Until the Fires Stopped Burning - Strozier, Charles

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Résumé :

Based on the testimony of survivors, bystanders, spectators, and victims' friends and families, Until the Fires Stopped Burning brings much-needed clarity to the conscious and unconscious meaning of 9/11 and its relationships to historical disaster, apocalyptic experience, unnatural death, and the psychological endurance of trauma. Charles B. Strozier interprets and contextualizes the memories of witnesses, comparing their encounter with 9/11 to the devastation of Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Katrina, and other events. Organizing his study around zones of sadness in New York City, Strozier powerfully evokes the multiple places in which his respondents confronted 9/11 while remaining sensitive to the personal, social, and cultural differences of these experiences. Most important, he distinguishes between 9/11 as an apocalyptic event and an apocalyptic experience, which is crucial to understanding the attack's affect on American life and a still-evolving culture of fear in the world.