Journal articles on the topic 'MILD STEEL PINS'

Application of a newly developed flexible forming tool to creep age forming (CAF) process has been investigated in this study. The flexible tool mainly consists of sparsely distributed forming pins, splines and elastomeric sheet. The effect of key factors related to the forming tool on the shape of the formed parts has been studied through various CAF experiments. The key factors investigated in this study include: the interval between forming pins, the arrangement of pins, the accuracy requirement of pin height and the material of splines. It has been found that reducing the interval between pins can efficiently smooth the shape of CAFed plates. The feasibility of asymmetric arrangement of pins has been proven, which can decrease the number of used pins, reduce tool weight, and increase efficiency. The forming results are very sensitive to the pin height, thus the experimental set-up error should be carefully controlled. Additionally, compared with mild steel, spring steel is more suitable as the spline material.

One of the common ways to overcome wear is by surface modification which is a coating process. The application of cermet of chromium (Cr carbide) in Nickel-Chromium (Ni-Cr) matrix is widely used as coating material since it provides high wear resistant. Besides, thermal spray process is widely known as the most suitable technique to produce cermet coating. In this study, chromium carbide-nickel chrome (Cr3C2- NiCr) powder is used as the feedstock. High Velocity Oxy Fuel (HVOF) thermal spraying is used to deposit the coating on mild steel substrate to study the behaviour of wear of the coating. The wear test is conducted by using TABER Linear Abrasion Wear Test machine. The wear rate of both coated and uncoated pin is measured by measuring the weight loss of the samples. The Cr3C2-NiCr coated pins have shown less weight loss than the uncoated pins. The lifetime prediction of Cr3C2-NiCr coated pins is higher than the uncoated pins at different time duration and applied loads. The results showed that the wear resistant properties of Cr3C2-NiCr coated pins are higher than the uncoated pins. Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) integrated with Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) are used to determine the microstructure of Cr3C2-NiCr coating. The microstructure of Cr3C2-NiCr coated pin after the wear testing showed no presence of crack and the wear track was homogenous.

Experiments are described in which high-chromium ferritic steel pins were slid, without lubrication, against austenitic stainless steel disks, under loads varying from 7 to 95N and speeds varying from 0.23 to 3.3 ms−1. Although no external heating was supplied, all the worn surfaces were oxidized, as also was the wear debris, indicating that some form of mild wear always occurred under these conditions. Measurements were made, using a special tilt correction facility on the Scanning Electron Microscope, of the thicknesses of the oxide formed both on the pin and the disk surfaces, due to the evolution of frictional heating at the interface. The division of heat at the interface was also deduced from thermocouple measurements. These measurements, combined with the surface model used as the basis for the Oxidational Wear Theory, are shown to give rise to independent estimates of the contact temperature (Tc), the number of contacts beneath the pin at any instant (N), and the radius (a) of each of those contacts, that are consistent with those obtained in earlier published experiments involving the mild wear of low-alloy steels. In these earlier experiments, the validity of the estimates of N, Tc and “a,” depended upon the validity of the choice of Arrhenius Constant used in the Oxidational Wear Theory. The correlation between the two sets of estimates is discussed. Suggestions are made for further work to validate the Oxidational Theory of the mild wear of these industrially-important materials, particularly at elevated temperatures.

The present work analyses MIG in terms of strength and consumption of energy during joining of similar AISI 1018 Mild Steel plates. Sustainable manufacturing is the creation of various manufactured products that generally use different processes that will minimize negative impact on environment, conserve natural resources and energy, are also safe for the employees, consumers and communities as well as economically sound. Sustainable manufacturing highlights on the necessity of an energy effective process that optimize consumption of energy. AISI 1018 mild steel is extensively used in automotive industries for pins, worms, dowels gears, non-critical tool components etc. Main important output responses are Tensile Strength and energy consumption during MIG Welding Process by taking Current, Travel Speed and Voltage as effective input variables. The main objective is to optimize energy consumption as well as tensile strength also determination of main influential process parameters on energy Consumption and tensile strength by using Taguchi Method. Contour plot has been also shown.

Flat faces of steel pins were slid on an eutectic aluminium silicon alloy under lubricated condition in the 1–100MPa mean contact pressure range and 0.2m∕s sliding speed. Two transition in wear rate were observed, at 10MPa and 70MPa. The wear rate in the 1–10MPa regime was found to be very small and within the measuring instrument resolution and also insensitive to contact pressure. The regime is designated ultramild wear. Lack of plastic flow, minimal fragmentation of silicon particles, and the presence of undistorted voids on the fractured and unfractured silicon particles in the subsurface suggest that the state of stress in the near surface region is elastic. Contact mechanical calculations demonstrate that at contact pressures <13.7MPa, the system is likely to shakedown to an elastic state.

This paper describes some interesting preliminary results obtained with tool steel pins sliding against a rotating sapphire disk without lubrication. It is shown (i) that mild (oxidational) wear of the pin surface can be obtained with this combination of materials, (ii) that the “hot-spots” between the pin and the disk surfaces can be seen and photographed for size analysis, and (iii) that the temperature of the hot-spots can be estimated from the photographs. Some scanning electron micrographs were also taken of the pin surfaces at the end of the experiments, the objective being to complement the optical analyses, and thereby provide information about the number, size, and temperature of the hot-spots. The revelance of these estimates to the mechanisms involved in mild (oxidational) wear is also discussed.

The dry sliding wear behavior of magnesium-matrix-composites (MMC) reinforced by boron carbide particulates (B4Cp) has been investigated. Magnesium is the lightest structural material and is a good choice as a metal matrix for boron carbide and silicon carbide addition. Magnesium and its alloys, without reinforcement, are generally not suitable for mechanical applications due to their low wear resistance. The MMCs used in this study were produced via highpressure die-casting technique. The wear resistance of B4C/AZ91D composite reinforced with 12 and 25 wt% B4C were studied, compared with unreinforced diecast AZ91D. As-cast microstructures of the materials and boron carbide particules were characterized by using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The hardness values of the control sample and the composites were determined via Vickers hardness measurements. Pin on disk dry sliding wear tests were carried out to study wear rate and wear mechanisms. The magnesium matrix composites were used as pins while mild steel as disc material. The worn surfaces of pins were examined by using SEM. The wear performance of magnesium matrix composites was improved with increasing volume fraction of B4C up to a certain level.

Abstract: Surface of a material can be improved by depositing the filler metal for the enhancement of various properties. Surface should be harder than substrate material for surface improvement. This surface improvement is also known as surfacing. In present research Mild steel specimens of size 140×35×40 were used to deposit surfacing layers and study the feasibility of iron/aluminum with varying compositions on low carbon steel deposited by GTAW process. Specimens for hardness and oxidation resistance were prepared. While studying oxidation of surfaced and un-coated area (base material), oxidation test resulted that the oxidation occurred on surface of base metal (un-coated area) after heating at different temperatures and time intervals. Specimens kept at 500˚C, 700˚C temperatures for 3, 6, 9 hours to get oxidized from un-coated surface but no mark of oxidation and pitting was visible at surfaced area but pitting of un-coated area occurred at 700˚C temperature. Oxidation had no effect to surfaced area. Low temperature oxidation test specimens gave only weight loss from un-coated portion but high temperature oxidation gave high amount of weight reduction due to pitting occurred on un-coated portion. The amount of weight loss of specimens increased with increase in furnace holding time at constant temperature. With increase in temperature oxidation of un-coated area of specimens also increased and pitting action occurred on un-coated area of specimens at high temperature. Further, for the various wear tests the cylindrical pins of 8 mm diameter with spherical tip 4 mm radius was made. Wear tests were carried out on pin on disc sliding wear testing machine. The comparison of wear rate loss was studied with constant sliding distance, varying load and sliding velocity of different compositions of iron/aluminum surfacing and substrate material. Hardness and wear resistance of composition were increased with increase in percentage of Fe element in composition. Composition C1 (Fe:Al/70:30) had high hardness and high wear resistance as compared to composition C2 (Fe:Al/30:70) and C3 (Fe:Al/50:50). Composition C3 (Fe:Al/50:50) had better hardness and wear resistance as compared composition C2 (Fe:Al/70:30). Keywords: Surface improvement, Fe-Al intermetallic, GTAW process, Sliding wear.

