of discourse. The third part considers cognitive constraints on verbalizations from the point of view of theories of common ground, bridging linguistics and psycholinguistics. Reference construction, information structuring, the notion of key-words confirm the specific quality of the corpus, deviating from general norms. A conclusion retraces the complex theoretical and methodological considerations and sums up analytical contributions

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the development of initial criticism on the early literary response to the September 11^th attacks and the trauma they engendered. The first part of the thesis explores the specificity of the 9/11 event through the lens of trauma theory and other especially pertinent theories. Chapter I looks at the unique sequence of events on 11 September 2001. Basing its argument on Chapter I’s investigation of a possible overlap between reality and fiction during the hundred and two minutes of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Chapter II further focuses on the way the event erupted into the phenomenological world and traumatically disrupted subjectivities to ponder on an oft-eluded definition of 9/ll as a sublime event. Chapter III examines the figure of the ‘jumpers’, these men and women who were forced outside the World Trade Center by the unbearable inside conditions and who offered a glimpse of the invisible horror taking place within the towers. The second part studies the early novelistic response to 9/11 through three novels: Window on the World by Frédéric Beigbeder (2003), Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005), and Falling Man by Don DeLillo (2007). These novels constitute but also depict an instant response to the event. Each chapter of the second part of the thesis focuses on a different aspect of the 9/11 trauma. Chapter IV examines the immediate response of Beigbeder to the attacks on the World Trade Center in Window on the World. Chapter V investigates the characteristics of 9/11 mourning by looking at the mourning process of Foer’s 9-year old protagonist in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Chapter VI analyses the figures of the 9/11 survivor in DeLillo’s Falling Man.

Cette thèse a pour objet l’étude de quatre romans issus du courant communément nommé « 9/11 fiction » – l’ensemble des œuvres s’attachant à mettre en fiction les attentats du 11-Septembre. Le propos suit un mouvement de définition progressive de l’esthétique et interroge la notion d’inscription du trauma dans le texte littéraire. Elle est d’abord proprement textuelle, et caractéristique des écritures du traumatique ; l’écriture est informée par le symptôme clinique et ses trois grandes manifestations : absence et effacement, trop-plein et débordement, fragmentation et éclatement. La métaphore du trauma agit comme un chemin de pensée littéraire : le trauma en tant qu’objet signifie l’impuissance à dire, et le texte devient réflexion sur la difficulté à représenter, symbole de la tension entre besoin impérieux et impossibilité de dire. Une deuxième partie est consacrée à la cicatrice physique, et met en jeu le sensible. Le trauma se manifeste dans la dimension visuelle de l’écriture, et en particulier l’impact de l’image dans le texte littéraire, tout autant que dans sa dimension sonore : le bruit assourdissant de la catastrophe se fait figure de l’effraction traumatique. Mais c’est également le corps lui-même, en tant qu’enveloppe charnelle trop fragile pour résister aux assauts, qui en vient à porter les traces du trauma et ainsi à faire monument. Une troisième partie se donne finalement pour ambition de penser l’inscription spatiale du trauma dans les romans du corpus, qui tous célèbrent la ville de New York. Le paysage urbain devient le lieu où ce qui résiste à une appréhension harmonieuse par la psyché trouve symboliquement un mode d’inscription détourné
This dissertation aims to study four novels from what is commonly referred to as “9/11 fiction” – that is, the works of fiction devoted to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The argument gradually characterizes their aesthetics and questions the notion of inscription, the ways in which trauma seeps into the literary text. This inscription is, first, strictly textual, and reminiscent of traumatic writings in general; the writing is informed by the clinical symptoms of trauma though its three main manifestations: absence and erasure, excess and overflow, fragmentation and splitting. The metaphor of trauma plays the role of a literary thinking path: as an object, trauma signifies the failure of language, and the text therefore becomes a reflection on the difficulty to represent, a symbol of the tension between urgency and impossibility to express oneself. A second part explores the physical scar and involves the sensible. Trauma reveals itself in the visual dimension of the writing – especially through the particular impact that images have on the literary text – as well as in its sonic aspect: the deafening sound of the catastrophe becomes a figure of traumatic effraction. The whole body, as a much too delicate carnal envelope that cannot resist foreign attacks, bears the marks of trauma, thereby turning into a monument to the event. A third part finally focuses on the spatial inscription of trauma in the four novels, which collectively celebrate New York City. The cityscape becomes the locus where what resists its registration into the psyche symbolically finds an alternate mode of inscription

