What changed when everything changed : 9/11 and the making of national identity / Joseph Margulies.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Margulies, Joseph.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National characteristics, American.

Nationalism--United States.

Nationalism.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001--Influence.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001.

Terrorism--Prevention--Social aspects--United States.

Terrorism.

United States--History--21st century.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (393 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Beautifully written and carefully reasoned, this bold and provocative work upends the conventional wisdom about the American reaction to crisis. Margulies demonstrates that for key elements of the post-9/11 landscape-especially support for counterterror policies like torture and hostility to Islam-American identity is not only darker than it was before September 11, 2001, but substantially more repressive than it was immediately after the attacks. These repressive attitudes, Margulies shows us, have taken hold even as the terrorist threat has diminished significantly. Contrary to what is widely imagined, at the moment of greatest perceived threat, when the fear of another attack "hung over the country like a shroud," favorable attitudes toward Muslims and Islam were at record highs, and the suggestion that America should torture was denounced in the public square. Only much later did it become socially acceptable to favor "enhanced interrogation" and exhibit clear anti-Muslim prejudice. Margulies accounts for this unexpected turn and explains what it means to the nation's identity as it moves beyond 9/11. We express our values in the same language, but that language can hide profound differences and radical changes in what we actually believe. "National identity," he writes, "is not fixed, it is made."

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. "What the United States of America Is All About at Our Core"

2. "The Ceaseless Striving to Live Out Our True Creed"

3. The Dark Side of the Creed

4. Race and Religion in National Identity

5. The Punitive Turn

6. "A Fight for Our Principles"

7. "We Need to Bring the News to People"

8. "A War for the Survival of America"

9. "Think the Unthinkable"

10. "Can You Think of Anything More Un-American?"

11. "Must We Sell Our Birthright?"

12. The Paradox of the Obama Era

13. All Will Be as It Ought to Be

Notes

Permissions

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780300195200

0300195206

OCLC:

841809188