The present study was undertaken to find out the phytochemicals present in Bougainvillea glabra bracts extract and to compare the corrosion inhibition efficiency between B.glabra Pink, Orange and White coloured bract extract on mild steel in 1N HCl. Phyto chemical analysis showed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, phenolic compounds and tannins in the extract as confirmed by implying different qualitative tests specified for these phytochemical. Corrosion rate, inhibition efficiency, FTIR analysis was determined. The corrosion of mild steel in 1N HCl acid media was significantly reduced upon the additions of BG bract extracts. The inhibition efficiency increased with the increasing concentration of the inhibitor. Maximum inhibition efficiency was observed at an optimum concentration of 2 % v/v.

Stainless steel and cobalt chromium is a metal that is used in dentistry. Stainless steel (SS) 316L has good corrosion resistance, but there are still many cases of hypersensitivity due to the use of such materials. Remanium GM800 is a cobalt-based alloy which is relatively mild with the advantages of having a high fracture resistance, high modulus of elasticity and resistance to corrosion. The research aims to know type IV hypersensitivity reactions for cobalt chromium GM800 applications compared with 316L Stainless steel. The research was conducted through the test GPMT (Guinea Pig Maximization Test). The pre-research phase does CoCr patch/SS/control application to 3 guinea pigs of each group with concentrations of 5%, 10%, 20%, 40%, and 80%. Primary research begins with intradermal induction on the backs of guinea pigs for 7 days with a suspension of A (50% FCA emulsion dan 50% Propylene glycol), B (SS/CoCr/blank dan Propylene glycol) and C (50% SS/CoCr/blank suspension and 50% FCA) on the left and right backs of guinea pigs. On the 8th day induction results topical concentration of 40% for 24 hours, then opened to see the reaction and closed again for 48 hours. After that, the research was continued with challenge phase by attaching patch 5% concentration for 14 days. On the 28th day was observed erythema and edema on the skin of guinea pigs followed by sacrifice in order to obtain specimen to do immunohistochemical staining by ED antibodies. The result showed 316L SS cause 40% of the samples sensitized that were grouped in moderate classification, while CoCr GM800 cause 20% of the samples sensitized so classified in the mild classification in triggering type IV hypersensitivity reaction. Histopathology examination showed that 42% of the visual field SS 316L specimen expressed macrophages, while only 28% expressed macrophages in CoCr GM800 specimen. The conclusion of this study CoCr GM800 trigger type IV hypersensitivity reaction is lower than SS 316L.

This contribution characterizes the performance of a DESI 11 high-speed disintegrator working on the principle of a pin mill with two opposite counter-rotating rotors. As the ground material, batches of Portland cement featuring 6–7 Mohs scale hardness and containing relatively hard and abrasive compounds with the specific surface areas ranging from 200 to 500 m2/kg, with the step of 50 m2/kg, were used. The character of the ground particles was assessed via scanning electron microscopy and measurement of the absolute/relative increase in their specific surface areas. Detailed characterization of the rotors was performed via recording the thermal imprints, evaluating their wear by 3D optical microscopy, and measuring rotor weight loss after the grinding of constant amounts of cement. The results showed that coarse particles are ground by impacting the front faces of the pins, while finer particles are primarily milled via mutual collisions. Therefore, the coarse particles cause higher abrasion and wear on the rotor pins; after the milling of 20 kg of the 200 m2/kg cement sample, the wear of the rotor reached up to 5% of its original mass and the pins were severely damaged.

A material with exceptional levels of abrasion resistance, compressive strength, and hardness is known as bearing steel, also known as EN-31 high-grade carbon alloy steel. It has several uses, including the bulk manufacturing of roller bearings, taps, gauges, ejector pins, swaging dies, etc. The lowest surface roughness (Ra) and highest material removal rate (MRR) are sought for this alloy steel in order for it to be used successfully in a range of applications. In the experiment, a L9 Taguchi orthogonal array design was used to CNC end mill EN-31 steel using a bullnose end mill carbide tool with inserts. This study presents a way for enhancing process factors such as cutting speed, depth of cut, feed rate, and tool corner radius that result in desirable output responses. Taguchi and Taguchi-Grey analyses are used to show the best input values that reduce surface roughness and increase MRR. The lowest level of surface roughness could be attained using the operating parameters of 3000 rpm cutting speed, 500 mm/min feed rate, 0.25 mm depth of cut, and 1.00 mm tool corner radius, while the highest level of material removal rate could be attained using 3000 rpm cutting speed, 2500 mm/min feed rate, 0.25 mm depth of cut, and 1.00 mm tool corner radius.

This work is devoted to the study of the possibility of recycling bar scrap of stainless metals using radial-shear rolling. In the course of studies on the deformation of bar scrap in the form of pins made of 12X18N9T stainless austenitic steel on a radial-shear rolling mill, the resulting bar was obtained microstructure of two different types: on the periphery an equiaxed ultrafine-grained structure with a grain size of 0.4–0.6 microns was formed; in the axial zone anoriented, banded texture was obtained. This discrepancy in the structure of the peripheral and axial zones, together with the results of cross-section microhardness measurements of samples made of 12X18N9T austenitic stainless steel with a total degree of deformation of 44.4 %, indicates the gradient nature of the resulting microstructure.

The steel rolling process is critical for safety and maintenance because of loading and thermal operating conditions. Machinery condition monitoring (MCM) increases the system’s safety, preventing the risk of fire, failure, and rupture. Equipping the mill bearings with sensors allows monitoring of the system in service and controls the heating of mill components. Fiber optic sensors detect loading condition, vibration, and irregular heating. In several systems, access to machinery is rather limited. Therefore, this paper preliminarily investigates how fiber optics can be effectively embedded within the mill cage to set up a smart manufacturing system. The fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) technology allows embedding sensors inside the pins of backup bearings and performing some prognosis and diagnosis activities. The study starts from the rolling mill layout and defines its accessibility, considering some real industrial cases. Testing of an FBG sensor prototype checks thermal monitoring capability inside a closed cavity, obtained on the surface of either the fixed pin of the backup bearing or the stator surrounding the outer ring. Results encourage the development of the whole prototype of the MCM system to be tested on a real mill cage in full operation.

In this report, a study of the wear mechanisms involved in spinning Ring and Traveler of textile industry have been presented. These components, after surface processing with various coatings techniques, were analyzed on the test rig to analyze the wear mechanism. The objective was accomplished by comparing various plasma sprayed coatings on E52100 steel pins using a Pin-on-Disc machine. The surface morphology as well as mechanical properties of the deposited coatings namely WC-Co-Cr, Al2O3+TiO2 (Alumina-Titania) and Cr3C2NiCr, as well as uncoated E52100, were comparatively studied. This study elucidates towards improving the working life of the Ring in a Textile mill while spinning operation. An X-ray diffractometer (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) was employed to characterize the unworn and worn surfaces of the specimens. The study revealed that the wear rate of Plasma sprayed thermal coatings enhanced with augmenting load. The Plasma sprayed WC-Co-Cr, Cr3C2NiCr, Al2O3+13TiO2 coatings developed on workpiece pins exhibited a notable decrease in volume loss of the material as compared to uncoated E52100 substrate. WC-Co-Cr coating turned out to be the best performer in terms of lowest cumulative volume loss among all the variants of coatings.

