9.11 in Sweden

Abstract

During the ten years that have passed since the mediated terrorist attacks in the United States on 9.11, 2001, they have become—through instant historicization as well as endless repetitions—stable points of reference for transnational collective memory. Focalizing the anniversaries of September 11, 2002 and 2011, on Swedish television, this article pursues how the medium annually commemorates the tragedy. Fusing television research with memory studies, the argument is that we may approach the anniversaries as an electronic “lieu de mémorie”: a material-symbolic space reappropriated annually as media become vehicles for “working through” in commemoration, mourning, debate, and critique. Despite the fragmentation of both television and collective memory in the context of digitalization, on the anniversaries, Swedish television promotes itself as a central “nucleus” for connectivity offering viewers a return to the traumatic site—to the television set—while interpellating them as a “global we,” of media witnesses.