Looking for „geheimamerika“

Kathrin Röggla on 9/11

Von Jean Lassègue

What is now Kathrin Röggla’s book, really ground zero. 11. september und folgendes, was first published in a newspaper, die tageszeitung, as a series that began just four days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The text is based on things the author heard and saw while living in New York at the time: snippets of people’s conversations in the streets and subways, apparently strange behaviour to which one would not normally pay attention, political reactions that seem anything but spontaneous, all in all events that were not yet fully understood for lack of meaningful landmarks. The book records these moments of intense stress and uncertainty.

Critics were mixed in their reception, interpreting the text as a kind of live report rather than a literary work.[1] The fact that the text first appeared in a newspaper, accompanied by Röggla’s own black and white photographs, may have contributed to the feeling that it did not belong in the realm of literature. But Röggla’s project in really ground zero is very different from a live report, and I think it goes deeper into that which was actually destroyed than just another first-hand account of the destruction of a pair of world-famous buildings. It attempts, instead, to come to terms with the events by reconstructing language from scratch. That’s what “ground zero” is about from a literary point of view: how to make sense again when a catastrophe has dwarfed language to such an extent that it no longer allows us to grasp events through categories that make anticipation possible.[2] And in this respect, anything goes: conversations with strangers, body language, the familiar faces at the White House press briefings and activists interviews on television, getting used to living with a dust mask. These live fragments have to be collected in order to fathom what language is still capable of grasping.

But what kind of title is that?

As a common noun, “ground zero” initially referred to the location of the first nuclear explosion at the “Trinity test” in New Mexico, USA, on 16 July 1945, then to the nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan on 6 and 9 of August 1945. Its definition was broadened when used in the “Ground Zero Indicator”, a British seismograph designed during the Cold War to detect the shockwaves of any nuclear explosion on Earth and determine its geographical location. No wonder that in the days following the attacks in New York, it was the first catchphrase to emerge both in the media and from the US government to refer to the site where the Twin Towers once stood: the term would become a proper noun, as one would “go to Ground Zero” just as one used to “go to the World Trade Center”. Röggla sticks to this catchphrase,[3] which reverberates in many directions: implicitly, the use of “Ground Zero” seems to be a way of zooming out and connecting the New York attacks to the history of the Second World War,[4] but also to the imaginary of nuclear warfare that developed during the Cold War, when the fear of a nuclear conflict was very much in the air.

I would argue, however, that Röggla’s title should be read slightly differently: the adverb “really” added to “ground zero” underlines the striking quality of any scene of destruction, real or fictional. It makes the phrase more versatile, because this quality can be applied to many other entities, including the narrator: “so now i have a life. a real one”[5], reads the very first line of Röggla’s text, as if the adverb adds a specific dimension, that of making history. It is easy to imagine how “really ground zero” could become a kind of motto in familiar phrases such as “clean up this mess, it looks really ground zero” or, more tragically, “it was really ground zero all over again”. Immersing oneself in Röggla’s text, one gets the impression that language itself became “really ground zero” after the attacks, and that the most urgent literary task, as I have said, was to try to capture various shifting pieces in order to make language adaptive again.

Ist es wirklich Deutsch, was ich da lese?

Restoring this capacity is no easy task, and the reader of Röggla’s text is first confronted with two features that immediately make reading challenging: the complete absence of capital letters and the unannounced switch from German to English. The absence of capital letters, whether after a full stop or the use of a noun, is certainly more disconcerting in German than in other languages that do not use capital letters for common nouns: it makes the text seem foreign. This uncanny feeling is reinforced by the sudden and unannounced switch to English, which is sometimes used for an entire page: it makes the text sound foreign. The reader is forced to ask the question: “Is this really German I’m reading?” in yet another variation of what the adverb “really” can be. I would argue that the text is not exactly a mixture of German with patches of English squeezed in between, but the recognition that things could not be said any other way, as if there were no metalinguistic perspective on the text to signal the change of language from German to English. In another text, Niemand lacht rückwärts, Röggla writes that “everything can be said twice, in yellow or grey”.[6] Language in a “really ground zero state” challenges this point of view, for it is precisely the general ability of language to paraphrase that seems to be strained, at least when one begins to read Röggla’s book. I would argue that the recovery of the ability to paraphrase, to say things in different ways, “yellow or grey”, is the way out of the real ground zero state that Röggla seeks.

