In _Ontological Terror_ Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness (...) as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with non-Being—a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks—Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in Being. (shrink)

This article begins by comparing terror and death and then focuses on whether killing combatants and noncombatants as a mere means to create terror, that is in turn a means to winning a war, is ever permissible. The role of intentions and alternative acts one might have done is examined in this regard. The second part of the article begins by criticizing a standard justification for causing collateral (side effect) deaths in war and offers an alternative justification that (...) makes use of the idea of group liability. (shrink)

This volume collects Jeremy Waldron's challenging and influential work on the moral, political and legal issues surrounding the response to terrorism since 9/11. The volume will be essential reading for all those engaged with contemporary politics and security law, and the continuing struggle for an ethical response to terrorism.

Sleep is soothing, silent, and serene, until it is not. Sleep is often troubled, disturbed, or even “disordered” as the medical literature describes it. This paper begins from an extreme form of such disturbance—terrified sleep. Night terrors (pavor nocturnus), in which sleep is violently interrupted, offer important insights into sleep and the methods by which it is studied. The sanitising nature of the medical classification of night terrors as part of a continuum with sleepwalking and yet strikingly distinct from nightmares, (...) leads us into the arms of a more traditional, first-person, phenomenological investigation of night terrors. Without denying the power of both approaches, this paper offers a deconstructive alternative reading of this troubling of sleep through Jean-Luc Nancy’s rethinking of the body, its suffering and materiality. Nancy, and Derrida, help us tarry with the body terrified and trembling in night terrors. First the paper explores the medical incisions within sleep that carve out night terrors, as a delimited phenomenon. This is followed by a consideration of what phenomenology can, and crucially cannot, add to our understanding of night terrors. Next a deconstructive critique of the phenomenological concepts of Leib and Körper is utilised to return to the material body gripped by the night terror. This in turn leads to an alternative account of this parasomnia through a post-Nancean phenomenology of terror as distinct from fear and Angst. The paper closes by drawing out several conclusions about the body, sleep, and phenomenology’s limits when approaching the somnolent. (shrink)

Many of us feel existential terror when contemplating our future nonexistence. I examine several attempts to rationally justify existential terror. The most promising of these appeals to the effects of future nonexistence on the meaningfulness of our lives. I argue that even this justification fails, and therefore existential terror is irrational.

En el artículo se exponen dos asuntos básicos: primero, más amplio, la aproximación literaria desde la semántica de lo bello a algunos pasajes literarios, y, segundo, más breve, la pregunta sobre qué significa valorar desde el punto de vista estético una pieza literaria; el primero permite introducir en el tema más genérico que indica lo segundo. Se resaltan dos temas que rodean a lo bello: el terror y lo erótico, unas relaciones que buscan desarrollar desde tres textos distintos: uno (...) contemporáneo de la poesía de Pablo Neruda y dos textos antiguos tomados de la literatura sagrada de la biblia judía y cristiana; la revisión de los textos permite ver los siguientes temas que se tratan por separado: primero, la belleza que redime lo abyecto; segundo, la belleza contemplada atípicamente desde lo sórdido, y, tercero, lo bello inefable o la imagen de terror como única expresión de la fuerza devastadora del eros. (shrink)

The biopolitics of empire : slavery and "the Muslim" -- The biopolitics of settlement : temporality, desire, and civilization -- Foucault and queer theory -- Society must be destroyed -- Queer terror -- Bibliography.

The author analyses new meanings of "terror" and "terrorism" in political discourse as well as their implications in international politics. To some extent (and according to the needs of the moment, i.e. the needs of the powerful), the old and traditional meaning of those terms now still apply to conflicts and situations considered as local and globally inoffensive, or as having no global outreach or dimension. Following the paranoia instituted by the “nine-eleven” re-foundational moment in contemporary history, the new-fangled (...) usage of, and the recent meanings credited to those terms now roughly apply to the complex vaguely denoted as “Arabic-country-ethnicity-religion-and/or-Islam”. State terror is now considered to be exclusively defensive and justified in advance. However, it still includes para-statal terror and international “anti-terror strategies”, together with wars, torture, extraordinary renditions, extraterritoriality and extra-legality of detention, secret detention, man-made droughts, pollution, climate change, famines, forced migrations, terror against women and feminicide, trafficking of humans, sex-tourism etc. The author considers language as being not only the possibility for evening-out differences and conflicts through necessary and welcome negotiations, but also as providing a possible space for conflict. Language can be (but needn’t be) as much a weapon as any other. She therefore explores the politics of language, as she believes that the political (but not politics) “precedes” language. This is not only a question of freedom of speech, but a question as to who, for what purposes and under which conditions lays out those rights and that freedom, or triggers violence. (shrink)

