Contesting the New York Community: From Liminality to the “New Normal” in the Wake of September 11

Abstract

This article explores the processes involved in the construction and contestation of community in New York City following the disaster of September 11, 2001. By employing insights from the literatures on disaster and cultural meaning making, we examine how New Yorkers created and negotiated the meanings of the cultural, symbolic, and moral problems that followed the attacks. Though this postdisaster period has come to be heralded as one that witnessed a spontaneous and uniform rise in patriotism, helping behaviors, and memorial practices, we demonstrate that New Yorkers actively contested and negotiated these terrains. We argue that the tension inherent in this contestation was rooted in uncertainty about identity, interaction, and the boundaries of community in the wake of the attacks, and that its negotiation resulted in a structure of feeling that was fraught with lingering inconsistencies. This was ultimately taken for granted and incorporated into the cultural framework of the “new normal,” marking the collapse of the acute liminality of the New York community's postdisaster experience.