Newly germinated pitch pine (Pinusrigida Mill.) seedlings inoculated with a mycorrhizal fungus (Pisolithustinctorius (Pers.) Coker & Couch) were grown for 13 weeks in sand irrigated with nutrient solution (pH 4.0) containing 0, 12.5, 25, or 50 mg/L aluminum in growth chambers fumigated with 0, 50, 100, or 200 ppb ozone. Cytological changes in needles of seedlings stressed by ozone and aluminum, singly and in combination, were determined by light and electron microscopy. The most pronounced changes in needles exposed to ozone occurred in the outer mesophyll, whereas major changes in the presence of aluminum occurred in the stele and inner mesophyll. At lower levels of either ozone or aluminum, the cytoplasm became more densely stained. Accumulation of dense materials appeared at intermediate treatment concentrations, and at high concentration localized cell collapse and deterioration became evident. Ozone or aluminum caused similar changes in the chloroplasts, for example, increase in number of plastoglobuli, accumulation of starch, formation of electron-dense stroma, and swelling or disruption of thylakoid membrane system. Ozone and aluminum in combination generally caused histological and cytological damage in needles to occur at lower concentrations than either aluminum or ozone alone.

Purpose: To assess the technical feasibility and biocompatibility of a novel stent based on poly(L-lactide) (PLLA) and poly(4-hydroxybutyrate) (P4HB) for peripheral vascular applications. Methods: A polytetrafluoroethylene aortobi-iliac graft was implanted in 5 pigs through a midline abdominal incision. After transverse graft limb incision, 5 PLLA/P4HB stents and 5 metal stents (316L stainless steel) were randomly deployed at both iliac anastomotic sites with 6-mm balloon catheters. Angiography was performed to determine patency prior to sacrifice at 6 weeks. Stented segments were surgically explanted and processed for quantitative histomorphometry. Vascular injury and inflammation scores were assigned to the stented iliac segments. Results: No animals were lost during follow-up. All PLLA/P4HB stents were deployed within 2 minutes by balloon inflation to 8 bars without rupture of the stent struts or anastomotic suture. All stents were patent on postprocedural angiography. Histological analysis showed no signs of excessive recoiling or collapse. PLLA/P4HB stents demonstrated decreased residual lumen area and increased neointimal area after 6 weeks (12.27±0.62 and 8.40±1.03 mm2, respectively) compared to 316L stents (13.54±0.84 and 6.90±1.11 mm2, respectively) as the result of differences in stent areas (PLLA/P4HB: 4.31±0.15 mm2; 316L: 2.73±0.29 mm2). Vascular injury scores showed only mild vascular trauma for all stents (PLLA/P4HB: 0.41±0.59; 316L: 0.32±0.47). Inflammatory reaction was slightly higher around PLLA/P4HB stent struts (1.39±0.52) compared to 316L (1.09±0.50). Conclusion: Rapid balloon expansion of PLLA/P4HB stents is feasible without risk of strut rupture. PLLA/P4HB stents provide adequate mechanical stability after iliac anastomotic stenting in pigs. Smaller residual luminal areas in the PLLA/P4HB stents might have been caused by tissue ingrowth into the larger strut interspaces due to higher strut thickness (stent area) in this group. This limitation needs to be addressed in future work on the stent design.

Gray Jujube, Zizyphus jujuba Mill., is a fruit crop unique to China that produces small fruit of high nutritional value with potential health benefits (2). In mid-September 2011, a fruit rot affecting approximately 10% of gray jujube fruit was observed in Xinzheng Date Garden, Henan Province, China. The diseased fruits exhibited small, oval, pale reddish brown lesions that expanded into clear concentric rings. Over time, the superficial lesions developed into soft rot affecting the whole fruit that produced a pungent odor. A putative Fusarium sp. was isolated by a single spore isolations from conidiophores produced on the decaying fruit. The isolated colonies first appeared on potato dextrose agar (PDA) as white to light yellow, then turned light pink. Falciform macroconidia were produced on PDA and were straight to slightly curved, usually 3-septate, short or medium long, 15.0 to 28 × 2.5 to 4.0 μm, with a curved apical cell and foot shaped to pointed basal cell. Microconidia were produced in false heads on Synthetic Nutrient-poor Agar (SNA), and were oval, 0-septate, 5.0 to 9.5 × 1.5 to 2.8 μm. Phialides were cylindrical and ranged from 7.0 to 20.0 × 0.7 to 1.4 μm. Chlamydospores were produced singularly and in pairs (1). Pathogenicity of the putative Fusarium sp. was evaluated by surface-sterilizing fresh gray jujubes on a healthy tree field and inoculating by placing a mycelial plug of the Fusarium sp. culture in contact with the fruit. An equal number of fresh gray jujube fruits were placed in contact with non-colonized PDA plugs to serve as a control. Each jujube fruit was wounded three times to create three holes close together using a steel needle (0.5 mm diameter), before inoculation with an agar plug. All the branches with inoculated fruits were enclosed in a clear plastic bag to maintain humidity and prevent cross contamination. After 3 days, inoculated jujubes exhibited the similar symptoms to those originally observed on the naturally infected fruits. Colonies resembling the Fusarium sp. isolated from the original lesions were obtained from each of the symptomatic fruits. Fruit inoculated with un-colonized PDA plugs remained asymptomatic and no fungus was isolated from these fruit. Koch's postulates were repeated three times with the same results. Based on the morphological characteristics, the Fusarium sp. was identified as F. oxysporum (1). The identity of the isolate was confirmed to be F. oxysporum by DNA sequencing of the elongation factor 1-alpha (EF-1a) gene (GenBank Accession No. KC796007), which was 99% homologous to those of other F. oxysporum isolates (JF430187 and JF430188). To our knowledge, this is the first report of F. oxysporum causing soft rot in fresh gray jujubes in Henan. This disease affects the yield and quality of fresh gray jujubes and potentially may threaten the jujube industry. References: (1) J. F. Leslie and B. A. Summerell. The Fusarium Laboratory Manual, 2006. (2) J. Sheng et al. Acta Hortic. 620:203, 2003.

Steel is one of materials that been used as a hull to build a ship. Steel are well known as strong, easy to fabricate and can withstand higher loading. Major problem for steel in shipbuilding are corrosion and marine fouling. Antifouling paint are applied at underwater hull paint to protect and slowing the microorganism growth, plant and animal that attached to the ship bottom hull. Important additive in antifouling paint known as Tributyltin (TBT) was previously observed good efficiency in prevent marine growth, however International Maritime Organization (IMO), in 2008 banned the usage of TBT due to abnormal growth of oyster shell. Thus, it is crucial to focus on an environmentally friendly antifouling paint and additive. Rosin modified paint is one of natural base of paint matrix that extract from pine tree. Performance of rosin modified with commercial biocide additive at various orientation are evaluate by referring to standard testing method on antifouling panels in shallow submergence. Rosin modified base observed good interaction with primer and steel substrate. Rosin modified antifouling (AF) coating for orientation 0º, 90º and 180º shows less than 4% marine growth after 30 days of immersion. AF coated at 0º and 90º -a orientation observe efficient protection with no marine growth occurred after 30 days of immersion.

