Essays by Veena Das, Robin Hogarth, Saba Gul Khattak, Tariq Modood, Marita Sturken, and Kathleen Tierney

"The challenge in New York will be to create a memorial where the World Trade Center once stood that provides a place to grieve for and speak to the dead, yet which also does not allow for a smoothing over of the search for meaning, or attempt to bring closure to an event that should not and cannot have closure."

--Marita Sturken, "Memorializing Absence"

"Yet, while in many other countries the wounds inflicted through such violence are acknowledged as attesting to the vulnerability of human life - in the case of American society there is an inability to acknowledge this vulnerability. Or rather the vulnerability to which we, as embodied beings are subject, the powerlessness, is recast in terms of strength.... While many have heard arrogance in these statements - to my ears they are signs of the inability to address pain."

--Veena Das, "Violence and Translation"