Le propos de cette thèse est centré sur la fictionnalisation des violences terroristes qui ont ébranlé l’Algérie et les États-Unis au tournant des XXe et XXIe siècles. Deux perspectives polarisent le traitement de ces violences dans les littératures dites « de l’urgence » et « du 11 septembre » : d’un côté, la radicalisation et le passage à l’acte des personnages terroristes ; de l’autre, la terreur et la reconstruction des témoins. Appréhendées suivant le prisme du tremblement, ces perspectives qui sont traitées tout au long de la thèse mettent en jeu des questions d’ordre esthétique, poétique et éthique. Ces trois questions organisent la progression de notre étude. En engageant une réflexion relative à l’incidence du thème sur la forme, elles montrent que les romans examinés ne se contentent pas de décrire le terrorisme ; ils en dégagent les invariants : coupures, dé-liaison, instabilité sémantique, enchevêtrements complexes, sont autant de traits saillants dont les romans du corpus se saisissent, autant d’aspects par lesquels ils illustrent et cristallisent les années noires et le 11 septembre. Si ces invariants mettent en évidence la ténuité du thème et du traitement littéraire, ils ménagent par ailleurs la percée de l’équivoque du sens, du non-totalisable, du non-rapport. Cela, que Jacques Lacan formalise sous l’angle de l’impossible, du réel, ouvre la voie à un décryptage tout à fait singulier de la transgression des terroristes, du faire face des témoins, et des questions portées par le roman contemporain
The subject of this dissertation is the fictionalization of the terrorist violence that shook Algeria and the United States at the turn of the XXth and the XXIst centuries. Two predominant viewpoints polarize the treatment of this violence in what has been dubbed by French literary critics as « littérature de l’urgence » (« emergency literature ») and « 9/11 literature »: on the one hand, the reader is exposed to the radicalization process of the terrorist characters and to their acting-out, and on the other, to the terror experienced by the witness characters and their reconstruction. These two perspectives, examined throughout the thesis, are apprehended via the prism of the tremor (understood as indecision, doubt and shaking) and involve issues of an aesthetic, poetic and ethical nature. These three issues provide coherence to the general outline and determine the organization of our study. They question the effect of theme on form, thereby demonstrating that the novels studied do not only describe terrorism ; they also bring out the underlying invariables: interruptions, disconnections, semantic instability and complex entanglements are some of the salient features whereby the novels of our corpus describe and crystallize the Algerias’ dark decade and the events of 9/11. While these invariants highlight the subtlety of the theme and its literary treatment, they also point out the equivocal meaning and give the lion’s share to the « non-totalizable » and the « non-rapport ». These aspects, which Jacques Lacan theorized from the angle of the « impossible », the Real, pave the way for a singular decoding of the terrorists’ transgression, of the witnesses’ coping, and of the issues raised by the contemporary novel

On Tuesday 11 September 2001, four commercial planes were hijacked by terrorists. One hijacked passenger jet leaving Boston, Massachusetts crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre at 8.45 a.m. setting the tower on fire. Eighteen minutes later, a second hijacked akliner, United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston, crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Centre and exploded. Later that morning both the north and south towers collapsed, plummeting into the streets below. At 9.43 a.m., a third hijacked airliner (American Airlines Flight 77) crashed into the Pentagon sending up a huge plummet of smoke. A portion of the building later collapsed. At 10.10 a.m. a fourth hijacked airliner (United Airlines Flight 93) crashed into Somerset County, Pennsylvania, south-east of Pittsburgh. The crashing o f these hijacked airliners into buildings and on land were the worst terrorist attacks in the history o f the United States. They led to the loss of thousands of innocent lives and damaged property running into billions of dollars. The attacks were heralded as not only terrorist attacks on the US, but also an attack on the entire global community. The atrocities led to the most dramatic amendment to anti-terrorism legislation ever known, both within the United States and the United Kingdom. The new antiterrorism legislation in both nations however, has been widely criticised as not being compatible with respect for fundamental human rights, due to its hasty enactment. This thesis analyses the responses and new anti-terrorism legislation in both countries examining the question: do they deprive international human rights?

碩士
淡江大學
歐洲研究所碩士班
95
Ever since the event of 9/11, many international organizations and nations have started enhancing their protection from the terror and fighting against the terrorism. In fact, France has been suffering from threats and attacks for a long time, but there were only a few people died from the terrorist attacks. The main causes are its policies of anti-terrorism and Middle East. France did make some measures for the terrorism like legislated the laws of counter-terrorism and renovated “le plan Vigipirate” after the event of 9/11. Furthermore, France also proactively took participation in the activities of anti-terrorism with international organizations such as UN, EU, and G8 etc. However, France utilized international institute which conform to the principle of absolute advantage of neo-liberalism to negotiate with other member states, and it impelled the collaboration basing on its policies and national interests during the negotiation and execution. From the above it shows France is a strong realism in the international counter-terrorism cooperation. This study focuses on the French policy and it has deep views through the background, intension and the results of executing the counter-terrorism policy. Besides this, it analyzes the whys and the wherefores that France trends to realism according to the above content. In the end, the study will predict the possible trend of the anti-terrorism policy in France.