This innovative and penetrating book examines the transformation of American identity through 9/11 storytelling. Incorporating elements of ontological security and materiality into a new framework that highlights Self/Other differentiation by way of the transitory role of the Stranger, M. L. deRaismes Combes argues that narratives of the 9/11 attacks have advanced an unconscious shift in norms that has broadened the permissive boundaries of American actions at home and abroad. Examining the discourses of aviation security and the covert drone strike program, Combes traces the original themes of the stories surrounding 9/11 and their contestation through the official and public texts associated with key moments in the development and implementation of each policy across four administrations. The resulting genealogy sheds light on the ways in which certain truth claims have justified government policies that otherwise might have been construed as exceptional and un-American. The ramifications of the dissonance between professed identity and policy have spread beyond the confines of the war on terror and can be seen in the global response to refugees, the normalization of drone warfare, and the legitimation of targeted killing as an instrument of statecraft. Rendering that dissonance contingent yet consequential opens space for a reassessment of both American identity and US security practices in the future.
