Terrorism

Terrorist violence - introduction

• State vs non-state violence

  • Terrorism is usually against state

  • It is possible for the state to start supporting terrorism

  • Shift from non-state to state terrorism

• Ideological violence - terrorist violence

  • Usually always political, national independence

• Very different backgrounds

  • Left wing extremist

  • Right wing exremist

  • Islamic

• The term terror dates back to chaotic state after the French Revolution reign of terror

• The idea is to install fear

• Attack innocent civilians

Element of definition

• Non -state actor

• Targeting innocent civilians

• No achievable, calculable goal

• Goal is to install fear and disturb way of life

Giovanna Borradori

• Why are philosophers silent about terrorism

• Dissatisfied with silence of philosophy in the face of terrorism

Deconstruction

• Jacques Derrida has been well known for deconstruction – way of reading

• Reading texts with an eye in the way key oppositions are constructed and used within the text

• What happens between one sentence and the other

• Making connection between sentencences based on assumptions

• What is the subtext involved

• Try to expose it

Jacques Derrida on terror

First auto-immunity

• The western society, have been suffering from unity diseases – the body is fighting toward itself

• Terrorist movements were origianlly sponsored by the US

• Terrorism use highly sophisticated technology, to destroy the technologically most advanced nation in the world in this way attacking the key symbols of the world (leading economy)

• The attack on 9/11, the terrorists were originally sponsored by the US itself, they trained and sponsored them

• committed the attack by using US technology and american weapons

Second auto immunity

• This one is abput the future after the attack has happened

• The ordeal of the event has as its tragic correlate not what is presently happening or what has happened in the past but the precursory signs of what threatens to happen

• It is the future that determines the unappropriability of the event not the present or the past

• The goal of terrorist is to install fear of what is yet to come

• The fear is something we construct ourselves

Third auto immunity

• War on terror regenerates terror

• The vicious circle of repression

• Creates more hatred, which stimulates the rise of new terrorists

Further reflection

• Fixed concept of war are obsolete

• Technoscience changes relation of terra (earth, location) and terror: attacking computer networks is an option also , or chemical/ biological attacks

• Opportunistic appropriation of vague concepts: ‘international terrorism’

• End of ‘terrorist – freedom fighter’- opposition

• The role of media

Jurgen Habermas - Critical theory:

• Understanding the modern world with an eye on power-relations and suppression.

  • Background in neo-marxism

• Not only class interested  but also the way people communicate, trust, work together, imagine a better world

• Recently greater interest in religion

• Public sphere

• How can people communicate a better world

• communication is the foundation of social life - mutual understanding

• importance of communication, democracy in modern societies

Public sphere

• space where people can discuss political issues, free from state or corporate control

• reconstruct it to make it more inclusive, pluralistic, and democratic

• essential or healthy democracy, allows open ideas

Communicative action

• Communication is the foundation of social life

• focused on mutual understanding

• participants engage in open, honest dialouge where they can express their needs, beliefs

• enables democratic decision making

• healthy society where people can come together in. apublic sphere to discuss issues and reach common understanding

Todays terrorsim

• Unspecified goals and strategies

• Terrorism: intangible threats issuing from local cells of networks without a clear political purpose (different from freedom fighters and rebels)

• Religious background of terrorist attacks of 9/11

• Distinction: orthodoxy – fundamentalism – terrorism

• failures in communication, political exclusion brought on by modernity and globalization

• reaction against the domanance of the western modernity

Distinction orthodoxy – fundamentalism

Orthodoxy

• Orthodoxy refers to traditional religious practices and beliefs that are rooted in historical and cultural contexts

• Orthodox beliefs are maintained by religious communities and seen as legitimate and stable

• Adhere to traditional norms but can coexist with modernity

• Strict religious practices and strong beliefs

Fundamentalism

• Represents a reactionary approach to religion

• they reject modernity and it’s values

• refusal to adapt to modern social norms

• view modernity as attack on their world

• leads to withdrawal from communicative action

• impose a strict adherence to their beliefs and often unwilling ot participate in democracy

• their beliefs are the absolute truth and cannot be questioned

Habermas cognitive dissonances

• One truth vs. other truth claims

• conflict between individuals beliefs, action or knowledge

• part of a process of moral developement

Globalisation and western dominance

• terrorism is a byproduct of modernity

• as globalization increases so do conflicts between regions, cultures, socioeconomic goups that can lead to injustice and resentment

• terrorism is a reaction to western dominance and the pust of western values on other cultures

• terrorism is then a form of resistance against the west

• Is communicative action still possible in todays world terrorism

• The spiral of violence begins with a distortion of communication

• In the course of mutual perspective taking there can develop a common horizon of background assumption in which both sides accomplish an interpretation that is not erhnocentrically adopted or converted but rather is intersubjectively shared

