From difficult past to imagined future: Projective reversal and the transformation of ground zero

In the United States, the term “ground zero” is now inextricably linked with New York City. Originally, however, it referred to the site directly beneath a detonated atomic bomb. The phrase was first used in government documents to identify the epicenters of destruction in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where U.S. forces dropped nuclear weapons in 1945. How did a term whose origins are bound up with acts of American violence come to signify American victimhood? Examining U.S. political and media discourse from 1945-2001, this paper identifies a long history of projective reversal: faced with the prospect of a “difficult past,” American politicians and media outlets often grappled with the realities of a nuclear age by switching the roles of victim and perpetrator, imagining the United States as a future victim of a nuclear attack. After 9/11, the “ground zero” nomenclature naturalized an understanding of lower Manhattan as akin to a post-atomic landscape and, in turn, helped to animate a new series of nuclear projections leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In tracing the transformation of ground zero, this paper also forges a more robust link between the extensive literature on collective memory and recent efforts to elaborate a sociology of the future, examining how pasts and futures interpenetrate to shape political action in the present.