IntroductionFew life experiences have a greater impact upon the sense of self than the diagnosis of a life-challenging illness. Breast cancer is such an illness, and the sudden transition from 'well' to 'ill' is unsettling for a person's sense of knowing who they are in 'their' own body. What you know about your body, what others know about your body and what your biology knows about your body become suddenly problematic. This paper addresses what people know about their bodies before and after experiencing a breast cancer diagnosis by examining relevant theory and empirical data drawn from an online community for people with breast cancer, their families and supporters. In the Breast Cancer Click (BCC) online community members are encouraged to blog their breast cancer journey, engage in discussion forums, use a private messaging function to talk in real-time with each other and a breast care nurse, and to participate in live group chat. The records of all these activities have been used in a netnographic study which aims to examine the efficacy of this mutual support community. In this paper we present some of the material which has been created in the community’s activities to consider the embodied experience of breast cancer. Evidence from online community members is addressed to consider what a western cultural experience of breast cancer as captured by a disembodied online community can tell us about embodiment and embodied knowledge. How Do We Know?In ‘Knowing and Being’, Polanyi argues that knowing is related to two separate methods of investigation which nonetheless need to be integrated. On the one hand is the detailed knowledge of the particulars, and on the other the grasping of the big-picture conceptualization of the whole. “A medical student,” he writes, “deepens his knowledge of a disease by learning a list of its symptoms with all their variations, but only clinical practice can teach him to integrate the clues observed on an individual patient to form a correct diagnosis of his illness, rather than an erroneous diagnosis which is often more plausible” (460). The implication here is that there is more at stake than a formulaic listing of symptoms. The ‘knowing’ relates to knowledge around the disease of breast cancer; the ‘being’ relates to the experience of being a breast cancer patient. The necessary theory underpinning the identification of disease, the progress of symptoms and the side effects of treatment fails to capture the experience of the breast cancer patient, which is mutually recognisable among other patients even where superficial aspects of the disease manifestation diagnosis and progress may differ. Lekkie Hopkins writes of her immediate and bodily experience of hearing the diagnosis of her breast cancer:Thwack! ‘The good news is that you won’t die of this. The bad news is that you will have to lose a breast’. Whoosh earthwards. Floor opens to swallow my life force. Body a shell. Head empty, uncomprehending. Within seconds, whoosh again, upwards this time. Blood rushes to head, face blooms red, eyes zoom onto the tiny points of calcification on the x-ray image, ears boom. Lose a breast, lose a breast, lose a breast ricochets off the walls. Kind eyes, gentle hands, steady voice: ‘Can I call someone? Your partner?’ Kind eyes, gentle hands, steady voice. Lose a breast, Lose a breast, Lose a breast (132).Such embodied knowledge may not be recognisable within a medical/scientific context. Conflict can arise between a woman’s embodied knowledge of her breast cancer and the medical/scientific understanding involved in her treatment (Thomas-McLean, Memories of Treatment). Perhaps surprisingly, the body can appear absent in medical discourse and alternative approaches are needed to provide an embodied perspective. Considering poet and feminist scholar Adrienne Rich’s invitation to women to learn to think through the body, Lekkie Hopkins wondered “what it must mean to lose part of that body” (134). Thomas-McLean has noted that frameworks of health and illness can fail to capture the “complexities associated with living with an altered body” (Beyond Dichotomies 202). She promotes the idea that “women speaking for themselves, about their own experiences” is an important part of the repository of knowledge and understanding about breast cancer (Memories of Treatment 629). Our knowledge comes from our physical nature, our embodiment within our world and the meanings attached to the body within our social context.An online community constructed using community networking technologies may seem an unlikely place for reclaiming the knowledge of the body. However, deep connection between members has been observed in online communities studied in detail (Bonniface et al.). The qualitative richness of complex experiences, missing from the medical discourse, can be found in such communities and constitute an alternative source of data to traditional interview methods. As mentioned, it is not an aim of this paper to address the efficacy of the Breast Cancer Click community, but to use some of the material which has been created in the community’s activities to consider the embodied experience of breast cancer. In speaking for themselves in the Breast Cancer Click community, women reveal both their knowing and being as breast cancer survivors.Online Support in a (Dis)embodied CommunityThe research question addressed in this paper is “What embodied knowledge about breast cancer can be shared in the disembodied realm of an online support community?” Women experiencing the betrayal of their bodies seek the authenticating experience of sharing their stories with others whose lives have embodied analogous experiences. Breast Cancer Click (BCC) was set up to provide a connection between breast cancer patients and their supporters with others who are currently undergoing treatment and those that have completed their treatments wishing to support others. This peer-to-peer support is expanded through interaction with an online Breast Care Nurse, providing education and information and unraveling the medical terminology and diagnosis with each specific patient, where requested. Through personal messages, forum threads and group online chats regular contact is maintained with newly diagnosed members, those currently involved with treatment, and those considering reconstruction and other post-surgical options. It is through these active members’ dialogue that we can appreciate the value provided by this disembodied communicative space. Using the principles of netnography (Kozinets), which applies ethnographic techniques to online communities and environments, the posts, chat, forum contributions and private messages (all de-identified) were archived to provide the raw data for this study. Transcripts were analysed to identify themes arising (Strauss & Corbin) and to select content which illustrates these themes and illuminates the experience of participants and the value or otherwise of the online community. Necessarily, with hundreds of thousands of words posted as part of the ongoing research project, only selected material is presented here. Three major areas of discussion are presented for this paper: development of a new normal, breast image and holistic health. We have not ‘personalised’ the contributions of Breast Cancer Click members, but have indicated verbatim quotes via the attribution to (BCC).The ‘New Normal’I have silicone implants and swimming now feels VERY wierd. (BCC) This statement is indicative of a range of language comparing the pre-diagnosis, or pre-cancer, body with the changed circumstances which embody the results of the cancer even while the medical model excises it. Insights and comments on the bodily experience arise in a range of circumstances such as: through the experience of hair loss following on from chemotherapy; questions about authenticity and reconstruction following surgery. im expecting to shave my head as soon as i see hairloss. i have already had my hair cut shorter to help my kids adjust etc.i cut my hair short too before chemo so i get used to the idea havent shaved it yet though. (all BCC) These comments indicate the intuitive use of simulation strategies as a means of adjusting to the anticipated response of the body to the experience of chemotherapy. This simulation strategy reintroduces a sense of agency for the BCC member, allowing them to feel as though they have chosen to change their appearance.Sometimes the edge of the new normal can be softened by the experience of social and emotional solidarity conveyed through others embodying their support for the person with a breast cancer diagnosis: oh when i lost my hair, my boss (at the time) was so lovely, and he shaved his head, and we had our pics taken together : ). Mine too- the school did greatest shave just as I lost my hair. Raised $900. (Both BCC) Although the experience of losing hair through chemotherapy is very different from that of being shaved, the embodiment of ‘different’ can serve to offer consolation and companionship for those who are embarking on a breast cancer journey. A return to the ‘old normal’ can be a cause for celebration, along with a recognition that the body continues to function as it had pre-cancer:i remember the feeling when my hair was long enuf to dye back to blonde : ) was fabulous when it got long enuf for a bit of a style instead of just fluff! (BCC) Breast Image, Mastectomy and ReconstructionWithin the breast cancer community, the issue of reconstruction following mastectomy becomes a very personal one, whilst also, for some people, involving wider gender