September 11th-12th

September 11^th-12^th

The Individual and the State faced with terrorism

Among the commemorations that marked the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11^th was held the conference « September 11^th-12^th, the Individual and the State Faced with Terrorism » (French Embassy in Washington D.C. April 11^th and 12^th, 2011). This new trans-Atlantic chapter of the program « Memory and Memorialisation » (Partner University Fund) was original in three ways :

• A transdisciplinary approach, calling to speak specialists in neuroscience, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, history, but also legal experts, law historians, even political science and public policy specialists ;
• An approach at once retrospective and projective : September 11^th is calling upon the competence of social as well as legal historians and the experience of psychological development of trauma specialists ;
• An approach with a growing focus : the personal construction of the victim, whose trauma ends ; construction via intermediation ; collective construction, by the big narrative that shapes our understanding of the event ; and finally by the State itself that crafts its own memory.