It is tempting to regard the perpetrators of the September 11th terrorist attacks as evil incarnate. But their motives, as Bruce Lincoln’s acclaimed Holy Terrors makes clear, were profoundly and intensely religious. Thus what we need after the events of 9/11, Lincoln argues, is greater clarity about what we take religion to be. Holy Terrors begins with a gripping dissection of the instruction manual given to each of the 9/11 hijackers. In their evocation of passages from the Quran, we learn (...) how the terrorists justified acts of destruction and mass murder “in the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate.” Lincoln then offers a provocative comparison of President Bush’s October 7, 2001 speech announcing U.S. military action in Afghanistan alongside the videotaped speech released by Osama bin Laden just a few hours later. As Lincoln authoritatively demonstrates, a close analysis of the rhetoric used by leaders as different as George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden—as well as Mohamed Atta and even Jerry Falwell—betrays startling similarities. These commonalities have considerable implications for our understanding of religion and its interrelationships with politics and culture in a postcolonial world, implications that Lincoln draws out with skill and sensitivity. With a chapter new to this edition, “Theses on Religion and Violence,” Holy Terrors remains one of the essential books on September 11 and a classic study on the character of religion. “Modernity has ended twice: in its Marxist form in 1989 Berlin, and in its liberal form on September 11, 2001. In order to understand such major historical changes we need both large-scale and focused analyses—a combination seldom to be found in one volume. But here Bruce Lincoln . . . has given us just such a mix of discrete and large-picture analysis.”—Stephen Healey, Christian Century “From time to time there appears a work . . . that serves to focus the wide-ranging, often contentious discussion of religion’s significance within broader cultural dynamics. Bruce Lincoln’s Holy Terrors is one such text. . . . Anyone still struggling toward a more nuanced comprehension of 9/11 would do well to spend time with this book.”—Theodore Pulcini, Middle East Journal. (shrink)

I argue against the Doctrine of Double Effect’s explanation of the moral difference between terror bombing and strategic bombing. I show that the standard thought-experiment of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber which dominates this debate is underdetermined in three crucial respects: (1) the non-psychological worlds of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber; (2) the psychologies of Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber; and (3) the structure of the thought-experiment, especially in relation to its similarity with the Trolley Problem. (...) (1) If the two worlds are not identical, then it may be these differences between the two worlds and not the Doctrine of Double Effect to explain the moral difference; (2a) if Terror Bomber and Strategic Bomber have the same causal beliefs, then why does Terror Bomber set out to kill the children? It may then be this unwarranted and immoral choice and not the Doctrine of Double Effect that explains the moral difference; (2b) if the two have different causal beliefs, then we can’t rule out the counterfactual that, had Strategic Bomber had the same beliefs as Terror Bomber, she would have also acted as Terror Bomber did. Finally, (3) the Strategic Bomber scenario could also be constructed so as to be structurally equivalent to the Fat Man scenario in the Trolley Problem: but then the Doctrine of Double Effect would give different answers to two symmetrical cases. (shrink)

A inicios del siglo XX, ya era común comprender la idea del terror difundida en los textos occidentales. Sin embargo, cuando en el Perú se intenta emular ese estilo tardíamente, es notoria la disfuncionalidad inmanente de ese género literario. Cuentos malévolos (1904) de Clemente Palma resultó ser un ejemplo de esa manifestación artística que revelaba carencias de un trabajo que tuvo por objetivo impactar y asustar al lector de ese tipo de narración. Para comprobarlo, en este artículo, confrontaré con (...) los relatos del escritor peruano para explicar cuáles fueron esos errores que impidieron la óptima configuración del cuento de terror, supeditada fundamentalmente a la propuesta teórica de Nöel Carroll. (shrink)

Este artículo comprende la periodización literaria del terror a inicios del siglo XX, expresada en la revista Variedades, dirigida por Clemente Palma, quien tuvo intereses artísticos e ideológicos similares. La compilación de textos afines se publicó en Cuentos malévolos (1904). Sus tópicos patentizados representan componentes indispensables para aludir al terror concomitante. Para demostrarlo, se efectuará un análisis discursivo de esas propiedades, tales como sus personajes consuetudinarios, el tipo de acciones desempeñadas, los escenarios configurados, la atmósfera inferida, la constitución (...) de los narradores y su forma de realizar sus enunciaciones. Igualmente, estos talantes se confrontarán con los relatos del escritor peruano. (shrink)

Religion has been responsible for both horrific acts against humanity and some of humanity's most sublime teachings and experiences. How is this possible? From a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective, this book seeks to answer that question in terms of psychology dynamic of realism. At the heart of living religion is the idealization of everyday objects. Such idealizations provide much of the transforming power of religious experience, which is one of the positive contributions of religion to psychological life. However, idealization can also (...) lead to religious fanaticism, which can be very destructive. Drawing on the work of various contemporary relational theorists within psychoanalysis, this book develops a psychoanalytically informed theory of the transforming terror-producing effects of religious experience. It discusses the question of whether or not, if idealism is the cause of many of the destructive acts done in the name of religion, there can be vital religion without idealism. Thisis the first book to address the nature of religion and its capacity to sponsor both terrorism and transformation in terms of contemporary relational psychoanalytic theory. It will be invaluable to students and practitioners of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, psychology and religious studies. (shrink)

Terrorism challenges our Western world system with a new form of war. Terror contrasts strongly with the Western world's concept of freedom. Thus, an aggravation of this conflict is inevitable. In terms of technical equipment, we are prepared. Mentally, we are not. We know the mental treasures of mankind. We know examples of similar situations, which have happened before. We never wanted to meet them again. Thus, our awakening is even more terrifying. Referring to quite contrasting systems, eras, philosophers (...) and historical events, the volume shows what has to be taken into consideration. (shrink)