politics. Although it might seem this is an elaboration of the discussion around challenges to the concept of the ‘pre-cancer self’ and the new normal, women’s breasts have such a range of associations in Western culture that it is hard to be objective about the new embodiment of the post-cancer self. I had a lumpectomy but it's obvious size wise and I lost my nipple completely ... but I won't reconstruct or wear padding.We all look great (scars are not so lovely) but with swimwear or a bra on we are all OK. I went from a small a cup to a c cup as the plastic surgeon suggested we ‘may as well kick a goal as a point’. (Both BCC)Sometimes the experience of the disease is such that the ‘new normal’ places the body into an anomalous category. There is an embodiment of strangeness which over-rides the conscious understanding about biology and function. The rational, knowledgeable, self can sometimes be seen to be in conflict with the experiential being of the post-treatment breast cancer patient. This was the case with a 29 year-old BCC member who successfully fell pregnant after her diagnosis. This exchange was via live chat between the breast care nurse (BCN) and the BCC member, so it sometimes reads in a disjointed way as the messagers respond to each other’s posts in a semi-synchronous way. Do you think you will breast-feed? (BCC Breast Care Nurse) probably not. (BCC)i feel weird about my boobs now. (BCC) How do you mean? (BCC Breast Care Nurse) like i'd make sure baby got first milk etc, and then bottle feed. (BCC)oh umm its hard to describe, they don't feel like they are for that purpose anymore. (BCC)i don't like the left one being touched much. (BCC)Good plan - good for baby to have some breast milk. (BCC Breast Care Nurse)No - I guess it feels odd - not normal? (BCC Breast Care Nurse)As in this exchange, the online community operates to validate the experiences of its members, to offer support and understanding. The politics around breast feeding, as with those around a woman’s physical appearance, mean that people with a diagnosis of breast cancer often perceive they are subject to a range of social ‘shoulds’ at a time when they are trying to re-learn (or to learn) an authentic sense of being in communication with, and being in communion with, their body. Holistic HealthWe went for a brisk walk around west-end with heart rate monitors on to check our pulse rates. It was great to do the exercise in a group situation. I am looking forward to getting in touch with my pre-diagnosis body again. I gently stretched my 'bad' arm which was OK.I am very happy to say that my energy levels have already improved and have just been for a walk. My unused muscles are waking up and I feel excited now I realize it is possible for me to return to my pre-diagnosis fitness levels and activities. (Both BCC) The physicality of the experience of cancer and its treatment can act as a spur to people who wish to reassert control over their bodies and bring their body back into a positive relationship with health and fitness. Sometimes this impetus can provoke an almost super-human response on the part of the person with breast cancer:I had been attending Body Pump 2 or 3 times a week for 10 years prior to my diagnosis and made casual aquaintences with other regular attendees. […] I returned to the classes myself while still on chemo, I was having a weekly light dose for 3 months so felt OK. While my energy levels were a bit low I managed to do about 75% of the class with light weights and just stopped when I became tired. The instructor and other class members were so supportive. It helped me to feel like I was getting back to normal just being able to participate in the classes. (BCC)On occasions, BCC members will post in a way that invites support from those who have developed successful strategies or responses to similar challenges. Here the mind is sometimes seen as determining the response of the body: [I’m] finding it hard to get motivated enough to go out. This is made worse because I have put on lots of weight and am so unfit compared to my pre-cancer body. So doing exercise just isn't as much fun anymore. Hopefully it will get better. (BCC)When a person with a breast cancer diagnosis seeks strategies to move beyond a place in which they feel stuck, it is often through harnessing a sensory image. The means of moving through a challenge, or towards an acceptable new normal, might be via the use of senses, simulation and experiential movement: I feel like I'd like to have someone gently hold my hand and lead me to do all the cardio, exercises and stretching. Having been through so much I feel like being nurtured but instead I have to be strict and a bit tough to take steps to go forward. […] Often I pop outside and if the sky is clear and it's not too cold I walk around the block. (BCC)Communication and the BodyWhat is clear from these communications between members is that an experience of breast cancer can trigger particular responses associated with physical embodiment. Even as the person with a new diagnosis of breast cancer tries to rationalise the diagnosis, the treatment and the prognosis, so they are assaulted by a range of highly physical sensations, from feeling sick, to feeling crushed, to feeling as if even the certainties of gravity have been challenged by this embodiment of change (Walker, Plant, Hopkins). For those working through their response, initial analysis of the data from the disembodied BCC community indicates that accommodating the post-cancer self often takes a physical form, an acceptance of the revised self and its engagement in sensory and simulated ways with the wider world. For example it is often aspects of the post-surgery body that BCC members use to highlight the possibility of a lighter, more humorous, response to the challenges of their experience:haha XX [friend who has had a breast cancer diagnosis] and [I] still go to lift the boob when washing in the shower haha.a friend of mine had [a] double reconstruction a few years back and needed ‘replacement nipples’ that were imported from the US - we all laughed when she announced they have arrived in the post for her! (Both BCC)In terms of the research question, “What embodied knowledge about breast cancer can be shared in the disembodied realm of an online support community?”, the data presented indicates that experience of the life-changing disease of breast cancer can trigger a new appreciation of the physicality of the human condition. This can be shared with others in a similar situation, seeking confirmation of shared experience. The disembodied community allows the member-self to move from the cognitive realm into an experiential one. It foregrounds the strangeness of the revised body through temporary but highly visible indicators, such as the loss of hair following chemotherapy, and permanent but less visible changes, such as the removal of a breast. It allows these changes to be recontextuatlised as the new normal, and provides a safe space in which to explore and imagine further responses to these embodied challenges such as whether to use a prosthesis, or to embark upon a reconstruction. The physically disembodied community of the BCC may constitute a lived space where the daily experience of breast cancer is addressed; “simultaneously part of bodily forms and their social constructions” (Moss and Dyck 49).This initial analysis of BCC community posts indicates that one way through the maelstrom of diagnosis, treatment and living with an altered body is a renewed focus upon experiential data and the sensory life. Simulation is often used and described as a means of coming to terms with the new normal. Theoretical discussions around embodied knowledge, may yet prove to have practical outcomes by contributing to a composite and shared understanding of the disease and in supporting people whose lives have triggered a radical re-appraisal of what it is to be an embodied being.AcknowledgementsThe research project upon which this paper is based is funded jointly by Breast Cancer Care WA and the Australian Research Council with in-kind contributions from Edith Cowan University and utilizes a social network site linked to Breast Cancer Care WA and Steel Blue’s Purple Boot Brigade.References Bonniface, Leesa, Lelia Green, and Maurice Swanson. “Affect and an Effective Online Therapeutic Community.” M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). 14 Aug. 2012 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/05-bonnifacegreenswanson.php›.Hopkins, Lekkie. “Bad News: A Narrative Account of the Subjective Experience of Mastectomy.” Health Sociology Review 12 (2003): 129-136.Kozinets, Robert. Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010.Moss, Pamela, and Isabel Dyck. Women, Body, Illness: Space and Identity in the Everyday Lives of Women with Chronic Illness. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.Plant, Jane. Your Life in Your Hands: Understand, Prevent and Overcome Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer. 4th ed. London: Virgin Books, 2007.Polanyi, Michael. “Knowing and Being.” Mind (New Series), 70.280 (1961): 458-470.Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998.Thomas-McLean, Roanne. "Memories of Treatment: the Immediacy of Breast Cancer." Qualitative Health Research 14 (2004): 628-643.---. Beyond Dichotomies of Health and Illness: Life after Breast Cancer. Nursing Inquiry 12 (2005): 200-209.Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. London: Virago, 1992.Walker, Brenda. Reading by Moonlight: How Books Saved a Life. Melbourne: Penguin Australia, 2010.

