Abstract
The Politics of Consolation offers fresh hope for a disciplinary endeavor described as “centerless” by collective-memory scholar Jeffrey K. Olick (Olick and Robbins 1998). Christina Simko was Olick’s advisee as a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Virginia and has heeded his critique of the discipline well. On its surface, The Politics of Consolation appears to address memory and meaning related to September 11 alone. However, Simko weaves a narrative that places pivotal American consolation speeches in conversation with one another, ranging from the Gettysburg Address to Pearl Harbor observances. Never losing sight of the polemical debates converging around 9/11 rhetoric, Simko adroitly positions the many symbols and historical euphemisms guiding contemporary consolation discourse. Hers is a shining example of what cultural sociology, collective memory, and historical sociology can and should do in conjunction with one another. Understanding the shadow of the past on the present is no easy task, and Simko manages to present an unyielding account of how American civil scriptures continue to weigh heavily on consolation rhetoric during and after calamitous events.
Simko’s work is divided in two parts. The first part addresses the history of consolation in American politics, which is a necessary foray into the civil scriptures that predate modern rhetoric. The second part illuminates the connection between past symbols and the politics of consolation specific to 9/11. The introduction offers an astute justification for the layout of the book. Because Simko’s argument is both historical and cultural, she offers readers a succinct overview of American sentiments as they developed by and through colonial encounters with North America. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of “civil scriptures,” or “canonical political texts that provided narrative foundations for the American nation” (p. 15). Civil scriptures are central to Simko’s argument that important moments of consolation not only are imbued with American values but also continue to dictate the course of political rhetoric in the face of calamity.
Chapter 2 attends to the evolution of American civil scriptures in the form of dualistic modes of consolation. Most notably, the emergence of common dualisms, such as “good” and “evil” and “civilized” and “savage,” were used to understand conflict as a struggle between opposing forces. In turn, pain, suffering, and sacrifice were heralded as necessary features of an eventually triumphant nation and colored American sensibilities thereafter. Chapter 3 concludes Part I by introducing the tragic turn of political consolation. Following disruptions, such as “the sixties” and the Vietnam War, politicians were compelled to explain conflict as part of a larger process of suffering that requires introspection. Thus, dualistic modes of consolation proved insufficient to explain the triumph of suffering. Instead, suffering became part of a greater lesson harkening back to Lincoln’s second inaugural address and explaining the contradictions plaguing American society.
Part II focuses on how political leaders made sense of 9/11 amid a grieving public. With historical precedence in civic scriptures ranging from dualistic to tragic modes of consolation, 9/11 posed the American public with an unresolved conflict that shattered many taken-for-granted national ideals. The ambiguity of “freedom and liberty, tolerance and pluralism” (p. 16) revealed chasms in political meaning-making that fractured American society. Much of this discord plays out in commemorative events and memorials at the World Trade Center site. Chapter 5 explores the consequences of a dualistic mode of consolation on foreign policy and its subsequent “effect flow.” Chapters 6 and 7 trace the use and failure of dualistic modes of consolation to effectively make sense of the tragic events of 9/11. Chapter 6 focuses on the commemorations at each of the crash sites and highlights how consolation continues to play a role in making sense of a national tragedy. Chapter 7 hones in on the politics of representation and memory that converge around memorial sites in lower Manhattan. Simko concludes with an analysis of how adopting a tragic, rather than dualistic, consolation mode might have changed the course of the War on Terror. Could positioning 9/11 as a tragedy requiring introspection rather than dualism between “good” and “evil” have changed American foreign policy? Simko answers convincingly with a resounding yes. This is perhaps the greatest lesson of her research; the narrative frames used in consolation have consequences for subsequent actions. Had the United States reflected rather than deflected post-9/11, American politicians could have turned tragedy into something generative. Instead, we are left with the ongoing legacies of the War on Terror, which has yet to be resolved nearly 15 years after 9/11.
Simko’s astute analysis moves beyond a mere assimilation of preexisting theory. She has acutely identified the gaps in the collective-memory literature and demonstrates the ongoing salience of past political consolation discourse on contemporary narratives and events. Simko’s contribution to the collective-memory literature makes her book essential for any graduate course on historical sociology, cultural sociology, and collective memory. Her work can also be used in undergraduate theory courses. For example, chapter 1 could be juxtaposed nicely with Weber’s The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This comparison would offer students an understanding of what colonial Americans brought with them across the Atlantic and how these views were steeped in northern European capitalism. The myriad of ways in which colonists ravaged Native Americans and the proverbial “frontier” belies the meaning Europeans ascribed to their endeavors in North America. Lay audiences with an interest in 9/11 would equally benefit from reading Simko’s work, as many of the events and speeches she analyzes are central to American politics. A sociological perspective on a tragedy as ubiquitous as 9/11 convincingly engages the public with an account of how the past informs the present. The Politics of Consolation is a critical contribution to collective-memory scholarship and should be used a guide for future research.