Representing Terrorism: Journal für the Study of British Cultures, Vol. 19 · No. 2/2012

By Jürgen Kramer

Representing Terrorism

Das E-Book Representing Terrorism wird angeboten von Königshausen & Neumann und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
Representing Terrorism, Study of British Cultures, Terrorism

• Language: English
• Publisher: Königshausen u. Neumann
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9783826080203

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Contributors

Introduction

Representing Terrorism

Jürgen Kramer (Dortmund) & Bernd Lenz (Passau)

Kill one, frighten ten thousands.

(Quoted in Easson & Schmid 2011: 99)

Terror is a natural phenomenon; terrorism is the conscious exploitation of it.

(Quoted in Schmid 2011b: 3)

I.

The title of this issue is a combination of two heterogeneous concepts, one from semiotics and the other from political sciences. The meanings of these concepts are contested and to connect them may lead to even more contestation. It is therefore reasonable to start with some tentative preliminary observations which may clarify our understanding of the terms and of their linkage.

The first problem of the study of terrorism is its complexity: it is a tactic employed by many different groups in many different parts of the world in pursuit of many different objects (Richardson 2011: xv); it is not linked to any specific ideology, but can be employed indiscriminately, as long as it promises success (however defined); and it changes with the evolution of new contexts (new means of violence and communication as well as new targets). While the employment of the tactic may be intricately structured, its central aim is beyond debate: to produce terror, i.e. to play on our fear of sudden violent death and try to maximize uncertainty and hence anxiety to manipulate actual and prospective victims and those who have reason to identify with them (Schmid 2011b: 2). Once a terrorist act makes its target audience ask ‘who will be next?’ it has achieved its intended impact.

The second problem of studying terrorism lies in the need to distinguish its high-profile (international) from its low-profile (domestic, national) version (cf. Card 2010: 149) and both from other forms of political violence, to decide on the ways in which to comprehend the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ of terrorism, to dispel prevalent myths (cf. Schmid 2011b: 5-29) and, most importantly, to find a consensual definition of it – the prerequisite of further collaborative study.

To date no such definition has been discovered or agreed on and that such a definition may be found is anything but likely. Easson & Schmid’s compilation of 250-plus Academic, Governmental and Intergovernmental Definitions of Terrorism (2011: 99-157) is valuable in its very diversity, but also impracticable because of its conceptual, political and ideological inextricableness. While Schmid’s own revised academic consensus definition of terrorism (Rev. ACDT 2011) (2011a: 86-87) aims at adding as many features as coherently possible – it consists of 12 thematically structured items and is c. 600 words long – Richard English’s much shorter (albeit more abstract) definition seems more persuasive and practicable for teaching and research.

Terrorism involves heterogeneous violence used or threatened with a political aim; it can involve a variety of acts, of targets, and of actors; it possesses an important psychological dimension, producing terror or fear among a directly threatened group and also a wider implied audience in the hope of maximizing political communication and achievement; it embodies the exerting and implementing of power, and the attempted redressing of power relations; it represents a subspecies of warfare, and as such it can form part of a wider campaign of violent and non-violent attempts at political leverage. (2009: 24)

The advantage of this definition is its condensed comprehensiveness: while all the relevant aspects are dealt with on a particular level of abstraction, the definition is open for further differentiation, concretisation and expansion.

The third (and final) problem of studying terrorism is how to devise ways and means of countering it. Again, English’s ideas are suggestive:

First, learn to live with it. […]

[Second]: where possible, address underlying root problems and causes. […]

[Third]: avoid the over-militarization of response. […]

[Fourth]: intelligence is the most vital element in successful counter-terrorism. […]

[Fifth]: respect orthodox legal frameworks and adhere to the democratically established rule of law. […]

[Sixth]: coordinate security-related, financial, and technological preventative measures. […]

[Finally]: maintain strong credibility in counter-terrorist public argument. (Ibid.: 120-140)

Perhaps this sober (but somewhat ‘dry’) political lesson deserves to be illustrated by the strong feelings of an individual victim of one particular kind of terrorism: Muslim fundamentalist terrorism. Salman Rushdie writes in his memoir Joseph Anton:

