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Securing American Identity Through the Retelling of ‘9/11’

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Securing American Identity Through the Retelling of ‘9/11’ © COPYRIGHT by M. L. deRaismes Combes 2018 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED To Ada B. SECURING AMERICAN IDENTITY THROUGH THE RETELLING OF ‘9/11’ BY M. L. deRaismes Combes ABSTRACT This dissertation is a longitudinal study of the transformation of American identity through 9/11 storytelling from September 2001 to December 2016. Drawing on and contributing to critical security studies, discourse theory, and social identity theory, I argue that the narrative of the attacks (‘9/11’) has contributed to an unconscious shift in normalized experience that has broadened the permissive boundaries of American actions at home and abroad. In other words, the extraordinary has become the ordinary. Examining the discourses of aviation security and the covert drone strike program, I explain how this permissiveness is made possible by unearthing the two-step process of how ‘9/11’ constructs threat (understood as embodied insecurity) and then reveals how that threat (in part) constitutes identity. Theoretically, I incorporate elements of ontological security and materiality into a new framework that highlights Self/Other differentiation by way of the transitory role of the Stranger. Methodologically, I use Foucauldian discourse analysis to trace the original themes of ‘9/11’ and their contestation through the texts associated with key moments in the development and implementation of each policy. Brought together, the resulting genealogy sheds light on the ways in which certain truth claims of ‘9/11’ have bounded the space of ‘appropriate’ American-ness, in turn justifying and perpetuating government policies that otherwise might have been construed as exceptional and ‘un- American’. Revealing this contingency opens up space for a reassessment of both American identity and U.S. security practices. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................................. ii TABLE OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................. v CHAPTER ONE: Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 Sites of Analysis .................................................................................................................................................. 6 Discourse Analysis .............................................................................................................................................. 8 Theoretical Framework .................................................................................................................................... 11 Identity practice ............................................................................................................................................................. 12 Critical security .............................................................................................................................................................. 13 The Stranger .................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Narrating 9/11 ................................................................................................................................................... 15 Contribution to the Field ................................................................................................................................................... 18 Plan of Dissertation ............................................................................................................................................................. 21 CHAPTER TWO: 9/11 and the State of the Art ........................................................................................... 22 Three Schools of Thought ................................................................................................................................................. 24 9/11 Storytelling and Threat Construction .................................................................................................................. 27 Uncontested Territory? ...................................................................................................................................................... 30 ‘9/11’ as Traumatic Rupture ................................................................................................................................... 31 Terrorism as Crime ...................................................................................................................................................... 36 ‘9/11’ Moving Forward ..................................................................................................................................................... 40 CHAPTER THREE: Discourse and Relational Causality ......................................................................... 43 Interpretivist Model ............................................................................................................................................................ 45 Discourse Analysis .............................................................................................................................................................. 48 Genealogy ......................................................................................................................................................................... 50 A note on terminology ................................................................................................................................................ 55 Analysis in practice ............................................................................................................................................................. 58 Research Design and Data Selection ............................................................................................................................. 60 ‘9/11’ and the Everyday .................................................................................................................................................... 67 CHAPTER FOUR: Theoretical Framework: The (In)secure Self .......................................................... 69 Identity-as-practice .............................................................................................................................................................. 70 Identity and ontological security .................................................................................................................................... 73 The Stranger .......................................................................................................................................................................... 78 Bodies ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 82 A Note on Vision ............................................................................................................................................................ 86 Mapped Out ........................................................................................................................................................................... 87 CHAPTER FIVE: Targeted Drone Strikes – Call of Duty ........................................................................ 94 Literature Review ................................................................................................................................................................ 98 iii Official Narrative .............................................................................................................................................................. 105 Security .......................................................................................................................................................................... 107 Values ............................................................................................................................................................................. 114 Identity-as-Practice .................................................................................................................................................. 119 Importance of 9/11 storytelling .................................................................................................................................... 122 CHAPTER SIX: Targeted drone strikes – talking back ........................................................................... 124 Drone Strike Counter-Narratives ................................................................................................................................. 127 Legality ........................................................................................................................................................................... 128 Collateral Damage ..................................................................................................................................................... 139 Identity-as-Practice .......................................................................................................................................................... 154 Importance of
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