9-11
Place Meaning, Symbolism, and Environmental Psychological
New York, New York: The Impacts of 11 September on Place Meaning, Architectural Symbolism, and Environmental Psychological Understanding in a Post-postmodern World
by Joseph P. Reser, Applied Psychology, University of Durham, UK
The events of 11 September have become indelibly imprinted in the consciousness of the world. The images of these events not only reverberate in individual imagination and collective representations and sense making, but have been accorded their own immortality and resonance through an unprecedented and hypnotic media documentation, as well as a literal flood of published photographic testimonials and tributes. Within a week of the event, a number of memorial books had been published in New York City, and almost every major international newspaper and magazine rushed to produce their own commemorative issue, to say nothing of calendars, postcards, talk shows, and shrines (e.g., Kerik, B.B. & Von Essen, T., 2001; Reuters, 2001; The Guardian, 2001; Time, 2001). Another and profoundly important consequence is that the actual and symbolic landscape, cityscape, and skyline of New York City was forever altered, in the space of an hour. The significance of the event, the images, the place, is remarkable, possibly unprecedented - and arguably of particular relevance to environmental psychology. As well, these changes to place meaning, place connection, behavior setting, are far more emotionally confronting and disturbing than one might think. The words and sentiments of Hall have been echoed by many, “Man’s feeling about being properly oriented in space runs deep. Such knowledge is ultimately linked to survival and sanity. To be disoriented in space is to be psychotic.” (1966, 105). These insights take on new meaning in the contemporary electronic and global world in which we live, where place, space and environmental transaction are quintessentially virtual, powerfully symbolic, and inherently self-defining and diagnostic.
What is perhaps most notable in the wake of 11 September - apart from the extraordinary physical, psychological, symbolic, and political impacts - is the palpable and brooding absence of what was an integral, monumental, striking feature of the New York City skyline and cityscape, twin towers which literally towered over adjacent buildings and horizon. At 1362 feet and 110 stories the World Trade Center was once the tallest building in the world. While it is often difficult to take in such monumental buildings or indeed the skyline in the center of a large city, the articulation of New York City is such that the World Trade Towers were ubiquitously – and experientially - there, whether as backdrop to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building, or as the towering ramparts of the Brooklyn Bridge. When the buildings fell, when the skyline dramatically changed, the collective experience and response was one of shock, disbelief, and disorientation, coupled with immediate fear and profound trepidation (APA Monitor, Nov, 2001). Because the absence of the World Trade Towers has so altered the skyline, New Yorkers are reminded of the event whenever they come across the Brooklyn Bridge, look out a window, or attend to the skyline.
And there is hole in the skyline. I can see it from my window. There is a place where two buildings are supposed to be that is now smoke and sirens, sounds and sky. (Roiphe, 2001, 18 eyewitness)
Many geographers, historians and novelists have underscored the profound and poignant experience of loss associated with the realisation that there is no going back to lost places (e.g., Read, 1996).
A deconstruction of the symbolic complex of the World Trade Center is beyond the scope of this essay, but it clearly included the building, the physical and ‘neighborhood’ context, the encompassing cityscape, the bustling nerve-center nature of this commercial and financial hub, and the shared perceptual and emotional gestalt for New York City residents and the 50,000 people who worked there each day. The true skein of meaning here reflects the complexity and locus of ‘place’ (Altman & Low, 1992; Childress, 1994). To this must be added the global iconography relating to a structure representing and epitomising capitalism and commerce, achievement and prosperity. Equally important, are the symbolic meanings associated with the change itself, and the nature and manner of what has happened to this physical complex and symbolic constellation. The very potent symbolism here includes threatened disorder, loss of control, and potential chaos, as well as, of course, the questions of who, how and why, and related feelings of injustice, anger, and retribution. The world has experienced a new insecurity, fragility and vulnerability. A new cycle of targeted aggression and escalating threat and counter threat commenced, the familiar rhetoric and symbolic exchange of international conflict.
The abrupt transition in meaning from monumental permanence and stability to fragility and target was immediately grasped by journalists and public. A year ago capitalism had never seemed so secure. … Then, in a day, in hours, the story changed. The fact that the terrorists had attacked the very symbol of successful capitalism escaped nobody. Suddenly, what seemed invulnerable was transformed into all that was fragile and mortal. They, whoever they were, had gone for the skyscraper, the overeacher. Overnight we began to see things differently. We saw that such a hyperbolic structure as the twin towers could not fail to invite attack. … We are fragile, our buildings and bodies and institutions are fragile, and none of us are or ever have been safe. (Drabble, 2001, 7)
We know well that the state and fate of buildings, neighborhoods, and precincts can be powerfully imbued with connotations of disorder, fear, and mistrust (e.g., Ellin, 1997; Nasar & Jones, 1997; Ross & Jang, 2000). We have indeed thought in design terms about how best to intentionally invest perilous places with such meanings (Brill, 1993). The symbolic connotations of the World Trade Center somersaulted from towering strength to monumental helplessness, to indomitable spirit, as place meaning and events coalesced and consolidated. Clearly one of the residual symbolic meanings of the World Trade Towers, which itself no longer exists, is vulnerability. What is particularly noteworthy here is that so much of the impact and meaning relates to dramatic and consequential change, and the potent meaning of these objective and subjective alterations of what, monumentally, was.
