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On the concept of terrorism

  • Feature Article: Theory and Practice
  • Published:
Contemporary Political Theory Aims and scope

Abstract

Many contemporary conceptualizations of terrorism inadvertently reify political conceptions of terrorism. Mainly because they in the end rely on the intentions of terrorists in defining ‘terrorism’, the process of terrorism, which involves an unfolding dialectic of actions and reactions, is omitted from researchers’ focus. Thus, terrorism becomes simplified to intentional actions by terrorists, and this short-cutting of the causal chain of the process of terrorism facilitates both a political ‘negation of history’ and a ‘rhetoric of response’. In this paper, I put forward a conceptualization of terrorism that transcends existing definitions and conceptualizations by first of all discerning between ‘terrorism’ and ‘terror’, and by subsequently conceptualizing terrorism as a paradox: what terrorism is, is inextricably bound to the reaction to terrorism. It is, in fact, the reaction of some states to terrorism that, in a sense ex post facto, constitutes an act as ‘terrorism’ by ‘refolding’ actions that unfolded subsequent to an event into that event as the root cause of the entire chain of events.

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Notes

  1. http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/nationalsecurity/faq-what.html (accessed 26 July 2006).

  2. It can rightly be said that P1 is a composite proposition as well, consisting of specifications of the type and actors of violence concerned. For my purposes here, it does not add to the clarity of the point I wish to make to further specify the elements of the definition accordingly.

  3. This becomes apparent when Wellman says: ‘The airline highjacker does not wish to terrify the pilot so that he loses his self-control and with it his control of the plane, although he does want to coerce the pilot into obeying his commands (…). Thus, his intent is to cause terror in the official who is in a position to take the demanded action, but it is not essential to his purpose that this official be in a state of intense fright’ (Wellman, 1979, 251). Another problem that becomes apparent here is the neglect of the indirect instrumentality of terrorism. Wellman seems to assume that the person terrorized is the one to be coerced.

  4. Another response consists of the draconic measures taken in immigration law with reference to ‘terrorism’ (cf. Buchanan, 2003).

  5. http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/nationalsecurity/faq-what.html (accessed 1 August 2006).

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  1. Faculty of Social Sciences, Room M6-17, Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, Rotterdam, 3000 DR, the Netherlands

    Willem Schinkel

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Schinkel, W. On the concept of terrorism. Contemp Polit Theory 8, 176–198 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2008.37

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