En el pensamiento de H. Arendt, las lecturas sobre el totalitarismo de The Origins of Totalitarianism, pueden ser leídas en paralelo a sus lecturas sobre la sociedad de masas, de la labor y el consumo en The Human Condition. Nos interesa mostrar en este artículo que se trata de lecturas convergentes, que se encuentran ligadas en la evolución del pensamiento de la autora y conservan algunas notas temáticas comunes como la preocupación por: el aislamiento, la soledad, el desarraigo y el (...) proyecto de convertir a los seres humanos en seres superfluos. (shrink)

The general idea of this investigation is to emphasize the elusiveness of the concept of terrorism and the pitfalls of the so-called “War on Terror” by way of confronting, roughly, the reflections made in the immediate following of 9/11 by Habermas and Derrida on the legacy of Enlightenment, globalization and tolerance, with Foucault’s concept of biopolitics seen as the modern political paradigm and Agamben’s understanding of “the state of exception” in the context of liberal democratic governments. The main argument (...) will state that the modern Western individual and the modern terrorist are in a way linked together as products of the same biopolitical network. So I shall argue that religious fundamentalism and international terrorism are not external factors to the Western civilization, nor even some radical late forms of ‘Counter-Enlightenment’ threatening the Western ‘way of life,’ but phenomena revealing what we could call, borrowing J. Derrida’s biological metaphor, a “crisis of autoimmunization” of Western neo-liberal democracies. The only long-term solution to the threat of global terrorism would have to involve the “deconstruction” of our common notion of tolerance and the experience of an unconditional hospitality that is actually the inversion of the terrorist action that is threatening us “from within,” according to Derrida. But we cannot reasonably hope for this radical change in our relationship to others unless we aren’t really trying to modify the relationship to the self that is prevalent in contemporary Western societies: a vision of us as self-encapsulated monads or ‘nuclear’ selves, for whom genuine community life is, at the most, only a nostalgic evocation of a past long gone, and the respect for the others, a strategic name for moral indifference. (shrink)

Esta investigación tiene como objetivo la reconstrucción del concepto de terror en la primera década del siglo XX. La delimitación temporal se debe a que en ese lapso se publicó un compendio de relatos de tópico terrorífico, intitulado Cuentos malévolos (1904), del escritor peruano Clemente Palma. Para lograr la configuración semántica del término aludido, se recurre a la documentación de fuentes periodísticas de ese entorno (como El Comercio, La Prensa, Variedades, entre otros), para respaldar la percepción asumida del mismo. (...) A través de la confrontación de estos discursos, es notoria la influencia que recibe el autor por parte de las temáticas derivadas, como la asociación del terror con la criminalidad o el oscurantismo que se desenvuelven por personas desequilibradas. Igualmente, la ideología y la filosofía que se extraen se vinculan con el ateísmo y todo lo que critica y cuestiona los dogmas de la religión judeocristiana. (shrink)

Para este artículo, asumo las ediciones publicadas de Cuentos malévolos, compendio de relatos con un abordaje crítico de los valores y las ideologías tradicionales del Perú a inicios del siglo xx, con el fin de construir un panorama de su exégesis literaria y analizar la inclusión autoral de una variante novedosa del terror, distinguida por el desarrollo de elementos decadentes del romanticismo. Para la comprensión de esta cosmovisión inusitada regida por la maldad, será indispensable adoptar el tratamiento del amor (...) y su percepción autónoma como ejes de sus narraciones. (shrink)

The essays in Waldron’s Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs have important implications for debates about the criminalization of terrorism and terrorism-related offences and its consequences for criminal law and criminal justice. His reflections on security speak directly to contemporary debates about the preventive role of the criminal law. And his analysis of inter-personal security trade-offs invites much closer attention to the costs of counter-terrorism policies, particularly those pursued outside the criminal process. But is Waldron right to speak of a ‘welcome (...) the return to the criminal justice model’? This article considers the arguments in favour of prioritizing the prosecution of terrorist suspects and asks if their prosecution can safely proceed without undue hazard to the criminal law and criminal process. (shrink)

Drácula, Frankenstein, espíritus, asesinos en serie� el cine bebió del terror desde sus inicios como séptimo arte. El miedo y el terror son géneros capitales en la historia del cine como el "western", el cine negro o el "thriller". Su evolución a lo largo de las décadas se ha manifestado desde los títulos del cine mudo como Nosferatu a la sofisticación de El silencio de los corderos. Y siempre ha sido un cine de culto, tanto por su factura (...) estética como por sus personajes, terriblemente humanos. (shrink)