Buildings of course are imbued with and embody multileveled and multipurpose meanings and messages. They provide not only structure and form, but text, context and meaning to social and cultural life (e.g., Gumpert & Drucker, 1996; Oliver, 1997). They also constitute powerful expressive and symbolic vehicles in their own right, with monumental buildings being more noteworthy in their statements and style than in their functional provision and delivery. The metaphoric and anthropomorphic qualities of buildings have been extensively documented, but remain largely outside of reflective public consciousness. One of the most provocative responses to the events of 11 September was that which George Lakoff, a sociologist and semiotician, circulated to friends and colleagues.
There are a number of metaphors for buildings. A common visual metaphor is Buildings Are Heads, where windows and doors are openings in the head, like eyes, nose, and mouth. For many people this metaphor interacted with the image of the plane going into SouthTower of the World Trade Center, producing via visual metaphor the unconscious but powerful image of a bullet going through someone’s head, the flame pouring from the other side blood spurting out. Tall buildings can, via visual metaphor, be people standing erect. For many the falling of the towers activated this metaphor. Each tower falling was a body falling. (Lakoff, 2001) These intertwined metaphoric and symbolic meanings became very evident as people wrote about this event, and were certainly not the exclusive province of cultural theorists and semioticians.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the city of New York and the United States of America were changed forever. Two hijacked airliners, loaded with innocent passengers, thundered toward the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. At 8:48 A.M. the first plane hit, piercing the side of a one-hundred-ten-story building and the innocence of a nation, virtually unblemished by the wars of history. … And when the final semblance of one of the world’s most visible symbols of power and strength toppled into powder and smoke (Bernard Kerik, 40th Police Commissioner, New York City, in Kerik & Von Essen, 2001, 8).
There is of course a striking and elemental quality about any structure the size of the World Trade Center, which necessarily limns the sky and dwarfs perception. There is also a peculiar inarticulateness about our language and disciplinary sensibilities when talking about the demise of buildings or dramatic alterations to people-setting transactions and understandings. Metaphors and images eloquently bridge this gap, and allow for immediate and convincing apperceptions, acknowledgements, and feelings. We rely on them more than we know, and, in concert with cultural meaning systems, they play multiple and important roles in the adjustments and constructions of sense making and place meaning (e.g., Douglas, 1970; Lakoff, 1987; Shore, 1996).
The metaphor of ‘time stopping’ which was repeatedly used in media reporting is particularly revealing with respect to our subjective experience of virtual place and event. It was 8:48 am Eastern Standard Time, and the world seemed to stop. Time froze for anyone in sight of a television screen anywhere in the world. One, two, three, four planes … one tower; two towers. The indomitable symbols of American capitalism crumbled into dust. The most famous city skyline in the world disappeared in a choking, all-swallowing sprawl of smoke. And while we blinked at these strangely beautiful images – it was a sparkling, blue-skied, autumn morning – there came the news that they had hit the nerve centre of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen…. America – its president, its citizens, its self-confidence - was poleaxed. (Rusbridger, 2001, 24)
The metaphor suggests the ‘flashbulb memory’ nature of emotionally charged and extraordinary events for which our recollections are remarkably detailed. There is an emotional consolidation, a freezing of the frame, which gives particular salience and meaning to setting and scene. There are, of course, many plausible psychological and neurobiochemical reasons why such an emotionally powerful event is registered in this way (e.g., Pillemer, 1990), but it is intriguing to speculate about the death of a monumental building, or a dramatic change in landscape feature or topography. We don’t often see such events. Their time frame is far more extensive, the nature and process of changes imperceptible. Hence the fascination of cataclysmic events such as a volcanic eruption or a hurricane, or the demolition of a well-known and imposing building. When the phenomenon is the dramatic, intentional destruction of a powerful cultural icon and symbol as well as a living, working institution, multiple sense making and protective mechanisms as well as cultural scripts ensure that attribution-based social perceptions quickly subjugate attentional arrest and elicit selfserving and coherence-conferring cognitive responses (e.g., Flick, 1998; Montada & Lerner, 1998).
What is clear from the media coverage and myriad other social representations of the event, is that the text and narrative is in the images, and the sense people are seeking is less cognitive than ‘psychospatial’ and emotive. Perhaps what happens with such dramatic and instantaneous alterations to place is that we need to fit the pieces together in a more literal way. We need to spend some time with our representations of the place which was - and the absence, ‘to get our head around it,' to orient ourselves, to refashion a coherent representation of our now-altered world and embodied self.
Our minds play tricks on us. The image of the Manhattan skyline is now unbalanced. We are used to seeing it with the towers there. Our mind imposes our old image of the towers, and the sight of them gone gives one the illusion of imbalance, as if Manhattan were sinking. Given the symbolism of Manhattan as standing for the promise of America, it appears metaphorically as if that promise were sinking. (Lakoff, 2001)
It is interesting that the World Trade Center Memorial Calendar produced by Browntrout publishers, a noteworthy phenomenon in itself, includes only ‘before’ photographic images, with the publishers perhaps appreciating that Americans needed to be able to look at and spend time with a place and time that was no longer there. There is another provocative, perhaps prophetic perspective on this event and reconstruction site. History, culture and collective memory conspire to invest noteworthy settings of man’s inhumanity to man and human tragedy with ‘heritage site’ status (e.g., Uzzell and Ballantyne, 1998).
