Between Tragedy and Farce: 9/11 Compensation and the Value of Life and Death Emily Gilbert Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; emily.gilbert@utoronto.ca Corey Ponder Cultural Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada Abstract: This paper examines how lives have been valued (or not) in the US federal compensation programs set up in the wake of 9/11. The Victim Compensation Fund (VCF), implemented within days of the attacks, provided unlimited funds to the victims. In contrast, many first responders who developed illnesses later have had access to limited support. Only in 2011 was the Zadroga Act signed into place, which extends compensa- tion to these workers and others. This paper compares and contrasts the two programs to make two points. One, the debates around compensation lay bare the differential values that are ascribed to life, and how biopower not only fosters life but abandons some to the point of death. Two, despite the controversies around extending compensation, the Zadroga Act was eventually enacted. Our second point is thus that war is not just destruc- tive, but can be used to reconstitute the social and political in unanticipated ways. Keywords: war on terror, compensation, biopolitics, value Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historical facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce (Karl Marx 1926:23, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) Introduction This paper is concerned with how civilian lives have been valued (or not) in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. To do so, we examine the fed- eral compensation programs that have been created in response to this tragedy. The first was the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 (VCF), which was established by an Act of Congress. The VCF was signed into place on 22 September 2001, just days after the attacks. With it, Congress approved unlimited funds to compensate the victims and their families. The payouts were generous: the average payment in the case of death was $2.08 million. Yet those who have become sick in the weeks and months since September 11, most notably first responders, have had a much more difficult time having their illnesses recognized. It was not until 2011 that a second compensation scheme, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 (the Zadroga Act), was signed into law. The Zadroga Antipode Vol. 00 No. 0 2013 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 1–22 doi: 10.1111/anti.12063 © 2013 The Authors. Antipode © 2013 Antipode Foundation Ltd.