REFLECTIONS ON IDENTITY AND TERRORISM: A TALE OF MISFIT

This draft paper is a phenomenological, critical and ontological examination of the idea of terrorism and the notion of a terrorist act. The paper looks at the ideological foundations of terrorism, and the presentation of terrorism and terrorist acts in media and communication in language and discourse. More particularly, there is a specific examination of the ontology and phenomenology of the term through four lenses: terrorism as performance, terrorism as ritual embodiment, terrorism as a double-sided experiential phenomenon, and terrorism as political discourse linked to power. There is also emphasis on terrorism as reflecting a clash of worldviews and value systems throughout the paper. The paper also discusses radicalisation and deradicalisation.

Constructions of Terrorism, 2019

Constructions of terrorism emanate from a wide range of sources. Governments and international organizations create criminal laws and administrative lists defining who is a terrorist or what acts constitute terrorism. In society, discussions among its members and the press play a major role in how the words terrorism and extremism are used and applied, which in turn influences public understanding and government policy. Terrorist groups themselves contribute to these constructions through the rationales and justifications they use for their actions. Today we are seeing the continual reference to terrorism in everyday language, government policy, news reporting, and international diplomacy and from various groups and uprisings. With the term being used to describe a wide range of violence, it is difficult to formulate effective government responses aimed at prevention and eradication. It further makes things difficult in societal settings for creating conducive environments for reconciliation. This volume seeks to establish appropriate research frameworks for understanding how we construct understanding(s) of terrorism. From the perspective of countering terrorism and extremism, if there is not a well-developed understanding of the object of these frameworks, they will not be effective. Assessments of the literature of terrorism have revealed consistent and troubling shortcomings. Lum, Kennedy, and Sherley and Andrew Silke carefully examined studies of terrorism published over the previous decades and the great explosion of terrorism research after 9/11. 1 The most germane findings about terrorism and counterterrorism research in their two studies help frame the contributions that have been reviewed here. The first finding is that most of the publications on terrorism have been contributions by scholars who were relatively new to the subject. These scholars discovered terrorism as a problem, usually after a particularly

Criminal Justice Studies, 2004

The idea that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' has led to the erroneous conclusion that defining terrorism is, in the final analysis, a subjective activity about assigning negative connotations to one's opponents and positive connotations to one's proponents. Terrorism, both as practiced and justified by terrorist themselves, is a tool used to achieve a specific outcome by using force or violence on one segment of society with the primary goal of causing fear in the larger society to make change in that society. This article will review the historical development of the use of terror and demonstrate that regardless of the actor, all terrorists share the common belief that terror is a tool of change. The desired change, the chosen target, and the justification of the use of terror can be specific to the society and the perpetrators. The goal of this paper will be to show the common strands of uniformity of the understanding of terror as a tool of change through history. Though there are differences between terrorists and waves of terror, the utility of terror is not different.

This paper will suggest that there are a number of good reasons for persevering with the endeavour to reach a universally agreed definition of terrorism, notwithstanding the formidable obstacles. It will, firstly, consider whether there really is anything qualitatively distinctive about terrorism compared with other forms of political violence, and, if so, what it is that is unique about the former. It will then propose some preliminary assumptions that can be made when approaching the definitional issue. Finally, the implications of these assumptions for how one ultimately conceptualises terrorism will be considered, before a general definition of the phenomenon is offered. Asta Maskaliunaite (Baltic Defence College): Origins of the Concept of Terrorism and their Reflections in its Contemporary Use. Many books and investigations into terrorism start by lamenting the lack of an agreed definition of terrorism in the field. Already in the seminal work of 1982, Political terrorism, Alex Schmidt discussed 109 definitions of terrorism and disagreements among scholars as to their content. Later, in 2012, the Volume Contemporary debates on terrorism, edited by Jackson and Sinclair, dedicated three out of twelve chapters to the problem of defining and understanding of the phenomenon. Thus, even after half a century of focused research into the subject, the issues of the conceptualisation of terrorism are still as important as ever. At one and the same time, the choir of those who suggest that the term itself is too loaded to be useful and should therefore be abandoned is growing ever louder. In such circumstances, it might be useful to look at the concept of terrorism from a more detached historical perspective and investigate the controversies that first surrounded the term when it appeared in the political lexicon. Already from its inception during the French Revolution, terror and terrorism has been laden with serious normative weight and its justification or abnegation filled the concept with different contents. In the first of these positions, terrorism appears as rational, directed, morally justifiable (at least in some circumstances) and strategically plausible. In the other, it is seen as irrational, random, immoral and without any strategic purpose but destruction. The third understanding of terroroften forgottenis actually also present in the French Revolutionary discourse, namely the terror of crowds, which is seen as just, though unruly, and purposeful, though misguided. These positions never managed to overcome one another and their influence over policy and academic discourse has fluctuated over the last two centuries with one or another gaining (temporarily) the upper hand. Using Koselleck's 'history of concepts' and Laclau's and Mouffe's discourse theory as a theoretical background, I propose to look at the 'semantic struggle' surrounding the concept of terror in its earliest manifestations during the French Revolution and its immediate aftermath. I will then look into the usage of the term 200 years later at the height of 'war on terror' and explore the differences in the semantic fields surrounding terror then and now. I will argue that though the contemporary use of terror on the surface seems to have adopted it counter-revolutionary representation, this representation still operates in a semantic field where 'terror' needs to be connected to, juxtaposed or opposed to, the notions of 'virtue', 'liberty', 'democracy', 'violence' and 'despotism'. I will discuss the possibilities of salvaging terrorism as a term through looking at it as a 'floating signifier' which only gains its meaning inside a certain discourse. I will discuss the variations of this meaning through the lens offered by the three understandings of the French 2 David Boyns and James David Ballard, Developing a Sociological Theory for the Empirical Understanding of Terrorism, The American Sociologist ,(2004), p 5-25.

In recent years, the conflict of culture between the Middle East and the West has culminated in extreme acts of violence. The moral, religious, social and political differences are not, however, just differences of opinion; they are founded on competing realities generated by two different civilisations. This chapter considers these two positions and reviews our psychological understanding of politically motivated violence, arguing in favour of an approach that combines elements of social constructionism and social representations theory . The principal contaminating factor within contemporary social and forensic psychological analysis is, in our view, the recourse to individualism, which obscures an alternative and more persuasive theoretical narrative that accounts for suicide attacks and the factors likely to mobilise individuals to carry them out. Producing explanations at the level of the individual also limits our understanding because it moves the analysis away from an examination of the significance of language, which within both a social constructionist critique and social representations theory, is critically important. The central idea is that the selective use of language and discourse, the arbitrary identification of historical precedent and the formation of culturally derived constructs actively structure and generate cultural meaning. This form of knowledge, which may be laden with political and/or religious import, is systematically endorsed by the culture to provide a basis for collective explanation and understanding. The result is a subjective view of the world that ultimately accounts for a broad repertoire of social behaviour