Meditations, maxims, aphorisms, notes, and comments address topics that range from pathos and genius to careerism and club sandwiches. Marcus Steinweg's capacity to implicate the other is beautiful, bright, precise, and logical, grounded in everyday questions, which to him are always big questions. —from the foreword by Thomas Hirschhorn The houses of philosophy need not be palaces. —Marcus Steinweg, “House,” The Terror of Evidence This is the first book by the prolific German philosopher Marcus Steinweg to be available in (...) English translation. The Terror of Evidence offers meditations, maxims, aphorisms, notes, and comments—191 texts ranging in length from three words to three pages—the deceptive simplicity of which challenges the reader to think. “Thinking means getting lost again and again,” Steinweg observes. Reality is the ever-broken promise of consistency; “the terror of evidence” arises from the inconsistency before our eyes. Thinking is a means of coping with that inconsistency. Steinweg is known for his collaborations with Thomas Hirschhorn and the lectures and texts he has provided for many of Hirschhorn's projects. This translation of The Terror of Evidence includes a foreword by Hirschhorn written especially for the MIT Press edition. The subjects of these short texts vary widely. (“The table of contents is in itself excessive and ambitious,” writes Hirschhorn.) They include pathos, passivity, genius, resentment, love, horror, catastrophe, and racism. And club sandwiches (specifically, Foucault's love for this American specialty), blow jobs, and dance. Also: “Two Kinds of Obscurantism,” “Putting Words in Spinoza's Mouth,” “Note on Rorty,” and “Doubting Doubt.” The Terror of Evidence can be considered a guidebook to thinking: the daily journey of exploration, the incessant questioning of reality that Steinweg sees as the task of philosophy. (shrink)

section 1. Reason, language, and the self -- section 2. Law, emergency, and exception -- section 3. Terrorism as a paradigm of (in)security -- section 4. Terrorism and the crisis of the political.

Hannah Arendt's rich and varied political thought is more influential today than ever before, due in part to the collapse of communism and the need for ideas that move beyond the old ideologies of the Cold War. As Dana Villa shows, however, Arendt's thought is often poorly understood, both because of its complexity and because her fame has made it easy for critics to write about what she is reputed to have said rather than what she actually wrote. Villa sets (...) out to change that here, explaining clearly, carefully, and forcefully Arendt's major contributions to our understanding of politics, modernity, and the nature of political evil in our century.Villa begins by focusing on some of the most controversial aspects of Arendt's political thought. He shows that Arendt's famous idea of the banality of evil--inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann--does not, as some have maintained, lessen the guilt of war criminals by suggesting that they are mere cogs in a bureaucratic machine. He examines what she meant when she wrote that terror was the essence of totalitarianism, explaining that she believed Nazi and Soviet terror served above all to reinforce the totalitarian idea that humans are expendable units, subordinate to the all-determining laws of Nature or History. Villa clarifies the personal and philosophical relationship between Arendt and Heidegger, showing how her work drew on his thought while providing a firm repudiation of Heidegger's political idiocy under the Nazis. Less controversially, but as importantly, Villa also engages with Arendt's ideas about the relationship between political thought and political action. He explores her views about the roles of theatricality, philosophical reflection, and public-spiritedness in political life. And he explores what relationship, if any, Arendt saw between totalitarianism and the "great tradition" of Western political thought. Throughout, Villa shows how Arendt's ideas illuminate contemporary debates about the nature of modernity and democracy and how they deepen our understanding of philosophers ranging from Socrates and Plato to Habermas and Leo Strauss.Direct, lucid, and powerfully argued, this is a much-needed analysis of the central ideas of one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The article surveys the history of “terror” vis a vis the development of international humanitarian and human rights law. During the French Revolution, the word “terror” was coined to describe a deviation from the laws of war. Justified by a mixture of ideology and necessity. People who resort to terrorism either suspends or rejects the laws of war (jus in bellum) in the name of an alternative and heightened sense of truth. However, the terrorists’ strong sense of probity (...) and mission is also an opening for re-establishing communication, arbitration and mitigation of cruelty and destruction. This paper represents International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as an “abstract Leviathan”, submission to which is the contemporary norm of pacification. From the perspective of radical terrorism, it is tyrannical. From other perspectives, it is open to criticism and change. Most importantly, it is on the side of rational arbitration rather than arbitrary ordeal. Even radical terrorism, which refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the abstract Leviathan, seeks to communicate its radical messages rather than to seek victory my means of physical annihilation of its opponents. (shrink)

The debate on religious backgrounds of the attack of the 11th of September calls for a theological protest above all for two sides. On the one side, it is factually not tenable to challenge the religious motivation of a terrorist on the basis of an »enlightened« concept of religion, as predominantly politicians with transparent motivation did. On the other side, it should towards those theologically be advanced who - on the basis of a generalized critical concept of religion- aim at (...) attacking Christianity at the same time as Islam as a source of intolerance and terror readiness. (shrink)

Ten years after the assault on the World Trade Center, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum was opened to the public. Built amidst the busy financial corridors of Lower Manhattan, the memorial was designed to provide a tranquil space for honoring those who perished in the terror attacks. Yet reading the 9/11 Memorial in terms of public remembrance fails to account for either the ontopolitical impact of the attacks as an event that continues to unfold or the contingent (...) relationship of the monument to modes of narratizing 9/11 trauma. To counter the recuperation of the 9/11 Memorial within nationalist security discourses, this essay employs an object-oriented framework to evaluate how 9/11 texts, political symbols, and memorial components operate as things-in-themselves, retaining individual agency apart from human motivations. Theorizing the signifer of “9/11” as a fiction productive of homogenized affect, I argue that the 9/11-signifier stabilizes the equilibrium of the state by suppressing the agency of objects that propose ways of relating to 9/11 that challenge the “hyperrelational” logic of United States security constructs, whereby all objects are said to be interconnected through a conflation of the marketplace, Constitution, and God. In preserving the material displacement of objects from familiar spatiotemporal locations, however, I contend that the 9/11 Memorial deterritorializes becoming from human subjectivity to withdrawn objectal being, in turn creating space for an uncanny affirmation of difference. (shrink)

