The monstrous sublime of 9/11 was met with overwhelmingly ‘masculine understandings of the political, which [sought] to mobilise the unleashed energy for projects of mastery and control.’ (link, p. 714) Domestic and foreign policy converged, as the Bush administration sought ‘symbolic reparation: a shift of affect from the vulnerability of victimization to the powerful confidence of valiant accomplishment.’ (link, p. 25)
Through a discursive framing read variously as Gothic or melodramatic, official discourse ‘removed … [global] terrorism into the realm of irrationality’ (link, p. 719), condemning it as a ‘a brand of evil’ (link) which could only be met with a military retaliation.
