The 9/11 attacks have had many extraordinary consequences. The horrific violence of that day ushered in a different world, a different time. We have all become, in one way or another, witnesses in the global theatre of terrorism. Terrorists want their violence to take on a theatrical quality, and be watched. The 9/11 attacks were successful to this end. It was not long before our imaginations were running wild.
Many fields of post-9/11 popular, tele-visual and screen cultures changed substantially, other subtly.
"Through dazzling close readings of a wide variety of cultural texts, from the Battlestar Galactica reboot to post-9/11 pornography, Howie is able to demonstrate how the politics and poetics of "witnessing" have come to structure the experience of American popular culture in the past decade." -Jeff Melnick, University of Massachusett, Boston.
"After reading Howie's ingenious updating of visual theory I would paraphrase Morpheus from The Matrix and say "welcome to the oasis of interpretation". This book is a much-needed analysis of the dangers to be found when a whole society risks living in an uncritical, ideological version of the witness protection program!" -Paul A. Taylor, University of Leeds, UK.