This collection of essays represents a sample of the work carried out on the various urgent issues arising from the contemporary "war in terror" by researchers in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Swansea University UK and/or who attended the 2005 conference on politics and ethics at the University of Southern Mississippi (Gulf Coast). Certain specific topics are obviously prompted by this general theme; others dealt with in this book are perhaps not as obviously connected to it - (...) though they are no less important for that. This book is therefore intended to cover some ground in both types of topic and it is to be hoped that its contents will stimulate further reflection and writing on the deep controversies that recent events in world politics have stoked. However misguided much of the debate has been, many have contended that the present era is witnessing a "clash of civilisations", in which fundamentally different value-systems confront each other with their mutually opposed and antagonistic views of the world. This position often undergirds a moral relativism, which denies that there are any universal values: all we have, according to this outlook, are the different values of different cultures seeking (insofar as they "clash") to impose themselves on others. In the first essay, James Beard counters this argument with a case for what he calls a "thin universalism", a relatively sparse but powerful set of fundamental values which can credibly be demonstrated to have universal application.Many who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq now oppose it, not on the grounds that they were wrong at the outset but that hindsight and subsequent events have given them new reasons to revise their judgements. This has led some to think that arguments about whether a war is just, and justified, can very often only be satisfactorily made "down the line", thus excusing initial support for a conflict which thereafter goes badly wrong. In her article, Christine Stender reminds us of many of the considerations that were available in 2003 itself which readily led to just-war arguments against launching the invasion at the time. It may be easy for the passage of time to cause us to forget those factors. But, given that we can only become more adept at making just-war judgements by reflecting on past experience, it is crucial not to let them disappear in the morass of subsequent experience. Arguably, the Abu Ghraib scandal did more than any other single event to undermine what moral credibility the American occupation of Iraq ever had. It certainly raised acute questions about the conception of "virtue" that the role of combatant in war ought to necessitate and, in his essay, J. Joseph Miller subjects this issue to close philosophical scrutiny, with particular focus on the ethics of torture. Traditional just war theory has been composed of two elements: jus ad bellum, which sets out moral criteria which may sanction the resort to war, and jus in bello, which provides moral rules for its actual conduct. Recent events, and in particular the tragically chaotic situation of post-invasion Iraq, have helped to make the case for a third element: jus post bellum, which deals with the rights and responsibilities of just combatants with respect to the pursuit of a just peace once conflict has ended. This remains an under-researched area and, in their article, Mark Evans and Christine Stender introduce a wide-ranging set of considerations towards the construction of an adequate account of jus post bellum. A concept that has surged to the fore in recent times has been that of a "failed state", which has been invoked as part of arguments for "humanitarian intervention." (Afghanistan is perhaps the most obvious and pertinent example.) It is, however, a highly contentious concept and many think it has nothing other than ideological, polemical value. Whilst admitting that it is prone to such (mis)use, Mark Evans argues, in his essay, that it can be given a determinate and useful normative content, even if it does not necessarily sanction the kind of foreign policies which certain Western leaders have thought it does. Most liberal democracies have responded to the "terror threat" by introducing emergency legislation, or by otherwise suspending in some way what they would "ordinarily" have regarded as inviolable basic liberties and legal safeguards. Nazeer Patel argues that this dangerously undercuts the moral authority that these states claim for themselves and urges that we rethink how liberal democracy should appropriately respond to terrorism; it may take courage not to "overreact" against it, but he plausibly suggests a more measured and morally preferable attitude for it to take. Finally, in her essay, Claire Delisle focuses on one of the more bitter conflicts within a liberal democracy of recent times which has, it seems, been resolved in favour of peaceful accommodation: that between the Nationalist and Unionist communities in the north of Ireland/Ulster. The full story of how this peace became possible has yet to be fully told, and she adds a vital element to the tale, of how incarcerated combatants developed attitudes, strategies and a culture which built the foundations for a process that eventually brought "The Troubles" to what, it is to be hoped, is a permanent end. With the exception of the editor's contributions, the research which is published here is the product of the intellectual labours of scholars who are in the early stages of their careers. This volume is, therefore, a compendium of work in progress and the authors hope that this publication will help to further their reflections; certainly, the issues with which they engage are a long way indeed from being exhausted in terms of the scholarly attention they demand. Obviously, their appearance together in the same volume should not be taken to imply that any of the contributors endorse anything of what any of the others argue. (shrink)

