In 2002 Jean Baudrillard first published a transcript of his lectures on ‘The Spirit of Terrorism.’ It is an ontological deconstruction of a sensitive and contentious subject; not least the chapter which deals explicitally with the collapse of the World Trade Centre on 9/11. The idealism inherant in the vision was what was attacked, the destruction of concrete and lose of life was a by product.

For Jean Baudrillard the Twin Towers, as architecture, were a container of a whole value system. This sytem was what was attacked on 9/11. It was an ideology which was epitomised by the very iconography of the towers. The staggering straight lined verticality a concrete celebration of capatalist ideals. Baudrillard compares the two plinths to high points in an economic graph, ‘an effigy of the system.’

The repetition is also key. The doubling of the sign becomes a cancelling of difference, a mirroring of a process which attests to a blindness. As such they provide a kind of full stop of verticality, a changelessness. We need neight Icarus or Newton to inform us what happens when a rise reaches its peak. A pause is inevitable, the fall even more so.

 The collapse of the towers thus becomes a desire for the collapse of the system. What is attacked is ‘the nerve centre of the system.’ The stillness, the verticality, the heroism, the muscular balance, the glimmering power is disrupted violently and suddenly.

 The collapse itself was key. The moment of impact has always seemed of central iconic importance. The horizontal dynamic force crashign into the vertical and stationary symbol. The phallis idealism of Western culture runs further than skyscrappers and capatalism and right back to heroic sculptures in Classical antiguity. As its binary opposition the horizontal attack has a gravitas in terms of mere spectacle.

 Jean Baudrillard, however, sees the collapse itself, rather than the impact, as the decissive symbolic moment. This emblem of power falling under its own weight, live, in front of our eyes. The double collapse is cited as crucial. The repetition bring a doubling of the spectacle with the first bringing pure shock and the second tragic inevitablity. The combination of two polar, dramatic emotive reposnses, in the same vision.

The impact of such a vision can only work due to the viewing of the incident live. Its the not knowing followed by the knowing. The irony is that the technological advancements which are a natural by product of capatalism are what allow such a delivery of the message to work. Across the internet, on multiple television cahnnels, recroded from every angle with multiple electronic devices, it was there to see as and when it happened. it had the feel of being part of the audience in the colloseum seeing a gladiator slade. Yet with this empire the statium has become global and the audience unlimited. We believed we were showing empathy, comapssion and horror but in truth we were just thirsty for the spectacle. We remained shocked but cold and detached. The buildings collapse under the watchful eye of the system, ‘dying in its own reflexion.’

 Jean Baudrillard describes the collapse as beocming almost suicidal. The dealy between impact and fall means that what we actual see is the internal structure of the building fail. This failure results in the sheers weight of floors forcing those below to cave in. It is the building, and thus the sytem, which failed to with stand its own weight. It descends and falls in the same direction it rose, an utter reversal. The cyclicial narrative, with its inevitablity, suggests a predetermined tragedy in the architecture.

For the terrorists the Twin Towers were worth destroying for the central place they hold in a Western belief system. The mistake of the knee jerk reaction to the attack was to concern ourselves entirely with the blind beliefs system of the 9/11 attackers.

The Twin Towers have vanished, the void speaks of their abscence.  They have ‘disappeared but not annihalated.’

Jean Baudrillard finishes with ‘by the grace of terrorism the World Trade Centre has become the world’s most beautiful building- the eight wonder of the world’