Enlightenment vs. Conspiracy

This way out is described in the text in particular when the public discourse on television succeeds in introducing a certain distance, allowing different opinions to be distinguished in what begins to look like a public debate, far from the unanimous but empty voices in Congress described in the early chapter entitled “mr. speaker!”. This is particularly striking in the case of the two public figures who appear in the text and make it possible to introduce real distinctions: government spokesman Richard Boucher and activist Norman Solomon, to whom the whole of Chapter 12 is dedicated.

Röggla writes that she admires Norman Solomon,[7] a progressive journalist and later director of the non-profit Institute for Public Accuracy.[8] She describes him as a political figure committed to building a true democracy by encouraging public debate through unbiased information, and challenging the way the press had wrongly become a mere echo chamber of government discourse after the attacks. On one occasion, Röggla says, when he was asked to respond to calls from the audience on C-Span TV’s morning show,[9] he was insulted and called a traitor to the nation,[10] but he remained calm and began by saying that he would do everything in his power to let the person insulting him speak his mind.[11] For today’s readers, the dialogue between Boucher and Solomon is readily available online in the C-SPAN archives, despite the distance in time: it is therefore possible to get an idea of the contrast to which she refers[12].

Unlike Norman Solomon, Richard Boucher, whose official title at the time was spokesman for the State Department, among those responsible for answering questions from the press after the attacks[13]. He is described as a man of power, power defined by Röggla as the ability to draw a line between what should be said and what should be concealed.[14] In Röggla’s book, this distinction is highlighted by the juxtaposition of two neologisms: “secretamerica” and “mediaamerica”: “secretamerica, a country that will grow in the near future, and whose flip side, mediaamerica, which really can’t grow any more, will be forced into further asymmetries”.[15]  Röggla’s book was published long before the “further asymmetries” of the massive CIA and NSA surveillance programmes were made public by whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden in 2013, but her interpretation seems quite prophetic in this regard. This remark is not only anecdotal, but it also concerns the way we read the text and understand what ‘reality’ means, as it first appears in the phrase “really ground zero”.

Stop making sense

It is difficult to believe that the term “geheimamerika” is unintentional, for it plays on the term “Geheimes Deutschland”, which has a long and controversial history in the German tradition. It was used in the nationalist movement the 19th century, and closer to us in the literary tradition in the circle of the poet Stefan George in the 20th century.[16] A similar notion of underground nationalism is conveyed in “geheimamerika”, but turned on its head to have a negative connotation. For Röggla, following the news made it clear that the US government was on the verge of paranoia, a direction that became more and more apparent as the days went by.[17] In this regard, Richard Boucher, representing the government, tries to keep “secretamerica” and “mediaamerica” as far apart as possible in order to preserve the power of the government at any cost to democracy, while Norman Solomon, on the other hand, tries to bring “secretamerica” and “mediaamerica” together so that the government remains accountable for its actions under the law.

This interpretation of Röggla’s text would provide a clear-cut distinction between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, a comfortable viewpoint, and would certainly fit into the familiar picture of the struggle of enlightenment against the obscurantism of power. But that would be a little too easy, both with respect to Röggla’s poetics and from a more historical point of view. In the days after the attacks, when Röggla was writing, before anyone had claimed responsibility and the months-long investigations had just begun, conspiracy theories flourished: the Twin Towers had been booby-trapped, otherwise they would not have collapsed as they did; Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, had been shot down by the US Air Force; no plane had hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; the CIA had masterminded the attacks; and so on. But by insisting on the idea that a “secretamerica” is at work, Röggla also runs the risk of inducing paranoia in her readers by giving credence to conspiracy theories that, by her own admission, implicate the US government:

suddenly it was no longer certain where the personal hysteria began, where the collective hysteria began, and where there was a real danger. it was no longer possible to keep it apart, and it won’t be possible to differentiate for a long time. and for many people it has long been impossible to differentiate. yet you would think that writers should be able to separate the two, at least initially, and then let them flow back into one another.[18]

