While the governing logic of the events remained at once ‘glaringly obvious and deeply ambiguous’ (link, p. 118), there was a willingness on the part of commentators and the mass media to afford 9/11 the status of a ‘significant event’.
Characterised variously as ‘an interruption of the deep rhythms of cultural time’ (link); ‘an unforeseen eruption across the path of a history’ (ibid); and ‘Time Zero … the specific location and instant of rupture in our chronological narratives’ (link, p. 741), according to Bousquiet, the sheer violence and monstrosity of the attacks saw history split asunder.
