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10

The Dimensions of Aura

In the aftermath of the devastation of September 11, the clearing of the site was accompanied by widespread claims for its sanctity. Everyone recognized that this was sacred ground, a gravesite, a place permanently marked by tragedy. In those first days, many of us called for the preservation of the entire fourteen acres as a memorial to the 3,000 victims of the horrendous attack. In the intervening months, this idea—most forcefully demanded by the survivors of those who died—has been quietly disappeared. The media barely refer to it, and none of the schemes proposed to date by the LMDC—all of which call for the restoration of massive amounts of office and retail space—even approach such a solution. Indeed, among those officially empowered to make choices, there seems to be a consensus that such a mode of remembering is either impractical, overly sentimental, or in some other way simply disproportionate.

It is clear though that most people consider the site permanently saturated with solemnity and therefore entitled to special consideration, not just the restoration of commercial activity. Just as the battlefields of the Civil War, the site of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan have been marked sacred and retain the power to arouse tremendous emotions when encroachment threatens, the World Trade Center site has an aura that must remain unbreached. The question is, what is its range and weight? What is its influence on both its immediate and extended environments? In recent months, the “footprints” of the towers have come to serve as a metonymic representation of the larger space of this tragic event. Since Governor Pataki’s pledge over the summer that nothing would be built on these footprints, their preservation as the space of memorialization has become the default. Indeed, most of the plans promulgated by the LMDC have respected the idea of the inviolability of the footprints, despite the inclusion of massive construction around them.

Given that the site has now been cleared, the footprints are, however, an entirely conceptual notion: there is no longer any physical evidence of their presence. To be sure, the “bathtub”—the vast retaining wall that surrounds the entire site—is legibly clear. But the footprints themselves would have to be reconstituted in any scheme to “preserve” them. Would it make a difference if they were shifted by a few feet? Does their sanctity demand that nothing intrude in the airspace above them? Does their auratic power extend into the earth below?

A remarkable hair-splitting proposition has just been announced by the Port Authority that offers the first precise measurement of the official dimensions of this aura. Under pressure from survivor groups, the Port Authority has concluded that locating commercial space beneath the footprints is inappropriate but that retaining the alignment of the PATH commuter train (presumably a less crass, more public use) under the former south tower is okay, despite survivor arguments that the sacred space extends to bedrock.

This conundrum is deepened by a further displacement. Although much public debate has revolved around the appropriateness of a “cemetery” on the site, the lack of human remains compromises the usefulness of the model. Equally, the analogy of a battlefield seems inappropriate to the site of a mass murder of civilians, although this too is one of the widely used analogies informing the debate. Because of the difficulty in establishing agreement about the basic character of the event itself, vocal constituencies call for the memorial to be widely dispersed, while others suggest the restoration of commercial activity—including continuing demands for the reconstruction of the Twin Towers.

The city has not yet found a way to decide among these claims. Clearly, the ethical and philosophical dimensions of this question are far beyond the intellectual ken of the businessmen and bureaucrats who dominate the LMDC and Port Authority, the bodies empowered to decide on the future of the site. These agencies have further contributed to the difficulty by promulgating plans in which a “memorial” is treated as ancillary to the larger development, and not its driver. This distinction is fundamental, and is one that must undergird the serious debate that has yet to take place in the corridors of official power.

Still, the recent parsing by the Port Authority of the reach of the footprints helps define their aura in terms of space and use. After all, the question isn’t simply one of how close normal life should be permitted to come, but also of what activities are to be considered respectful. Just as one bridles at the thought of a casino on Omaha Beach or a McDonald’s at Gettysburg—and just as tremendous protest greeted the opening of a disco outside the gates of Auschwitz—so it should be clear that some things should not come too close to Ground Zero, wherever we decide to locate it.

In a real estate economy in which value (and meaning) is measured in inches, the care with which we discuss these questions will have tremendous bearing on the meaning of this place for future generations and on its role in the wider physical pattern of New York City. The question is whether a compromise between contending interests—finance, transportation, memorial—can yield a vision for the place. The conflict is not simply between a terribly banal politics—a little something for everyone—and a democratic process in which all voices are heard and weighed to abet a larger idea of the common good. Such matters of a collectively formed memory are not the subject for compromise but the terrain for a more spiritual consensus.

Every memorial invents the event it recalls. That “event” of 9/11 cannot simply be absorbed into things as they are: a year later it still exceeds our ability to describe it. It is only what happens now—what we do about this event and how we mark it—that will define the meaning of this horrific act. Until the endlessly “realistic” language of current discussion can be changed to accommodate this perspective, the victims of this terrible crime will not have been served.

2002