The ideal of being able to make distinctions through writing seems completely compromised in these days of crisis. To return to the adverb “really” with which I began, what is the real difference between her text and the ones the conspiracy theorists imagined at the time? Perhaps the answer lies in the very last lines of Röggla’s text, which is a fictional dialogue between inner voices:

“but there’s no overview.
‚- oh, come on.”[19]

The “oh, come on” is ambivalent, depending on where the accent is placed: it could mean “of course there is an overview” (and that could presumably lead to paranoia in some circumstances), but it could also mean “of course there is no overview” (what do you expect? We are talking history here). But precisely this hesitation between the two is not paranoid, and it is perhaps because of this ambivalence and doubt that Röggla’s text should be considered literary, as it leaves room to question the veracity of what is heard and seen without trying to covertly force the reader to immediately take sides.

Anmerkungen

[1] For a review of these reactions, see for example Landerl, Peter: jetz also hab ich ein leben, ein wirkliches: Zu really ground zero und folgendes von Kathrin Röggla. In: Recherches germaniques, 39 (2009), S. 85-97 (https://doi.org/10.3406/reger.2009.1392). The issue features a dossier on Kathrin Röggla by French and German scholars.

[2] The writer Yannick Haenel, in a book he wrote after having covered the Charlie-Hebdo trial in Paris as a journalist, had a similar experience: “violence paralyses language – it makes words ridiculous”. Cf. Haenel, Yannick: Notre solitude. Paris 2021, S. 19.

[3] Another catchphrase which does not appear in Röggla’s book, “The Pile”, referring to the enormous heap of debris that had to be searched for, remained local and was mostly used by those directly involved in the rescue and recovery operations.

[4] It is worth noticing that, in a video released in October 2001, Ossama bin Laden himself made the connection between the attacks on the World Trade Center and the nuclear bombings on Japan during WWII.

[5] Röggla, Kathrin: really ground zero: 11. september und folgendes. Frankfurt am Main 2001, S. 4: „jetzt also hab ich ein leben. ein wirkliches.“

[6] It is the first sentence of Röggla, Kathrin: Niemand lacht rückwärts. Frankfurt am Main 2004: “alles lässt sich zweimal erzählen, in gelb oder in grau.”

[7] “calm, confident, pedagogical, careful and precise in the wording of his statements. yes, there is hope even on tv. the morning hours of c-span are full of journalists facing callers from all over the country.” [ruhig, souverän, pädagogisch, vorsichtig und genau in der formulierung seiner aussagen. Ja, es gibt hoffnung slebt im tv. Die morgenstunden von c-span sind voller journalisten, die sich anrufern aus dem ganzen land stellen.“], Röggla, Kathrin: really ground zero: 11. september und folgendes. Frankfurt am Main 2001, S. 54.

[8] The Institute’s aim is to encourage whistleblowers “to shed light on concealed activities that are relevant to human rights, corporate malfeasance, the environment, civil liberties and war.” See Clines, Francis: An Ad Campaign for Whistleblowers. In: The New York Times, July 9 (2014).

[9] C-SPAN is the acronym of Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network. It is an American nonprofit public service independent of US Congress which broadcasts proceedings of the United States federal government (US House of Representatives, US Senate, government hearings) as well as other public affairs programs including individuals associated with public policy. The program under scrutiny here was and is still called “Open phones” (https://www.c-span.org/video/?536630-2/open-phones).

