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The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on 11th September, 2001, left behind 2977 dead, an altered Manhattan skyline and a changed world order marked by a formidable upsurge of global discourses pertaining to terrorism, multiculturalism, xenophobia, collective memory, and so forth. Indeed, 9/11 inhabits a discursive field of narratives/counter-narratives defying closure. Taking into cognizance this inevitability of myriad discourses, the present paper engages with the politics of the emergence of the discursively constructed Islamic Other in the post-9/11 national imaginary. Using the Foucauldian ideas of Power/Knowledge and "regime of Truth" along with Said's major premises as are found in the works Orientalism and Covering Islam, the paper attempts to debunk the idea that "innocent", neutral and objective representations in the media have been the norm. It argues that the fanatical, regressive and jehad-driven stereotype of the Islamic Other that gained visibility/ circulation/ legitimisation in the post-9/11 American socio-political culturescape had a Stateist genesis rooted in the reductive, ahistorical, Manichean binary of "us versus them" which essentially constituted the official discourse. It traces the trajectory of the Arab-American experience from initial erasure/ invisibility to hyper-visibility in the post-9/11 years, a time marked by deep fractures in the civil society where xenophobia, racial profiling and jingoistic patriotism became normalised. One way of generating resistance to such workings of power is by launching a counternarrative through the literary text. Consequently, the paper ends with a detailed engagement with two novels, one by Mohsin Hamid and another by Laila Halaby, that resist the official stereotypes/discourses while foregrounding the various registers of Othering in the post-9/11 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unprecedented toxic release in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001 created one of the worst environmental disasters in US history, followed by a contentious and ongoing battle over the existence, etiology, and legitimation of World Trade Center-related illness. In this paper, I explore the enactment of epistemic authority by a complex array of stakeholders-government officials, scientists, physicians, environmentalists, advocates, journalists, and politicians-who have woven medical-scientific knowledge into their competing agendas and platforms. Despite the scientific validation of environmental dangers, the clinical documentation of illness and the epidemiological substantiation of links between environmental exposure and illness onset, the political-economic interests of federal, state, and local bodies have often been privileged over the protection of public health. 9/11 illness is a 'contested illness' enmeshed in politically charged disputes regarding the relationship of environmental toxins to disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 tested the government's communications capabilities and illustrated the flaws in available systems, equipment, and procedures. The attacks in lower Manhattan proved too much for current emergency response practices. Traditional communications methods were severely strained from a combination of overuse and structural damage. Resourceful emergency responders and local officials were forced to rely on less technical means of communication. Despite prior warnings of radio equipment limitations, officials carried outdated devices that lacked the ability for long distance communication or interoperability with other departments. Individuals turned to new means of sharing and acquiring information. Smart phones, text messaging and online media established themselves as vital lifelines in an emergency. The government has learned from these constraints and revised its emergency response and disaster preparedness procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]