World International Studies Committee (WISC) 3rd Global International Studies Conference: World Crisis. Revolution or Evolution in the International Community? Porto, Portugal 17 th - 20 th August 2011 Panel: The political implications of feeling, suffering, forgetting, remembering and memorializing in contexts of crisis, trauma and political transition - II Paper: Aporia and Trauma in the Crisis of Meanings of 9/11 Author: Erica Simone Almeida Resende, PhD Rio de Janeiro Rural Federal University Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between meaning, memory and trauma in cases of crisis. Employing concepts and theories that relate meanings, representations, memory and trauma, I will demonstrate how 9/11 was able to destabilize dominant representations and meanings, rupture the line of History, subvert senses, bend space‐time perceptions, and implode dominant grids of intelligibility that had allowed Americans to make sense of reality and of themselves. I will argue that the mute and hyper‐real representations of the terrorist attacks against the Twin Towers produced a situation where meanings were displaced, voided and disrupted, in sum, language failed. As a result, the American people experienced aporia, a situation described by Jacques Derrida as having no way forward, for the path out of it is blocked. I argue that 9/11, due the difficulty of its signification, sits at the heart of a trauma in the American collective imaginaries. The political discourses about the War on Terror could then be interpreted as an attempt to escape aporia and thus overcome trauma, for it provided the means to restore the broken grids of intelligibility, hence allowing Americans to make sense of reality once again. Comments are welcome. Please do not quote without previous permission. The author is indebted to the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology (CNPq/MCT) for the financial support for the execution of this research and to Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) for the financial travel support to attend this conference.