The present paper is devoted to a detailed presentation of a new Military Ethics doctrine of fighting terror. It is proposed as an extension of the classical Just War Theory, which has been meant to apply to ordinary international conflicts. Since the conditions of a fight against terror are essentially different from the conditions that are assumed to hold in the classical war (military) paradigm or in the law enforcement (police) paradigm, a third model is needed. The paper (...) proposes such a model in the form of principles that should govern the activity of a democratic state when faced with terror. Eleven principle are proposed. Two are on the level of the state, including the Principle of Self-Defense Duty. Six are related to military preventive acts against activities of terror, including new formulations of a Principle of Military Necessity, a Principle of Distinction, and a Principle of Military Proportionality. Principles of Low Probabilities, Time Span Considerations and Professional Understanding are also included. Finally, three principles that are related to consciousness-directed activities against terror are added: a Principle of Permanent Notice, a Principle of Compensation, and a Principle of Operational Deterrence. The exposition of the principles is accompanied by arguments about their moral justification. The doctrine has been developed on the background of the IDF fight against acts and activities of terror performed by Palestinian individuals and organizations. (shrink)

In his “Marxism and the Post-Modern Condition” Raulet examines the relation between modernity, post-modernity, and the aesthetics of the sublime. I would like to make a modest clarification. Raulet argues that I counterpose the Kantian sublime, which is based on incommensurability of powers [Vermögen], to the Hegelian dialectic which totalizes them. Thus I place myself in a position of being able to oppose totalitarianism only by means of a politics of terror. Both equations (speculative discourse = totalitarianism; and philosophy (...) of the sublime = terrorism) need to be dissolved. Let us briefly recall the objections to these equations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper addresses the ways in which the cultural, the affective and the political intersect, counter and/or feed upon one another in the context of contemporary terror. Initially, buildin...

Was ist Terrorismus? Wie kann man ihn verstehen und. erklären? Wie ist Terrorismus moralisch/rechtlich/politisch zu beurteilen? Und wie geht man mit ihm am besten um? Das sind die Fragen, die man sich bei einer rationalen Befassung mit Terror und Gegen-Terror-Maßnahmen zu stellen hat. Dieses Buch weicht diesen schwierigen Fragen nicht aus. Orientierungshilfe in solchen gesellschaftlichen Grundsatzfragen anzubieten - das ist eine der zentralen Aufgaben einer Universität: Und so gehen die Beiträge dieses Bandes auf eine zweisemestrige öffentliche Ringvorlesung an (...) der Universität Leipzig 2002/2003 zurück. Diese Veranstaltung war nicht rein akademisch: Außer Wissenschaftlern kommen daher auch Generäle, Journalisten, Pfarrer und Politiker zu Wort. Die Autoren kommen aus Deutschland, Australien, Israel, der Schweiz und den USA. Terror & der Krieg gegen ihn - beides ist, der Intention wie den Wirkungen nach, engstens mit Bildern verknüpft. Mit Bildern der Gewalt - und mit Bildern, mit denen Gewalt ausgeübt wird. Auch dieser Aspekt wird in diesem Band dokumentiert. (shrink)

I. The Confrontation of Terror and Play: An Intellectual-Historical Constellation in Early West Germany In September 1968, a conference took place in the castle of the town of Rheda , remote from German intellectual centers. Boasting illustrious names from the German history of ideas, such as Jean Bollack, Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, Hans Blumenberg, and Manfred Fuhrmann, this gathering of twenty-eight highly renowned scholars appears, in retrospect, to be one of the more memorable events in the intellectual history (...) of the Federal Republic of Germany. It had a lasting impact on German research in the fields…. (shrink)

Place is sometimes understood as reinforcing personal and cultural identity in the face of dissipating versions of modernism or postmodernism. However, that identity can also come with a variety of cultural neuroses and manias that are inscribed on place. I consider the ways in which terrorism has become a feature of place, and how we can expect to see the terror of the place in the future. First, we can expect a relative diminishment in 'place-making imagination', the ability to (...) see places as rich, ambiguous, and multi-purposed. Second, we can expect the terror of the place to exhibit itself as an inability to come to terms with the other. Third, we can expect the continuation and development of a triumphalist narrative of place, including a sense of entitlement. Fourth, we can anticipate the death or the fear of the agora, the true 'agoraphobia', as the public space of discourse is closed down, and the private space of patriarchally enforced agreement gains ascendancy. Fifth, we can expect people to regard specific places as having fixed and permanent meanings, and to try to constrain those meanings in such a way as to guarantee that permanence. Sixth, we can expect topophobia, not only the fear of place but also stage fright, as the expression of self on the world stage becomes more and more limited and narrowly focussed. And seventh, we can expect a re-assertion of memory of place, perhaps with a shifted baseline, as the places of terror become exhausted. We can furthermore expect all of these phobias and manias to be rationalized as virtue in a society that cannot deal with the terror of the place. (shrink)

The war on terror is commonly characterized as a fundamentally different kind of war from more traditional armed conflict. Furthermore, it has been argued that, in this new kind of war, different rules, both moral and legal, must apply. In the first part of this paper, three practices endemic to the war on terror -- torture, assassination, and enemy combatancy status -- are identified as exceptions to traditional norms. The second part of the paper uses these examples to (...) motivate a generalized account of exceptionalism; a taxonomy of different exceptionalisms is derived, including temporal, spatial, and group-based exceptionalisms. The third part of the paper considers the ethical status of exceptionalism, paying particular attention to the group-based exceptionalisms that are argued to be prevalent in the war on terror. It is concluded that there is nothing inherently wrong with group-based exceptionalism and, furthermore, that the proper locus of ethical evaluation lies not with the norms that are being excepted, but rather with the groups that are being excepted from them. (shrink)

