We Three, Kinged: Crowning the Aural on 9/11
(2018)
author(s): Isaac Vayo
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This study examines the present predominance of visuality in relation to narratives of 9/11, concluding that aurality, typically undervalued in such conversations, is a more accurate and effective representation of 9/11-as-event. Within the broader field of 9/11 aurality, three specific examples are subject to more lengthy analysis in terms of their original context and their presentation to audiences via popular media: the voices of pilot-hijackers Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah, the impacts of those jumping from the burning World Trade Center towers, and George W. Bush’s 14 September 2001 speech delivered from atop the rubble at the World Trade Center site. 9/11 aurality, then, succeeds where the visual imagination fails, allowing its account of the event to persist generationally, its internal logic to exist rationally, and its chief interlocutor, Osama bin Laden, to continue the discourse verbally.