Mourning Absences, Melancholic Commemoration, and the Contested Public Memories of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum

This essay extends the interdisciplinary work that exists on the dialectic between mourning and melancholia as a way of analyzing the rhetorical effect of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. We argue that while previous research on this site has often underscored the reverential and mourning functions of this space, few have studied the darker, more melancholic features of these hallowed grounds. By investigating the melancholic dimensions of public memory, and by illustrating how national communities can strategically take advantage of these dimensions, we affirm the importance of resilience, mourning, and recovery for commemorative efforts.