“Terrorism”' is sometimes defined as a “form ofcoercion.” But there are important differences between ordinary coercion and terrorist intimidation. This paper explores some of those differences, particularly the relation between coercion, on the one hand, and terror and terrorization, on the other hand. The paper argues that while terrorism is not necessarily associated with terror in the literal sense, it does often seek to instill a mental state like terror in the populations that it targets. However, the (...) point of instilling this mental state is not necessarily coercive or intimidatory: one can try to instill terror as an act of punishment, or as an expressive or therapeutic act, or because one values the political consequences that might follow, or because one thinks terror is preferable, from an ethical point of view, to the inauthentic complacency that characterizes the targeted population at present. Though this paper asks questions about the definition of “terrorism,” these questions are not asked for their own sake. The quest for a canonical definition of “terrorism” is probably a waste of time. But asking questions which sound like questions of definition is sometimes a fruitful way of focusing our reflections on terrorism and organizing our response. (shrink)

One of the main characteristics of this phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the resort by Palestinian groups to suicidal terror. This paper focuses on the unique nature of suicidal terror, since, I believe, it is this kind of terror that presents the most immanent threat to the foundations of politics and law in the free world. The article begins with a phenomenological exploration of the effect of suicidal terror on politics in Israel, inspired by the (...) work of Hannah Arendt. It presents the various manifestations of the suicidal terror as a new Paradigm of Violence. This new paradigm poses a great threat on politics: as the terrorists waive their effort to stay alive, deterrence becomes useless; the Israeli politics, in response, redraws the boundaries of the collective according to demographic lines; the feelings of helplessness reduces politics to personal tragedies giving up on normative arguments and long term policies. Compassion replaces persuasion. The attempt of an organized army to respond effectively to suicidal terror is ridden by the dilemma of effectiveness-legitimacy, that is, the more the response is effective, the more difficult it becomes to retain the distinction between the actions of the army and the actions of the terrorist. Moreover, during the attempt to bring the actions of the army to the review of the court, the legal system itself is infected by the same dilemma. The article examines the response of the Israeli Supreme Court to several petitions that questioned the legality of the means employed by the IDF in its fight against terror. These cases provide a unique opportunity to examine the way in which terror infiltrates into the very legal system that is called upon to respond to it, mainly by changing the legal language. The question that guides my discussion is what effect terror exerts on politics and law, and can law provide a way to resist the destructive influence of terror on the political system. (shrink)

This essay focuses on James Baldwin's treatment of the Atlanta child murders in The Evidence of Things Not Seen, a book that began as a series of reports for Playboy magazine. Returning to the United States from France, Baldwin not only reported on the child murders, but offered a treatise on terror as well: a treatise that distinguishes an imagined or remembered menace from a terror that might be considered constitutive, ontolological. This terror persists, Baldwin maintains, as (...) the negative cause of African American existence. Insistently political, the kernel of nonbeing to which Baldwin's thought appeals is not the grand abstraction of death but the becoming-abstract of abduction and permanent disappearance. Baldwin's essay on the Atlanta child murders thus seeks not only to bear witness to the plight of the missing children, but of the persistence of this “terror of being destroyed” as well. This essay revisits Baldwin's late work, often dismissed as either lackluster polemic or as sermonizing reportage, as no less apocalyptic a work of Pauline witnessing than The Fire Next Time. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The history of spectacle terror lynching remains one of the darkest and least explored political events in American history. In this article, I explore the aesthetic relation of this history to the formation of notions of public action and political assembly. I argue that the history of spectacle terror lynching establishes both a past and present form of public sovereignty. As such, I attempt to examine questions of what public action means with regard to a political context (...) of antiblack violence. I conclude that lynching festivals constitute not only a form of politics but a form of public sovereignty that is still in play in our notion of the public. At heart this notion informs not only antiblack forms of racism but antiblack forms of genocide. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: “How can these things be?” Reason's Transcendental Climb Where Were We?

Shortly before his death in 2004, Jacques Derrida provocatively suggested that the greatest problem confronting contemporary democracy is that ‘the alternative to democracy can always be represented as a democratic alternative ’. This article analyses the manner in which certain manifestly anti-democratic practices, like terror and torture, come to be taken up in defense of democracies as a result of what Derrida calls democracy’s ‘autoimmune’ tendencies.

The argument proceeds from a sense of imminent danger; 9/11 and its sequel challenge our deepest pretensions regarding the universality and self-evidence of moral/political conviction. The intransigence of such convictions is now an important source of international conflict and terror. It also signifies that the resolution of the disorder that now confronts the international community requires a transformation in our conception of morality itself. In this regard, philosophy has an important task to address. The discussion explores a radical change (...) in our understanding of just war, the distinction between war and peace, the logic of conflict, and similar topics. (shrink)