By the time you read this, it will be wrong. Things seemed to be moving so fast in these first days after airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania earth. Each certainty is as carelessly dropped as it was once carelessly assumed. The sounds of lower Manhattan that used to serve as white noise for residents—sirens, screeches, screams—are no longer signs without a referent. Instead, they make folks stare and stop, hurry and hustle, wondering whether the noises we know so well are in fact, this time, coefficients of a new reality. At the time of writing, the events themselves are also signs without referents—there has been no direct claim of responsibility, and little proof offered by accusers since the 11th. But it has been assumed that there is a link to US foreign policy, its military and economic presence in the Arab world, and opposition to it that seeks revenge. In the intervening weeks the US media and the war planners have supplied their own narrow frameworks, making New York’s “ground zero” into the starting point for a new escalation of global violence. We want to write here about the combination of sources and sensations that came that day, and the jumble of knowledges and emotions that filled our minds. Working late the night before, Toby was awoken in the morning by one of the planes right overhead. That happens sometimes. I have long expected a crash when I’ve heard the roar of jet engines so close—but I didn’t this time. Often when that sound hits me, I get up and go for a run down by the water, just near Wall Street. Something kept me back that day. Instead, I headed for my laptop. Because I cannot rely on local media to tell me very much about the role of the US in world affairs, I was reading the British newspaper The Guardian on-line when it flashed a two-line report about the planes. I looked up at the calendar above my desk to see whether it was April 1st. Truly. Then I got off-line and turned on the TV to watch CNN. That second, the phone rang. My quasi-ex-girlfriend I’m still in love with called from the mid-West. She was due to leave that day for the Bay Area. Was I alright? We spoke for a bit. She said my cell phone was out, and indeed it was for the remainder of the day. As I hung up from her, my friend Ana rang, tearful and concerned. Her husband, Patrick, had left an hour before for work in New Jersey, and it seemed like a dangerous separation. All separations were potentially fatal that day. You wanted to know where everyone was, every minute. She told me she had been trying to contact Palestinian friends who worked and attended school near the event—their ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds made for real poignancy, as we both thought of the prejudice they would (probably) face, regardless of the eventual who/what/when/where/how of these events. We agreed to meet at Bruno’s, a bakery on La Guardia Place. For some reason I really took my time, though, before getting to Ana. I shampooed and shaved under the shower. This was a horror, and I needed to look my best, even as men and women were losing and risking their lives. I can only interpret what I did as an attempt to impose normalcy and control on the situation, on my environment. When I finally made it down there, she’d located our friends. They were safe. We stood in the street and watched the Towers. Horrified by the sight of human beings tumbling to their deaths, we turned to buy a tea/coffee—again some ludicrous normalization—but were drawn back by chilling screams from the street. Racing outside, we saw the second Tower collapse, and clutched at each other. People were streaming towards us from further downtown. We decided to be with our Palestinian friends in their apartment. When we arrived, we learnt that Mark had been four minutes away from the WTC when the first plane hit. I tried to call my daughter in London and my father in Canberra, but to no avail. I rang the mid-West, and asked my maybe-former novia to call England and Australia to report in on me. Our friend Jenine got through to relatives on the West Bank. Israeli tanks had commenced a bombardment there, right after the planes had struck New York. Family members spoke to her from under the kitchen table, where they were taking refuge from the shelling of their house. Then we gave ourselves over to television, like so many others around the world, even though these events were happening only a mile away. We wanted to hear official word, but there was just a huge absence—Bush was busy learning to read in Florida, then leading from the front in Louisiana and Nebraska. As the day wore on, we split up and regrouped, meeting folks. One guy was in the subway when smoke filled the car. Noone could breathe properly, people were screaming, and his only thought was for his dog DeNiro back in Brooklyn. From the panic of the train, he managed to call his mom on a cell to ask her to feed “DeNiro” that night, because it looked like he wouldn’t get home. A pregnant woman feared for her unborn as she fled the blasts, pushing the stroller with her baby in it as she did so. Away from these heart-rending tales from strangers, there was the fear: good grief, what horrible price would the US Government extract for this, and who would be the overt and covert agents and targets of that suffering? What blood-lust would this generate? What would be the pattern of retaliation and counter-retaliation? What would become of civil rights and cultural inclusiveness? So a jumble of emotions came forward, I assume in all of us. Anger was not there for me, just intense sorrow, shock, and fear, and the desire for intimacy. Network television appeared to offer me that, but in an ultimately unsatisfactory way. For I think I saw the end-result of reality TV that day. I have since decided to call this ‘emotionalization’—network TV’s tendency to substitute analysis of US politics and economics with a stress on feelings. Of course, powerful emotions have been engaged by this horror, and there is value in addressing that fact and letting out the pain. I certainly needed to do so. But on that day and subsequent ones, I looked to the networks, traditional sources of current-affairs knowledge, for just that—informed, multi-perspectival journalism that would allow me to make sense of my feelings, and come to a just and reasoned decision about how the US should respond. I waited in vain. No such commentary came forward. Just a lot of asinine inquiries from reporters that were identical to those they pose to basketballers after a game: Question—‘How do you feel now?’ Answer—‘God was with me today.’ For the networks were insistent on asking everyone in sight how they felt about the end of las torres gemelas. In this case, we heard the feelings of survivors, firefighters, viewers, media mavens, Republican and Democrat hacks, and vacuous Beltway state-of-the-nation pundits. But learning of the military-political economy, global inequality, and ideologies and organizations that made for our grief and loss—for that, there was no space. TV had forgotten how to do it. My principal feeling soon became one of frustration. So I headed back to where I began the day—The Guardian web site, where I was given insightful analysis of the messy factors of history, religion, economics, and politics that had created this situation. As I dealt with the tragedy of folks whose lives had been so cruelly lost, I pondered what it would take for this to stop. Or whether this was just the beginning. I knew one thing—the answers wouldn’t come from mainstream US television, no matter how full of feelings it was. And that made Toby anxious. And afraid. He still is. And so the dreams come. In one, I am suddenly furloughed from my job with an orchestra, as audience numbers tumble. I make my evening-wear way to my locker along with the other players, emptying it of bubble gum and instrument. The next night, I see a gigantic, fifty-feet high wave heading for the city beach where I’ve come to swim. Somehow I am sheltered behind a huge wall, as all the people around me die. Dripping, I turn to find myself in a media-stereotype “crack house” of the early ’90s—desperate-looking black men, endless doorways, sudden police arrival, and my earnest search for a passport that will explain away my presence. I awake in horror, to the realization that the passport was already open and stamped—racialization at work for Toby, every day and in every way, as a white man in New York City. Ana’s husband, Patrick, was at work ten miles from Manhattan when “it” happened. In the hallway, I overheard some talk about two planes crashing, but went to teach anyway in my usual morning stupor. This was just the usual chatter of disaster junkies. I didn’t hear the words, “World Trade Center” until ten thirty, at the end of the class at the college I teach at in New Jersey, across the Hudson river. A friend and colleague walked in and told me the news of the attack, to which I replied “You must be fucking joking.” He was a little offended. Students were milling haphazardly on the campus in the late summer weather, some looking panicked like me. My first thought was of some general failure of the air-traffic control system. There must be planes falling out of the sky all over the country. Then the height of the towers: how far towards our apartment in Greenwich Village would the towers fall? Neither of us worked in the financial district