Welcome to the Big Ideas at Broome Blog

Welcome to the new blog for the Big Ideas in Contemporary Culture Stream at the Broome Street Residential College.


This month we'll be thinking about the various legacies of the events of September 11, 2001. In our first meeting on the 4th, we read John Homan's essay, "The Long Funeral,”in which he argued that a "Grief Culture," born in the small, hand-made shrines and tributes that popped up all over the city in the days after the calamity, has taken over the nation with disastrous consequences:


The memory of 9/11 continues to stoke a weepy sense of American victimhood, and
victimhood, as used by both left and right, is a powerful political force. As
the dog whisperer can tell you, strength and woundedness together are a
dangerous combination. Now, 9/11 has allowed American victim politics to be writ
larger than ever, across the globe. When someone from Tulsa, for example, says,
“It’s important to remember 9/11 every day,” what he means is, “We were
attacked, we are the aggrieved victims, we are justified.” But if we were
victims then, we are less so now. This distorted sense of American weakness is
weirdly mirrored in the woundedness and shame that motivate our adversaries. In
our current tragicomedy of Daddy-knows-best, it’s a national neurosis, a
perpetual childhood. (With its 9/11 truth-conspiracy theories, the far left has
its own infantile daddy complex, except in that version, the daddies are the
source of all evil.) No doubt, there are real enemies, Islamist and otherwise,
more than ever (although the cure—the Iraq war—has inarguably made the disease
worse). But the spectacular scope of 9/11, its psychic power, continues to
distort America’s relationships. It will take years for the country to again
understand its place in the world. More...



It's an empassioned essay, and it gave rise to a lively discussion that started off the semester well.