George Yudice
Revista Critica de Ciências Sociais
Revista Critica de Ciências Sociais
Eurozine
The place of culture after September
11, 2001
George Yudice
This essay examines the effects on culture
of the new systems of security and surveillance
put in place after the September 11
attacks. Already transformed by processes
of globalization, and indeed, contributing
to these processes, culture is a major site
of conflict and control in the wake of the
attacks: contestatory movements, many of
which are constituted culturally, are identified
with terrorism; Hollywood films, the
electronic and the printed press are recruited
in behalf of security; new cultural forms
of control are devised. Ultimately, the war
on terrorism also manages to protect the
regime of accumulation put in place by the
Washington Consensus. Can the antiglobalization
movement take on the new security
regime?