Nine Eleven. Ästhetische Verarbeitungen des 11. Septembers 2001. Ed. Ingo Irsigler und Christoph Jürgensen. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2008. Pp. 410. Cloth € 35.00.

• Christina Meyer

The attacks on the World Trade Center in the morning hours of September 11, 2001 are probably the most well documented events in “global” history – be that in the form of photographic images or video films (by amateurs and/or professionals), in the form of the ‘official’ TV newsreel footage, or in any digitalized format. The media coverage was enormous and brought with it certain problems. The mediatization of the terrorist attacks is intricately tied up with processes of perception/reception and memorization. The well-known artist Art Spiegelman deals with the dilemma of distinguishing between “what he actually saw” and what he remembered from watching on his television screen in his comic In the Shadow of No Towers. 1 This epistemic problem is discussed in manifold ways in his graphic text: exemplary in this regard is Spiegelman’s negotiation of the iconic (synecdochical) image of the “falling man” – standing for the people who jumped from the buildings to avoid incineration.

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