The limitless monstrosity of the ‘false sublime’ was realised in the ‘morbid excess’ of 9/11. Morrione argues that, in an act of counter-intuitive productivity, the ‘destruction of the Twin Towers … left [a] semiotic black hole in the center of Manhattan’ (link, p. 158) - a phenomenon which, even in its seeming absence, is capable of exerting a gravitation pull. Attempts to fix a dominant interpretation or explanation are drawn into a slowly degrading orbit, annihilated as they crossed the discursive event horizon.
To speak of September 11, then, is to be faced with the full force its inherit Beyondness; to recall, ‘as if in quotation marks, a date or a dating that has taken over our public space and our private lives’ (link). Here, the choice of signifier is highly significant; the ‘minimalist aim of this dating … [marking] the fact that we have no concept and no meaning available to us to name in any other way this “thing” that … happened.’ (ibid)