a mile downtown, but was Ana safe? Where on the college campus could I see what was happening? I recognized the same physical sensation I had felt the morning after Hurricane Andrew in Miami seeing at a distance the wreckage of our shattered apartment across a suburban golf course strewn with debris and flattened power lines. Now I was trapped in the suburbs again at an unbridgeable distance from my wife and friends who were witnessing the attacks first hand. Were they safe? What on earth was going on? This feeling of being cut off, my path to the familiar places of home blocked, remained for weeks my dominant experience of the disaster. In my office, phone calls to the city didn’t work. There were six voice-mail messages from my teenaged brother Alex in small-town England giving a running commentary on the attack and its aftermath that he was witnessing live on television while I dutifully taught my writing class. “Hello, Patrick, where are you? Oh my god, another plane just hit the towers. Where are you?” The web was choked: no access to newspapers online. Email worked, but no one was wasting time writing. My office window looked out over a soccer field to the still woodlands of western New Jersey: behind me to the east the disaster must be unfolding. Finally I found a website with a live stream from ABC television, which I watched flickering and stilted on the tiny screen. It had all already happened: both towers already collapsed, the Pentagon attacked, another plane shot down over Pennsylvania, unconfirmed reports said, there were other hijacked aircraft still out there unaccounted for. Manhattan was sealed off. George Washington Bridge, Lincoln and Holland tunnels, all the bridges and tunnels from New Jersey I used to mock shut down. Police actions sealed off the highways into “the city.” The city I liked to think of as the capital of the world was cut off completely from the outside, suddenly vulnerable and under siege. There was no way to get home. The phone rang abruptly and Alex, three thousand miles away, told me he had spoken to Ana earlier and she was safe. After a dozen tries, I managed to get through and spoke to her, learning that she and Toby had seen people jumping and then the second tower fall. Other friends had been even closer. Everyone was safe, we thought. I sat for another couple of hours in my office uselessly. The news was incoherent, stories contradictory, loops of the planes hitting the towers only just ready for recycling. The attacks were already being transformed into “the World Trade Center Disaster,” not yet the ahistorical singularity of the emergency “nine one one.” Stranded, I had to spend the night in New Jersey at my boss’s house, reminded again of the boundless generosity of Americans to relative strangers. In an effort to protect his young son from the as yet unfiltered images saturating cable and Internet, my friend’s TV set was turned off and we did our best to reassure. We listened surreptitiously to news bulletins on AM radio, hoping that the roads would open. Walking the dog with my friend’s wife and son we crossed a park on the ridge on which Upper Montclair sits. Ten miles away a huge column of smoke was rising from lower Manhattan, where the stunning absence of the towers was clearly visible. The summer evening was unnervingly still. We kicked a soccer ball around on the front lawn and a woman walked distracted by, shocked and pale up the tree-lined suburban street, suffering her own wordless trauma. I remembered that though most of my students were ordinary working people, Montclair is a well-off dormitory for the financial sector and high rises of Wall Street and Midtown. For the time being, this was a white-collar disaster. I slept a short night in my friend’s house, waking to hope I had dreamed it all, and took the commuter train in with shell-shocked bankers and corporate types. All men, all looking nervously across the river toward glimpses of the Manhattan skyline as the train neared Hoboken. “I can’t believe they’re making us go in,” one guy had repeated on the station platform. He had watched the attacks from his office in Midtown, “The whole thing.” Inside the train we all sat in silence. Up from the PATH train station on 9th street I came onto a carless 6th Avenue. At 14th street barricades now sealed off downtown from the rest of the world. I walked down the middle of the avenue to a newspaper stand; the Indian proprietor shrugged “No deliveries below 14th.” I had not realized that the closer to the disaster you came, the less information would be available. Except, I assumed, for the evidence of my senses. But at 8 am the Village was eerily still, few people about, nothing in the sky, including the twin towers. I walked to Houston Street, which was full of trucks and police vehicles. Tractor trailers sat carrying concrete barriers. Below Houston, each street into Soho was barricaded and manned by huddles of cops. I had walked effortlessly up into the “lockdown,” but this was the “frozen zone.” There was no going further south towards the towers. I walked the few blocks home, found my wife sleeping, and climbed into bed, still in my clothes from the day before. “Your heart is racing,” she said. I realized that I hadn’t known if I would get back, and now I never wanted to leave again; it was still only eight thirty am. Lying there, I felt the terrible wonder of a distant bystander for the first-hand witness. Ana’s face couldn’t tell me what she had seen. I felt I needed to know more, to see and understand. Even though I knew the effort was useless: I could never bridge that gap that had trapped me ten miles away, my back turned to the unfolding disaster. The television was useless: we don’t have cable, and the mast on top of the North Tower, which Ana had watched fall, had relayed all the network channels. I knew I had to go down and see the wreckage. Later I would realize how lucky I had been not to suffer from “disaster envy.” Unbelievably, in retrospect, I commuted into work the second day after the attack, dogged by the same unnerving sensation that I would not get back—to the wounded, humbled former center of the world. My students were uneasy, all talked out. I was a novelty, a New Yorker living in the Village a mile from the towers, but I was forty-eight hours late. Out of place in both places. I felt torn up, but not angry. Back in the city at night, people were eating and drinking with a vengeance, the air filled with acrid sicklysweet smoke from the burning wreckage. Eyes stang and nose ran with a bitter acrid taste. Who knows what we’re breathing in, we joked nervously. A friend’s wife had fallen out with him for refusing to wear a protective mask in the house. He shrugged a wordlessly reassuring smile. What could any of us do? I walked with Ana down to the top of West Broadway from where the towers had commanded the skyline over SoHo; downtown dense smoke blocked the view to the disaster. A crowd of onlookers pushed up against the barricades all day, some weeping, others gawping. A tall guy was filming the grieving faces with a video camera, which was somehow the worst thing of all, the first sign of the disaster tourism that was already mushrooming downtown. Across the street an Asian artist sat painting the street scene in streaky black and white; he had scrubbed out two white columns where the towers would have been. “That’s the first thing I’ve seen that’s made me feel any better,” Ana said. We thanked him, but he shrugged blankly, still in shock I supposed. On the Friday, the clampdown. I watched the Mayor and Police Chief hold a press conference in which they angrily told the stream of volunteers to “ground zero” that they weren’t needed. “We can handle this ourselves. We thank you. But we don’t need your help,” Commissioner Kerik said. After the free-for-all of the first couple of days, with its amazing spontaneities and common gestures of goodwill, the clampdown was going into effect. I decided to go down to Canal Street and see if it was true that no one was welcome anymore. So many paths through the city were blocked now. “Lock down, frozen zone, war zone, the site, combat zone, ground zero, state troopers, secured perimeter, national guard, humvees, family center”: a disturbing new vocabulary that seemed to stamp the logic of Giuliani’s sanitized and over-policed Manhattan onto the wounded hulk of the city. The Mayor had been magnificent in the heat of the crisis; Churchillian, many were saying—and indeed, Giuliani quickly appeared on the cover of Cigar Afficionado, complete with wing collar and the misquotation from Kipling, “Captain Courageous.” Churchill had not believed in peacetime politics either, and he never got over losing his empire. Now the regime of command and control over New York’s citizens and its economy was being stabilized and reimposed. The sealed-off, disfigured, and newly militarized spaces of the New York through which I have always loved to wander at all hours seemed to have been put beyond reach for the duration. And, in the new post-“9/11” post-history, the duration could last forever. The violence of the attacks seemed to have elicited a heavy-handed official reaction that sought to contain and constrict the best qualities of New York. I felt more anger at the clampdown than I did at the demolition of the towers. I knew this was unreasonable, but I feared the reaction, the spread of the racial