Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War
In this book version of Retort’s broadsheets and New Left Review article (2004), the authors ask: What, politically and strategically, took place on September 11, 2001, and how has the US state responded to it? They argue that in this atrocity the hijackers caused actual deaths and a symbolic destruction: “What is the effectiveness — the specific political force — of this form of symbolic action, hopeless or not, within the symbolic economy called ‘spectacle’? Spectacularly, the American state suffered a defeat on September 11. [….]. The state was wounded in September in its heart of hearts, and we see it still, almost four years later, flailing blindly in the face of an image it cannot exorcize, and trying desperately to convert the defeat back into terms it can respond to”.