• Eventually sccording to Habermas, next to dialouge and communication more international bodies are needed with enforcing power

• from tolerence to constitutional protection for all citizens, regardless of their worldview

• militant democrazy - constantly critically reviewing the universality of its practices

By way of conclusion ten stages of genocide

• Classification

• Discrimination

• Symbolization

• Dehumanization

• Organization

• Polarization

• Preparation

• Persecution

• Extermination

• Denial

Achille Mbembe - inspirational sources

• Franz fanon

• Karl Marx

• Carl Schmitt: politics is about friend vs enemy

• Michael Focault

Mbembe - key themes

• The heritage of colonialism

• The end of Europes central role in the world

• The origins of colonialism

• The dynamics of colonialism

A counternarrative to the standard narrative:

Fanon: Third World should start a new history of Man

Standard narrative/self-image of the West: The West as inventor and guardian of human rights and democracy.

Mbembe: democracy is not the source of human rights and peace, but of colonial exploitation

The ‘true story’ behind democracy Is a Hobbesian war of all against all

Democracies…

• are inherently connected to slavery and colonialism: two sides of the same coin

• To cover up its violent nature democracy needs

  • Mythologies

  • Enemies and wars, industrial killing

  • Third places: colonies, plantations, hidden camps for refugees

• Necropolitics (radicalizarion of foucauls ‘biopolitics’)

Politics of enmity

• How modern political systems use the concept of hostility to control and governance

• Governances often rely on creating snd maintaining division, enemies and zones of exclusion

• it is done to exert control. perpetuate violence and sustain unequal power structures

• The disturbing object-of-desire of democracy an enemy, separation, destruction

  • Building of walls (palestine – israel)

  • Principle of separation (apartheid)

  • Principle of destruction (the other as the rejected me, psychic object, the enemy)

  • Killing and suicide become the primary ‘language’ that surrounds democracies

  • The threat of and fear for death is the glue for democracy and state power

• The worst crime becomes doubt, because in the concrete struggle opposing us to our enemies, doubt hinders the total freeinof voluntarist, emotinal and vital energies necessary for the use of violence a nd, when required, the shedding of blood

Necropolitics vs biopolitics

• biopolitics - how power regulates life

• necropolitics - -framework that examines how power decides who may live and who must die

• politics of enmity involves the use of violence, terror, the power to dictate life and death as tools of political control

The result is the building of security states

• Inherently connected to capitalism

• Tribalisation

• Nanoracism: small racism, prejudices, discrimination in addition to bureaucratic and institutional racism

• Nanoracism is the ultimate opposite of recognition

• Narcotherapy: nanoracism is the way to deal with the own uncertainties and fears, the longing for a clean world,becomes even a consumption article

  
  

Possible criticism

• Isn’t democracy and human rights way too important to be debunked like this

• Historical accuracy – is colonialism the only evil in the world, does oppression and exploitation not predate colonialism for centuries

• How long can you blame colonialism for current shortcomings

• Compare the transitional justice literature – what kind of future emerges from Mbembes analysis

Eric Voegelin - inside the mind of a
terrorist/ideologist

• History of the consciousness of order by analysis of symbols of order

• Throughout history homo sapiens gradually discovers what it means to be human

• But homo sapiens increasingly doesn’t like to be human, wants to transcend the limits of the human condition – existential resistance

• An account of what it means to be human, of the limits of the human condition that totalitarian movements are denying and resisting

Eric - Key concepts

• Paradox of consciousness: we are participants in a world we didn‘t create

• Intentionality vs, luminsoity: we can make many things but we cannot make existance itsel

• Existential resistance and imagination – symbols of a better or perfect world never can be political programs but nevertheless humans can use them as msuch

• The need for reflective distance – wisdom

The revisonist type of Argumentation: the terroris soul

• Two modes of experience in the soul:

  • Mode of control (intentionality: immanence)

  • Mode of participation (luminosity: transcendence)

• Mode of control seems to have become stronger in the course of history

• Can give rise to the illusion that we can fully control the world and hence the eclipse of the mode of participation in the consciousness

• The balance of consciousness is distorted

• To keep up the illusion against reality, total violence or terrorist violence is necessary

Conclusions

1. Terrorism may be an option that expresses itself in any worldview:monotheisy, atheist

2. Exclusively attacking monotheism as theology of terror is a mistake of judgment: going for the wrong guy and leaving the true perpetrator at large

3. In the prevention of terrorism/political violence there is a crucial role for (religious) communities, who live/embody the balance of consciousness (condoning violence or carefully considering it – in case of resistance): defining orthodoxy as different from radicalism

4. Exactly this one reason why we need to cross the public – private divide, allow religions to be publicly present