Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

So, What Is Terrorism? Framing The 9/11 Attacks In African Editorial Cartoons, Duncan Mainye Omanga

Re-visioning Terrorism

As artifacts of political culture, editorial cartoons reveal prevalent public opinion on a particular issue with direct or indirect effects to members of society. The central question addressed in this paper is how editorial cartoons in Kenya’s press framed the 9/11 event and the extent to which such framing accorded or denied terrorists, government agencies and other stakeholders legitimacy. Specifically, the section probes the extent to which the dominant frames careered, and whether framing tilted away or towards legitimizing or delegitimizing terrorism. From these, conclusions are drawn on the extent to which particular aspects of knowledge, opinion or ideologies were …

Symbolic Violence As Subtle Virulence: The Philosophy Of Terrorism, Jonathan Beever

Re-visioning Terrorism

Jean Baudrillard’s semiotic analysis of violence leads us to understand the form of violence as three-fold: aggressive, historical, and semiotically virulent. Violence of the third form is the violence endemic to terrorism. If violence has been typically understood as of the first two types, terrorism should be understood as the virulence of simulacra. The conflation of these types of violence explains the failure of militaristic responses to terrorism. This paper will explore Baudrillard’s conception of symbolic violence as the virulence of signs and help us come to terms with the semiotic foundation of terrorism.

Tele-Visioning Terror, Caroline Zekri

Re-visioning Terrorism

This paper is devoted to the relationship between terrorism and media, with a special focus on the theoretical notions of “icon”, “mass” and “distance”. It aims to show how the phenomenon of modern terrorism calls into question the essence of modern democracies and their systems of information, based on the distance between vision and event.

Marco Bellocchio's Buongiorno Notte And The Language Of Terrorists, Cosetta Gaudenzi

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay investigates Marco Bellocchio’s Buongiorno, notte (2003), a movie which exploits language and soundtrack to fictionalize and revisit the historical 1978 kidnapping and murder of the Christian Democrat President Aldo Moro by the 1970s Italian left terrorist group Brigate Rosse. As I demonstrate, Bellocchio relies greatly on the language and soundtrack of Buongiorno, notte to convey his negative response to the BR’s kidnapping and murder of Moro, as well as to come to terms with his own political and cinematic past.

The Cultural Politics Of Wmd Terrorism In Post-Cold War America, Harold Williford

Re-visioning Terrorism

Terrorism’s definition is hotly debated and notoriously problematic. The resulting instability of counterterrorism and counterterrorist identity, however, is less often explored. This paper analyzes the prehistory of the War on Terror to explore how the meaning and associations attributed to terrorism by counterterrorists in the 1990s reflect the latter’s priorities, agenda, and anxieties. Prevalent ahistorical post-Cold War representations of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as a “new” threat indicate that WMD-wielding terrorists functioned to justify the continued existence of the American national security state after the Soviet Union collapsed. Close readings of Rainbow Six, a Tom Clancy …

The Privilege Of Ambivalence: Saturday’S Henry Perowne On The ‘War On Terror’, Jax Lee Gardner

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay considers the relation between personal privilege (class, race, nationality, sex) and political ambivalence toward the Iraq war as it manifests in the protagonist of Ian McEwan’s Saturday. Henry Perowne “feels culpable somehow, but helpless too” in his shifting opinions of the coming invasion. Throughout the text we are shown Henry’s multiple perspectives regarding Iraq. Such ambivalence is, in itself, a form of complicity in war. Henry neither tangibly opposes the actions of the government (as the protesters do), nor does he consider sacrificing any of his creature comforts in support of the war (as the soldiers do). I …

Writing Victims: Post-Terrorist Fiction(S) In The Basque Country And Spain, Roland Vazquez

Re-visioning Terrorism

This paper examines the recent evolution of fiction in and about the Basque Country. I focus on depictions of the victims of ETA’s violence, and literature that documents their plight in the genres of the novel and short story. One trend is the movement away from “terrorist” and toward “victim” as the narrative focus. Another is an art increasingly in service to a political agenda. Although much of this corpus focuses on everyday details richer than those found in the mass media, social-scientific literature, or victim testimony, these forms often blur in their rhetorical styles.

The Invention Of Modern State Terrorism During The French Revolution, Guillaume Ansart

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay discusses three aspects of the Terror (September 1793–July 1794): (1) The Institutions of the Terror: The Committee of General Security, the Committee of Public Safety, and the Revolutionary Tribunal; (2) the Theory of Terror: The unity and indivisibility of the people, the category of enemy of the people, and the concept of Revolution as a state of war against aristocratic/foreign conspiracies; (3) the Language of Terror: The Terror is also a performative language, a language which embodies terror by aiming to silence all debate. In this sense, the language of Terror is Terror itself.

Knights Of Justice: Blockbuster Terrorism In Code Geass: Lelouch Of The Revolution, Aaron Choo, Wilson Koh

Re-visioning Terrorism

Jihadis And The Use Of The Terms Terrorism And Terrorist, Aaron Zelin

Re-visioning Terrorism

Previous studies on the usage of the terms terror, terrorist, and terrorism have taken a Western perspective on how these terms should be defined and then deployed, but the viewpoint of the “terrorist” (in this case jihadis) has yet to be examined. This study analyzes how jihadis understand these terms and critically assesses their interpretation based on classical Islamic doctrine. The basis and “proof” for jihadis’ legitimization of using terror is based upon the Qur’anic verse 8:60, but when taken into context and traditional understanding, jihadis miss the mark. Yet, at the same time, when exploring the linguistic root for …