Gathering Dust

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6422845
AutoresW Anderson (0000-0002-2572-035X, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume17
Fascículo3
Páginas585-603
Data de publicação2025-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironmental Humanities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2201-1919 • E-ISSN: 2201-1919
EditoraDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/22011919-11942078
OpenAlexW7106581074
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas39

The dust and ashes from the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, have developed dual and contrasting significance: valued as remains of loved ones and feared as toxic residue. Dust has long been associated with the evanescence of life—and more recently, with dangerous environmental exposures or toxicities. The desire for connection to human remains in the continuing work of mourning is put in tension with the need to avoid contamination. A process of sacralization is juxtaposed to identification of an environmental hazard. For the past twenty years, artists and scientists have offered multiple framings, often from contrary perspectives, on the meanings of the dust and ashes of 9/11. Drawing on a century of experiment and speculation, they have devised various means of staying close while keeping distant, of attachment and containment. That the remains of loved ones can now be refigured as risk factors seems a characteristically “modern” predicament. Such concerns about dust and ashes draw attention to contemporary regimes of perceivability and breathability, which are manifested also in atmospheric hazards of climate change and aerosolized viral transmission in pandemic disease—ecological regimes that are extending and reframing the scope of grievability

Agency (philosophy · Climate change · Cognitive reframing · Global warming · World trade center