harassment and racial profiling that I had already heard of from my students in New Jersey. This militarizing of the urban landscape seemed to negate the sprawling, freewheeling, boundless largesse and tolerance on which New York had complacently claimed a monopoly. For many the towers stood for that as well, not just as the monumental outposts of global finance that had been attacked. Could the American flag mean something different? For a few days, perhaps—on the helmets of firemen and construction workers. But not for long. On the Saturday, I found an unmanned barricade way east along Canal Street and rode my bike past throngs of Chinatown residents, by the Federal jail block where prisoners from the first World Trade Center bombing were still being held. I headed south and west towards Tribeca; below the barricades in the frozen zone, you could roam freely, the cops and soldiers assuming you belonged there. I felt uneasy, doubting my own motives for being there, feeling the blood drain from my head in the same numbing shock I’d felt every time I headed downtown towards the site. I looped towards Greenwich Avenue, passing an abandoned bank full of emergency supplies and boxes of protective masks. Crushed cars still smeared with pulverized concrete and encrusted with paperwork strewn by the blast sat on the street near the disabled telephone exchange. On one side of the avenue stood a horde of onlookers, on the other television crews, all looking two blocks south towards a colossal pile of twisted and smoking steel, seven stories high. We were told to stay off the street by long-suffering national guardsmen and women with southern accents, kids. Nothing happening, just the aftermath. The TV crews were interviewing worn-out, dust-covered volunteers and firemen who sat quietly leaning against the railings of a park filled with scraps of paper. Out on the West Side highway, a high-tech truck was offering free cellular phone calls. The six lanes by the river were full of construction machinery and military vehicles. Ambulances rolled slowly uptown, bodies inside? I locked my bike redundantly to a lamppost and crossed under the hostile gaze of plainclothes police to another media encampment. On the path by the river, two camera crews were complaining bitterly in the heat. “After five days of this I’ve had enough.” They weren’t talking about the trauma, bodies, or the wreckage, but censorship. “Any blue light special gets to roll right down there, but they see your press pass and it’s get outta here. I’ve had enough.” I fronted out the surly cops and ducked under the tape onto the path, walking onto a Pier on which we’d spent many lazy afternoons watching the river at sunset. Dust everywhere, police boats docked and waiting, a crane ominously dredging mud into a barge. I walked back past the camera operators onto the highway and walked up to an interview in process. Perfectly composed, a fire chief and his crew from some small town in upstate New York were politely declining to give details about what they’d seen at “ground zero.” The men’s faces were dust streaked, their eyes slightly dazed with the shock of a horror previously unimaginable to most Americans. They were here to help the best they could, now they’d done as much as anyone could. “It’s time for us to go home.” The chief was eloquent, almost rehearsed in his precision. It was like a Magnum press photo. But he was refusing to cooperate with the media’s obsessive emotionalism. I walked down the highway, joining construction workers, volunteers, police, and firemen in their hundreds at Chambers Street. No one paid me any attention; it was absurd. I joined several other watchers on the stairs by Stuyvesant High School, which was now the headquarters for the recovery crews. Just two or three blocks away, the huge jagged teeth of the towers’ beautiful tracery lurched out onto the highway above huge mounds of debris. The TV images of the shattered scene made sense as I placed them into what was left of a familiar Sunday afternoon geography of bike rides and walks by the river, picnics in the park lying on the grass and gazing up at the infinite solidity of the towers. Demolished. It was breathtaking. If “they” could do that, they could do anything. Across the street at tables military policeman were checking credentials of the milling volunteers and issuing the pink and orange tags that gave access to ground zero. Without warning, there was a sudden stampede running full pelt up from the disaster site, men and women in fatigues, burly construction workers, firemen in bunker gear. I ran a few yards then stopped. Other people milled around idly, ignoring the panic, smoking and talking in low voices. It was a mainly white, blue-collar scene. All these men wearing flags and carrying crowbars and flashlights. In their company, the intolerance and rage I associated with flags and construction sites was nowhere to be seen. They were dealing with a torn and twisted otherness that dwarfed machismo or bigotry. I talked to a moustachioed, pony-tailed construction worker who’d hitched a ride from the mid-west to “come and help out.” He was staying at the Y, he said, it was kind of rough. “Have you been down there?” he asked, pointing towards the wreckage. “You’re British, you weren’t in World War Two were you?” I replied in the negative. “It’s worse ’n that. I went down last night and you can’t imagine it. You don’t want to see it if you don’t have to.” Did I know any welcoming ladies? he asked. The Y was kind of tough. When I saw TV images of President Bush speaking to the recovery crews and steelworkers at “ground zero” a couple of days later, shouting through a bullhorn to chants of “USA, USA” I knew nothing had changed. New York’s suffering was subject to a second hijacking by the brokers of national unity. New York had never been America, and now its terrible human loss and its great humanity were redesignated in the name of the nation, of the coming war. The signs without a referent were being forcibly appropriated, locked into an impoverished patriotic framework, interpreted for “us” by a compliant media and an opportunistic regime eager to reign in civil liberties, to unloose its war machine and tighten its grip on the Muslim world. That day, drawn to the river again, I had watched F18 fighter jets flying patterns over Manhattan as Bush’s helicopters came in across the river. Otherwise empty of air traffic, “our” skies were being torn up by the military jets: it was somehow the worst sight yet, worse than the wreckage or the bands of disaster tourists on Canal Street, a sign of further violence yet to come. There was a carrier out there beyond New York harbor, there to protect us: the bruising, blustering city once open to all comers. That felt worst of all. In the intervening weeks, we have seen other, more unstable ways of interpreting the signs of September 11 and its aftermath. Many have circulated on the Internet, past the blockages and blockades placed on urban spaces and intellectual life. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s work was banished (at least temporarily) from the canon of avant-garde electronic music when he described the attack on las torres gemelas as akin to a work of art. If Jacques Derrida had described it as an act of deconstruction (turning technological modernity literally in on itself), or Jean Baudrillard had announced that the event was so thick with mediation it had not truly taken place, something similar would have happened to them (and still may). This is because, as Don DeLillo so eloquently put it in implicit reaction to the plaintive cry “Why do they hate us?”: “it is the power of American culture to penetrate every wall, home, life and mind”—whether via military action or cultural iconography. All these positions are correct, however grisly and annoying they may be. What GK Chesterton called the “flints and tiles” of nineteenth-century European urban existence were rent asunder like so many victims of high-altitude US bombing raids. As a First-World disaster, it became knowable as the first-ever US “ground zero” such precisely through the high premium immediately set on the lives of Manhattan residents and the rarefied discussion of how to commemorate the high-altitude towers. When, a few weeks later, an American Airlines plane crashed on take-off from Queens, that borough was left open to all comers. Manhattan was locked down, flown over by “friendly” bombers. In stark contrast to the open if desperate faces on the street of 11 September, people went about their business with heads bowed even lower than is customary. Contradictory deconstructions and valuations of Manhattan lives mean that September 11 will live in infamy and hyper-knowability. The vengeful United States government and population continue on their way. Local residents must ponder insurance claims, real-estate values, children’s terrors, and their own roles in something beyond their ken. New York had been forced beyond being the center of the financial world. It had become a military target, a place that was receiving as well as dispatching the slings and arrows of global fortune. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php>. Chicago Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby, "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. (2002) A Day That Will Live In … ?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]).