The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his worldview, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world’s resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war, but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them. How to defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized. Don’t let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared. (2012: 624)

The study of the second concept, representation, involves several problems, the first of which is its ubiquity: whatever we do is through or with the help of representation. In order to grasp or comprehend something we have to represent it to ourselves (and/or others); and to represent something signs are needed: according to their particular systems – language, music, pictures (moving or not) etc. – these signs can then be used to construct certain meanings which, in turn, can be received and understood by those who have learnt the particular ‘code’ of the group. Meanings can only be produced because human beings possess two interdependent systems of representation. The first enables us to make connections between the ‘things’ of the world and our mental concepts; the second enables us to connect our mental concepts with particular signs or signs sequences. The relation between ‘things’, concepts and signs lies at the heart of the production of meaning in language. The process which links these three elements together is what we call ‘representation’. (Hall 1997:19)

The second problem with the study of representation lies in the fact that not only can be represented what is, but also what can be imagined. While the ‘how’ or ‘poetics’ of representation (sign systems) are the same, their ‘effect’ or ‘politics’ differ. History happens randomly, but in order to live we have to make sense and impose a certain order on it. This is what historians and philosophers, but also writers and film-makers do, albeit in different ways. Discourses in the everyday world claim to represent it as it is and, possibly, as it should be changed by public argument and political action. Aesthetic discourses, in contrast, aim at representing the everyday world from particular, but multiple perspectives, thereby stimulating debates about its constitution and inspiring visions of potential alternatives.

The third problem of the study of representation is that, while all these discourses represent and, perhaps, propagate the worldview of their producers (or their ‘commissioners’), no reader or spectator can be forced to blindly accept what they are being given to read or look at, but can (and will) strive to negotiate their meaning(s) of what is represented.

II.

At least since Alfred Nobel’s inventions of dynamite (1863) and gelignite (1875), international terrorism has achieved a new quality: bombs, capable of killing many more people than could previously be imagined, have been used as terrorist means. And with advancing technologies the potential threat of evermore powerful explosives has grown, while the means (the media) of communicating the threat have become quicker, more comprehensive and sophisticated. Concurrently, literature and, more recently, film and TV have responded not only by documenting these developments, but also by reflecting, i.e. debating and discussing them. These attempts at representing and trying to understand the nature, causes and effects of terrorism have themselves been carefully scrutinised (cf. Scanlan 2001, Houen 2002, Kubiak 2004, Blessington 2008, Appelbaum & Paknadel 2008, Greiner & Sprang 2011, Frank & Gruber 2012a). It is with the latter efforts that this issue of the Journal associates itself.¹

Of the more recent investigations Appelbaum & Paknadel’s survey (2008) is one of the most substantial.² Their central aim is to describe, with regard to novels published between 1970 and 2001, what cultural work the novel […] performs with regard to terrorism (ibid.: 389), i.e. to analyse not only which aspects or dimensions of terrorism are mirrored and reflected in which way, but also to determine how these representations potentially affect their reader(s) through processes of identification and/or distanciation. Their most interesting insights are as follows: fictional texts dealing with terrorism but usually re-narrate earlier ideas – which the authors call the mythography (400) – of terrorism. In doing so, these texts not only respond to such culturally produced ideas, but also become part of the general discourse on terrorism. The aesthetic variety of these texts is very wide: there are different genres and registers, there are also many different kinds of engagement with terror, different ways of disclosing it as a feature in the world of the novel and the external world it implies (ibid.: 404). But there are also limitations: with regard to geographical locations (Europe, the east coast of the US, the Near and Middle East, Latin America) for one, but also with regard to contents and aesthetics:

[…] limits of political orientation, of narrative perspective, of plot development, of empathy and sympathy. These limits appear first of all in what is not by and large represented in these novels. Few of them, for example, narrate their tales from the point of view of terrorist ideology or the internal psychology of someone devoted to such an ideology. (Ibid.: 408)

Appelbaum and Paknadel argue that, all things considered, the cultural work of the terrorism novel from 1970 to 2001 was to legitimate the position of innocence occupied by terrorism’s victims and the political society to which they belong. […] These novels tell us that terrorism is the violence of an Other; it is illegitimate violence perpetrated from an illegitimate position. (Ibid.: 427)³

