Table Of ContentDiscourses and Practices
of Terrorism
This interdisciplinary book investigates the consequences of the language of terror
for our lives in democratic societies.
The approach of this book is in direct contrast with those that either view
terrorism simplistically, as a clear reality threatening democratic society and
thus requiring certain sorts of response, or argue, equally simplistically, that the
invocation of terror is merely the ideological veil for continued capitalist
exploitation. While closer in spirit to the second of these, this work does not
simply dismiss the discourse on terror, but rather investigates the consequences
of this discourse for the organisation of life in democratic societies.
In interrogating the discourse of terror from a variety of viewpoints, this text
builds upon the understanding of the importance of the language of terror from a
new perspective: the interconnections between discourses of terror; the material
realities they at once reflect and help produce; and the specificities of particular
historical circumstances. In adopting an integrated approach of this sort, and
founded on a base of applied philosophy, broadly conceived, the authors offer a
new contribution to both public and academic debate, and at the same time initiate
a series of further interventions in Critical Terrorism Studies.
This book will be of interest to students of Critical Terrorism Studies, terrorism
studies, security studies, philosophy and discourse theory.
Bob Brecheris Director of the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics
at Brighton University. He has published widely in moral, political and applied
philosophy and the politics of higher education.
Mark Devenneyis Academic Programme Leader in Humanities at the University
of Brighton. He has published in the areas of critical theory, post-Marxism and
post-colonial politics.
Aaron Winteris Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Abertay Dundee. His
research focuses on terrorism and the concept of ‘extremism’, whiteness, mas-
culinity and violence, and the extreme right, organised racism and the religious
right in the United States.
Critical Terrorism Studies
Series Editors Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth and
Jeroen Gunning
Aberystwyth University, UK
This book series will publish rigorous and innovative studies on all aspects of ter-
rorism, counter-terrorism and state terror. It seeks to advance a new generation
of thinking on traditional subjects and investigate topics frequently overlooked
in orthodox accounts of terrorism. Books in this series will typically adopt
approaches informed by critical-normative theory, post-positivist methodologies
and non-Western perspectives, as well as rigorous and reflective orthodox terror-
ism studies.
Terrorism and the Politics of Response
Edited by Angharad Closs Stephens and Nick Vaughan-Williams
Critical Terrorism Studies: Framing a New Research Agenda
Edited by Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning
State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South
Ruth Blakeley
Contemporary State Terrorism: Theory and Practice
Edited by Richard Jackson, Eamon Murphy and Scott Poynting
State Violence and Genocide in Latin America: The Cold War Years
Edited by Marcia Esparza, Henry R. Huttenbach and Daniel Feierstein
Discourses and Practices of Terrorism: Interrogating Terror
Edited by Bob Brecher, Mark Devenney and Aaron Winter
Discourses and Practices
of Terrorism
Interrogating terror
Edited by Bob Brecher, Mark
Devenney and Aaron Winter
First published 2010
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2010 Bob Brecher, Mark Devenney and Aaron Winter for selection
and editorial material; individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Discourses and practices of terrorism : interrogating terror / edited by Bob
Brecher, Mark Devenney and Aaron Winter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Terrorism--Case studies.2. War on Terrorism,
2001- I. Brecher, Bob. II. Devenney, Mark, 1968- III. Winter, Aaron.
HV6431.D565 2010
363.325--dc22
2009034476
ISBN 0-203-85734-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-48808-7 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-85734-8 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-48808-2 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-85734-2 (ebk)
For what’s left of the Left
Contents
List of contributors ix
1 Introduction: philosophy, politics, terror 1
BOB BRECHER AND MARK DEVENNEY
2 Rediscovering the individual in the ‘war on terror’:
a virtue and liberal approach 5
HEATHER WIDDOWS
Critique 16
Response 18
3 Is there a justifiable shoot-to-kill policy? 20
SHAHRAR ALI
Critique 34
Response 36
4 Torture and the dem ise of the justiciable standard
of enlightened government: a US perspective 39
DON WALLACE AND AKIS KALAITZIDIS
Critique 54
Response 56
5 Asylum and the discourse of terror: the European
‘security state’ 58
FRAN CETTI
Critique 73
Response 76
viii Contents
6 Feeling persecuted? The definitive role of paranoid
anxiety in the constitution of ‘war on terror’ television 78
HUGH ORTEGA BRETON
Critique 93
Response 95
7 Fundamentalist foundations of terrorist practice:
the political logic of life-sacrifice 97
JEFF NOONAN
Critique 113
Response 115
8 Specificities, complexities, histories: Algerian politics
and George Bush’s USA-led ‘war on terror’ 118
MARTIN EVANS
Critique 130
Response 133
9 Ignatieff, Ireland and the ‘lesser evil’: some problems
with the lessons learnt 135
MARK MCGOVERN
Critique 151
Response 153
10 American terror: from Oklahoma City to 9/11 and after 156
AARON WINTER
Critique 174
Response 176
Bibliography 178
Index 189
Contributors
Shahrar Ali teaches philosophy at Birkbeck College and facilitates research at
the Institute of Philosophy, University of London. He practised as a biochemi-
cal engineer before completing an MPhil and PhD from UCL on topics in
moral philosophy. He has held a Ramón y Cajal scholarship in the European
Parliament, working on environmental risk assessment. His continued interest
in applied philosophy and service as the Green Party’s London policy coordi-
nator from 2004–09 helped inform his contribution here.
Bob Brecherteaches philosophy at the University of Brighton, and is Director of
its Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics. He has published over
sixty articles in moral theory, applied ethics and politics, healthcare and
medical ethics, sexual politics, terrorism and the politics of higher education.
His latest book is Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007).
Currently he is working on a theory of morality as practical reason. A past
president of the Association for Legal and Social Philosophy, he is on the
board of several academic journals.
Hugh Ortega Breton is a doctoral student in the Media and Cultural Studies
Department at Roehampton University, with wide-ranging interests in media
and representation theory and a regular conference contributor. His thesis is
entitled In the Eye of the Storm: Paranoiac Hegemony in British political and
popular culture 1997–2007.
Fran Cettiis completing a PhD at the University of East London on the nature of
the relationship of the European ‘security state’ and Europe’s war on terror
with the ‘globalised’ identity of ‘refugee’ conferred on those seeking asylum
in the core European Union member states. She has contributed to numerous
conferences, etc., on issues around asylum.
Mark Devenneyis Academic Programme Leader in Humanities at the University
of Brighton. He has written on critical theory and post-Marxism, notably in his
most recent book Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Theory (Routledge,
2005). He has published articles on Habermas, Žižek, Laclau, post-
colonialism and the politics of literature in a wide range of journals, and is
completing a manuscript on the politics of life.