Emotions and experiences are integral to meaning and interpretation, and that there is a fascination, a respect, a very necessary acknowledgement and witnessing character to visiting sites such as Port Arthur or a holocaust memorial. Such a ‘setting apart’ is happening with respect to ‘ground zero’, with considerable discussion about whether the world and New York city needs a reassuring and defiant replacement skyscraper - or a less monumental but more apposite ‘memorial.' Indeed as of week 16 post 11 September the nature and status of the site appears to be moving very rapidly from cathartic memorial to tourist ‘hot spot’ and circus.
But in America, even tragedy becomes professionalized, and ground zero is now as distinct – and as commercial – a New York region as the theatre district or the garment district. It’s a throbbing 6.5-hectacre region populated by construction workers, itinerant volunteers, movie stars, religious proselytizers, uniformed officers, National Guard members, souvenir hawkers and more tourists than anywhere in the city. (Ratnesar & Stein, 2002, 68) Americans can now, sadly, truly touch base with such a place and event - on their own soil, less distant than Pearl Harbor, as confronting and problematic as Hiroshima or Vietnam (e.g., Sturken, 1998). It is instructive that when the city and society no longer had a place name that made sense, ‘ground zero’ materialised. This ‘selection’ was perhaps apposite on many levels in its apocalyptic, loss of innocence and swath of destruction connotations, but it carries its own very worrying symbolic and metaphoric baggage. Local television cameramen meticulously recorded the direct hits by two hijacked passenger airplanes in New York, the meltdown that followed and the direct hit on the Pentagon. (Aronowitz, 2001, 14)
One is left with an overriding impression that the ‘language’ being used to communicate and comprehend the events of 11 September and the impacts on the setting in which they occurred is primarily visual, inherently ‘representational’, and media mediated and dominated (e.g., Gerahty, 1996; Barthes, 1977, 1996). The photographic images of the World Trade Towers, the people who worked there, New York’s finest, the witnesses we identified with, and the blow by blow stages of the building’s collapse and clearing have been used to tell the story, to impose sense and coherence, to construct new meanings. But in this case the building and the landscape are always, somehow, centerstage, embodying, encompassing, communicating this tragedy. These photographs of place constitute powerful social and cultural representations (e.g., Farr & Moscovici, 1984; Hall, 1997) of a particular order and kind, orchestrating and situating sensemaking at multiple levels, and intersecting a plurality of semantic planes, places and domains. The role that the building itself plays in this visual narrative is particularly interesting with respect to rhetoric of the images and photographs, and the use of the semiotic landscape (Barthes, 1996; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996), in this case via media representations in a disaster documentation mode. There has never been such a sifting through of a monumental building’s death throws and demise, such a public and media fixation on the parts and the pieces of the building, of the story. Much of this has to do with the intertwined symbolic and metaphoric meanings of the building, the places, the events themselves, and this - itself symbolic - point in time in human history. The emergent fields of cultural representations (e.g., Hall, 1997) and visual culture (e.g. Mirzoeff (1998) underscore the critical role of representations in meaning construction and investment, and the multi-faceted and multi-valenced roles of the media in fashioning and communicating these representations.
In part, we give things meaning by how we represent them – the words we use about them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualise them, the values we place on them. (Hall, 1997, 3)
Opening up the field of vision as an arena in which cultural meanings get constituted also simultaneously anchors to it an entire range of analyses and interpretations of the audio, the spatial, and the psychic dynamics of spectatorship. This visual culture opens up an entire world of intertextuality in which images, sounds and spatial delineations are read on to and through one another, lending ever accruing layers of meaning and of subjective responses to each encounter we might have with film, TV, advertising, art works, buildings or urban environments. (Rogoff, 1998, 15)
As Gumpert and Drucker (1996) persuasively argue and as any cultural theorist knows, we increasingly inhabit virtual landscapes. We genuinely need to consider how such representations constitute, compromise, and complement the ‘environments’ in which we live and the psychosocial environmental ‘impacts’ which we experience.
There are many questions of particular relevance to the readers of this Bulletin posed by the events of 11 September, their representations, and impacts. What insights does, can, an environmental psychological perspective provide? What lessons can we learn from this unprecedented event? What things change, and what things remain unaltered when such a dramatic and consequential built environment impact is sustained by a city and its residents? What constitutes the text, subtext, and hypertext of these events, images, and representations as they relate to the World Trade Towers? How does this relate to place meaning, and place attachment and connection in circumstances such as this? What and whose functions and needs are served? Finally, and importantly, where do we locate our object of focus and inquiry? Where do lost places reside?
Note. The author is American citizen, but a long term overseas resident. He grew up in Chicago, and taught in the shadow of the John Hancock Building at Loyola University, prior to moving overseas.
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