One other, related and equally important, issue concerns the aesthetic nature of the products (be they literary texts, films etc.). What needs to be asked is whether there is a particular ‘aesthetics’ of ‘terrorism’, perhaps an aesthetics of violence or, more generally, of evil (cf. Card 2010)? What are the particular stylistic means and devices used to make the terrorist acts (and their repercussions) appear glamorous, repellent or indifferent? A film, for example, may praise (or denounce) terrorist acts by frequently depicting violent action or by making use of ‘aggressive’ editing and cinematography. In the latter case, non-standard framing, fast or even shock cuts as well as slow motion can be employed in order to spectacularize the action of the film and its protagonists. Similar questions need to be discussed with regard to literary texts. Marie-Luise Egbert has argued that although it is undeniable that novels dealing with terrorism form a subset of fiction if one goes by topic, they do not in themselves form […] a new paradigm (2012: 247), while Anthony Kubiak, as we have seen, diagnoses a mode of discourse which he calls narrative terrorism: attempts to destabilize narrativity itself – disrupting linearity, temporality, plot, character or whatever conventions (2004: 297). The intricate temporal structure of Conrad’s Secret Agent (employing flashback and prolepsis) would be a suitable subject for debate.

Moreover, the problematic of an aesthetics of terrorism may be regarded as closely linked to that of emotional governance (Richards 2007) which refers to the emotional aspect of governing in general and the process of governing the emotions of the political actors in particular. As political actors share some, but hardly ever all interests, their emotions tend to partly contradict each other. For journalists, for example, ‘bad news’ may be ‘good news’ when it helps increase circulation or readership, while, for the common readers/viewers, such news may be really bad (if they themselves are concerned) or of no interest at all. Taking emotional governance into account requires a writer to establish a delicate balance. With regard to everyday journalistic practices Barry Richards writes:

When something as dreadful as a massive terrorist attack happens, we are all stunned, and in various ways we all need to know something of the reality of it – the weird moment of the blast, the displaced body parts, the pathetic debris of possessions. We need journalists to bring this to us, to get the survivor accounts, the basic sequence of events, the numbers, and so on. Since these needs are partly based on reasonable information demands, and stem partly from efforts to come to terms emotionally with what has happened, we can ask of journalists that they meet them fully. Since however the same needs also stem partly from our morbid appetites for the dreadful, we ask journalists to do this without giving us gratuitous opportunity for thoughtless immersion in the horrific physical reality and in primitive emotional responses to it. (Ibid.: 70)

With regard to the control of our daily lives this appears highly persuasive because the longer we stay in those feelings of terror and inchoate anger, the more vulnerable we are to having our responses to the trauma captured by simplistic ideological positions, of all descriptions, which feed off what psychoanalysts might call emotional primitivity (ibid.). A work of art, however, may not only (want to) probe and extend the boundaries of our perceptions but can also transgress them. The licence for this procedure lies in its ‘what-if’ character. While the journalist needs to have a considerable capacity for emotional labour […] in producing reports which do not avoid the empirical object of dread but which also carry the possibility for contextualisation, reflection and stabilisation (ibid.: 70-71), the artist’s emotional labour concentrates on enabling the readers/viewers to cope by taking up different positions and perspectives vis-à-vis ‘the horror’ of terror in their processes of reading/viewing.

III.

Although the present collection of articles and thematic reviews is aware of the highly complex history of representing terrorism and its theoretical implications, it cannot possibly cover the whole spectrum of feasible approaches and topics. Therefore, in order to present a comprehensible line of argument, the focus is on terrorism’s modern and postmodern manifestations, dealing with different stages (late 19th and early 20th centuries, the 1980s, post 9/11) and discussing selected cultural, discursive and medial representations (memorials, literature, film, cartoons).

As an integral part in the history of cultural responses to terrorism, literary texts deserve particular, but not exclusive, attention. Therefore, the first two articles focus on fictional representations of terrorism, one investigating late Victorian novels while the other deals with British post 9/11 fiction. Andrew Glazzard (London), taking the sub-genre of