This article begins by posing the question: how can we understand the ‘terror’ of 11 September? First, a brief discussion of the reactions, both psychological and political, provides a background for establishing the particular character of this act of terror as being both inside and outside, simultaneously. The pairing of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in inextricable struggle reminds us of the role monsters have always played in putting a face on the radical alterity of the Other. Second, the experience (...) of terror is examined from three distinct philosophical positions: the fatalism of Baudrillard, the sublime of Kant, and the political of Arendt. Third, a discussion of the media and the role of the viewer of the Event of 11 September ends the discussion. In conclusion, it is suggested that the three ways of responding to the monstrous - practical understanding, working through and pardoning - may provide the best ways to help us empathize with our fellow human beings, which ultimately may move us to a fuller imaginative understanding. (shrink)

Si bien hubo grandes pensadores a lo largo de la historia que hicieron referencia al concepto de «terror» (Kant y lo sublime, Hegel y el terror posrevolucionario francés, Heidegger y la significación ontológica del término, o la aproximación del psicoanálisis a lo siniestro), escasean aún los estudios vinculados a esta temática y los pocos que existen carecen de la profundidad adecuada para tratar este fenómeno. La presente edición cuenta con una serie de textos escritos por reconocidos especialistas (Vicente (...) Serrano, Antonio Castilla, Arturo Leyte, Miguel Morey, Mauricio Mancilla Muñoz, Ana Carrasco Conde, Jorge Fernández Gonzalo y Enrique Lynch) que nos permitirán adentrarnos de lleno en el tema del terror y sus principales vinculaciones con la filosofía, el psicoanálisis, la literatura y la sociedad en general. ¿Qué es el terror? ¿Cómo interpretarlo? ¿Cómo se representa en la literatura y el cine? ¿Cuál es, realmente, su función política? La filosofía, el terror y lo siniestro nos da la llave para acceder a estas y a otras cuestiones y abre vías de reflexión que resultan de vital importancia para comprender los resortes que operan detrás de nuestra sociedad contemporánea. (shrink)

¿Qué pasaría si, en el momento fundacional de la modernidad, el personaje principal no fuera el yo cartesiano, sino ese otro personaje que Descartes llamó genio maligno? Esa es la hipótesis que plantea el presente ensayo: ¿qué ocurriría si en lugar de la agotada certeza del yo, el mundo moderno se hubiera asentado más bien sobre la confusión y sobre la trampa que se condensan en la metáfora del genio maligno? Desde esa hipótesis, la mayor parte de las configuraciones filosóficas (...) de eso que llamamos modernidad aparecen transfiguradas, se convierten en meras repeticiones de aquel fraude básico que ocultan. Pero donde tales configuraciones velan ese gesto al repetirlo, el género de terror y los discursos sobre la angustia y la locura parecen haberlo denunciado como grietas de un edificio sin fondo. Este es el viaje apasionante que se propone en este libro, un viaje en el que autores como Poe, Stevenson o Conrad se atreven a proponernos lecturas de Nietzsche, Heidegger o Deleuze y Foucault, en el que personajes como Frankenstein o el doctor Jekyll nos enseñan aspectos inéditos de la filosofía de los siglos modernos, un viaje en el que la posmodernidad se revela como el penúltimo recurso retórico de un personaje ficticio y casi olvidado. (shrink)

An abiding concern in Žižek’s writings is with a central taboo of the modern age: the taboo of terror. We disavow terror only at the cost of accepting implicitly the violence and terror contained in the global capitalist logics and the fantasmatic structures that support them. The ongoing ideological attempts to neutralize the status of the capitalist economy, Žižek argues, are simultaneously accompanied by increasingly violent and authoritarian measures taken for its reproduction. Moreover, by failing to politicize (...) the economy and its constitutive violence, Western democracy is being reduced steadily to technocratic forms of administration. Focusing on recent work – and, in particular, The Defense of Lost Causes – this paper seeks to address Žižek’s cultivation of a new type of politico-philosophical engagement that does not shrink from the dimension of terror. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBuilding on Google's efforts to scan millions of books, this article introduces methodology using a database of annual word frequencies of the 40,000 most frequently occurring words in the American literature between 1800 and 2009. The current paper uses this methodology to replicate and identify terror management processes in historical context. Variation in frequencies of word usage of constructs relevant to terror management theory are investigated over a time period of 209 years. Study 1 corroborated previous TMT findings (...) and demonstrated that word use of constructs related to death and of constructs related to patriotism and romantic relationships significantly co-vary over time. Study 2 showed that the use of the word “death” most strongly co-varies over time with the use of medical constructs, but also co-varies with the use of constructs related to violence, relationships, religion, positive sentiment, and negative sentiment. Study 3 foun... (shrink)

In the ongoing war on terror both the American and Israeli governments have resorted to a policy of ‘targeting terrorists’. In essence, both governments authorize their military or intelligence services to kill specific ‘terrorists’ who they believe mortally threaten citizens and cannot otherwise be neutralized. President Bush calls this ‘sudden justice’ and the Israeli government ‘targeted killing’ but their critics speak of ‘assassination’, ‘liquidation’ or ‘extra-judicial killing’. Since 11 September 2001, America is reported to have killed at least 44 (...) people without warning or trial under the guidance of this policy, at least 18 of whom were civilians; the Israelis have killed at least 348, including 120 unintended targets. (shrink)

Ian Ward argues that through a closer appreciation of the ethical and aesthetical dimensions of terror, as well as the historical, political and cultural, we can better comprehend modern expressions and experiences of terrorism.