9/11 steel: Distributed memorialization

Abstract

Steel has become the de facto material to memorialize 9/11. In this article, we show how the vast majority of steel from the World Trade Center (200,000 tons) was recycled abroad but what remained was sacralized and made into local memorials. Using newspaper reports and materials obtained from a freedom of information request, the article analyzes how dispersed memorialization honored first responders across the United States (and abroad) enlarging both the geography of trauma and responsibility to remember. We connect the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's curation, gifting, and transportation of 9/11 steel to a form of mourning with military antecedents as well as the deliberate focus on strength, masculinity, and participation in the War on Terror. Finally, we show how local memorialization democratized the process of ‘sacred steel' distribution while also tightly controlling what could be done with salvaged metal in order to make sure that relics remained communal, rather than personalized, objects.