[10] Röggla quotes one of these exchanges word for word. Someone from the audience rings to tell Norman Solomon: “you are a complete contemptuous fool, you are an apologist to the enemy, you are the very evil in terms of what this country must obliterate” (Kathrin Röggla (2001), really ground zero, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, p. 54). He answers : “thank you for your comment. obviously you have every right to your opinion and i would fight very hard for your right to express that opinion […] if we go beyond the invective of your call and look at basic information […] nowhere do we want to slaughter and starve people for political reasons.” , Röggla, Kathrin: really ground zero: 11. september und folgendes. Frankfurt am Main 2001, S. 55.

[11] In the same exchange, he goes on saying that, all invectives put aside, if it were proven that the recent attacks on US soil had been launched by some Palestinian groups, not only American casualties of 9/11 should be taken into account, but also the civilian victims of the Israeli army during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

[12] The video capture of the exchange can be watched online at: https://www.c-span.org/video/?166676-2/media-coverage-action-afghanistan. It ranges from 52’41 to 55’46.

[13] See for example the video capture of one of his talks on C-SPAN archives: https://www.c-span.org/video/?165986-1/state-department-daily-briefing.

[14]  “again and again mr boucher: information, disinformation, he mixes it up, he knows exactly how to differentiate. he does not yet think in entertaining formats, does not add little stories or little jokes like so many others.because if he has to be the boundary between media america and secretamerica for a press conference, he ultimately represents the latter. [„immer wieder herr boucher: information, desinformation, das bringt er durcheinander, er weiß da genau zu unterscheiden. er denkt noch nicht in unterhaltsame formate, setz ihnen keine kleinen geschichten bei oder kleine lustigkeiten wie so mach andere. dennwenn er eine presskonferenz lang wieder einmal grenze zwischen medien-amerika und geheimamerika sein muss, so repräsentiers er schliesslich doch imme letzeres.“ Röggla, Kathrin: really ground zero: 11. september und folgendes. Frankfurt am Main 2001, S. 64.

[15] Röggla, Kathrin: really ground zero: 11. september und folgendes. Frankfurt am Main 2001, S. 18: “geheimamerika, ein land, das sich in nächster zeit vergrössern wird und dessen kehrseite, medienamarika, das wirklich nicht mehr weiterwachsen kann, in weiter asymmetrien zwingt.”

[16] A member of the circle, Ernst Kantorowicz, gave a famous speech entitled “Das Geheime Deutschland” on 14 November 1933: “The “secret Germany”, in which the poets and sages sit alongside the heroes, will educate young Germans in the cult of nobility, beauty and greatness, and then perhaps send them back as kalo kagathoi, so that they can act in the State and the people. Only in this secret realm can the eternal truths of the people be found.” The “official Germany” (presumably the Nazi Reich which took power the same year) is opposed to the “secret Germany”, the true German Geist uniting cultural heroes despite centuries.
(cf. https://archive.org/details/ernstkantorowicz00reel02/page/n52/mode/1up?view=theater, section VI, p. 21).

[17] “the between-the-lines feeling that is moving more and more in the direction of paranoia.”[„das zwischen-den-zeilen-gefühl, das sich mehr und mehr in richtung paranoia bewegt.“], Röggla, Kathrin: really ground zero: 11. september und folgendes. Frankfurt am Main 2001, S. 102.

[18] Röggla, Kathrin: really ground zero: 11. september und folgendes. Frankfurt am Main 2001, S. 101: „auf einmal war nicht mehr sicher: wo fängt die persönliche hysterie an, wo die kollektive und wo ist eine reale gefahr da. Das wird auch nicht entscheidbar sein für eine lange zeit. Und für viele ist es schon lange nicht mehr entscheidbar. Dabei sollte man doch denken, autoren sollten das können, dies auseinander zu dividieren, zumindest zunächst, um es danach wieder ineinander fließen zu lassen.“

[19] Röggla, Kathrin: really ground zero: 11. september und folgendes. Frankfurt am Main 2001, S. last lines :
- „aber überblick gibt’s doch nicht
– ach was.”