Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies 9781003835288, 9781032469560, 9781032469591, 9781003383963

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Methodological Plurality and Reflexivity
SECTION I: The Field of Critical Terrorism Studies and Violence
1. Calibrating Violences in Critical Terrorism Studies
2. “Terrorism” as Abjection: Queering/Abolishing Critical Terrorism Studies
3. A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies: Interrogating the Gendered Coloniality and Colonial Function of the Dominant Discourse on Terrorism
SECTION II: The Eurocentricity of Critical Terrorism Studies and Global South Approaches
4. Postcolonial Spaces and Critical Terrorism Studies: Towards a Dialogic Research Agenda
5. Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies: A Counter-Visuality of the 01/08 Anti-democratic Attacks in Brazil
6. Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya: Coloniality and Exclusion of African Women
SECTION III: Bridging Disciplinary and Methodological Gaps in Critical Terrorism Studies
7. Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies: Studying Counterterrorism as Contestation across Political Parties
8. Bringing in New Voices: Non-English Linguistic Corpora and Critical Terrorism Studies
9. Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies: A Mixed-Method Randomised Control Trial Study on Community Reintegration of Former Boko Haram Members in Nigeria
Index

Citation preview

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

This interdisciplinary book presents an intervention into methodological practices in the subfield of Critical Terrorism Studies, and features established and early career scholars. The volume interrogates the role that research methods play in shaping the sub­ discipline of Critical Terrorism Studies. It responds to two major methodological gaps within Critical Terrorism Studies: 1) the dearth of Global South cases and voices, and decolonial and feminist approaches; and 2) the lack of engagement with ‘traditional’ disciplines and quantitative methods. Together, authors demonstrate that interdisciplinary methodological dialogues can open up new possibilities for researchers seeking pathways towards and definitions of emancipation, social jus­ tice and freedom from violence. Simultaneously, the book shows that by focusing on the possibilities that methodologies open up to us and by maintaining a com­ mitment to reflexive practice, we expand our understandings of what are ‘legit­ imate’ and ‘acceptable’ forms of research, thus challenging the Critical/Terrorism Studies divide. The chapters draw upon a wide range of empirical cases, including Nigeria, Kenya, France, Brazil and the UK, focusing on three key issues within Critical Terrorism Studies: its own relationship with and perpetuation of epistemic violence; decolonial, postcolonial, Global South, feminist and queer approaches; and more ‘traditional’ approaches and methods as a means to interrogate the methodological binary between Critical Terrorism Studies and Terrorism Studies. This book will be of much interest to students of Critical Terrorism Studies, Counter-terrorism, Security Studies and International Relations in general. Alice Finden is an Assistant Professor of International Politics at Durham University, UK. Carlos Yebra López is a UKRI postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College London, UK. Tarela Ike is a Senior Visiting Fellow at Coal City University, Nigeria. Ugo Gaudino works as a Guest Teacher at the London School of Economics and as a lecturer at Kingston University. Samwel Oando is a Research Associate at the Institute for the Study of Afri­ can Realities (ISAR) of the Africa International University (AIU), Kenya.

Routledge Critical Terrorism Studies Series Editor: Richard Jackson University of Otago, New Zealand

This book series will publish rigorous and innovative studies on all aspects of terrorism, counter-terrorism and state terror. It seeks to advance a new gen­ eration of thinking on traditional subjects and investigate topics frequently overlooked in orthodox accounts of terrorism. Books in this series will typi­ cally adopt approaches informed by critical-normative theory, post-positivist methodologies and non-Western perspectives, as well as rigorous and reflec­ tive orthodox terrorism studies. Making Sense of Radicalization and Violent Extremism Interviews and Conversations Mitja Sardocˇ Mediatised Terrorism East-West Narratives of Risk Saira Ali Public Opinion and Counter-Terrorism Security and Politics in the UK Michael Lister Contemporary Reflections on Critical Terrorism Studies Edited by Alice Martini and Raquel da Silva Hindu Nationalism and Terrorism in India The Saffron Threat to Democracy Eamon Murphy Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies Gaps and Interdisciplinary Perspectives Edited by Alice E. Finden, Carlos Yebra López, Tarela Juliet Ike, Ugo Gau­ dino and Samwel Oando For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Critical-Terrorism-Studies/book-series/RCTS

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies Gaps and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Edited by Alice Finden, Carlos Yebra López, Tarela Ike, Ugo Gaudino and Samwel Oando

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Alice E. Finden, Carlos Yebra López, Tarela Juliet Ike, Ugo Gaudino and Samwel Oando; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Alice E. Finden, Carlos Yebra López, Tarela Juliet Ike, Ugo Gaudino and Samwel Oando to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Finden, Alice E., editor. | Lopez, Carlos Yebra, editor. |

Ike, Tarela Juliet, editor.

Title: Methodologies in critical terrorism studies : gaps and

interdisciplinary perspectives / edited by Alice E. Finden, Carlos Yebra

Lopez, Tarela Juliet Ike, Ugo Guadino and Samwel Oando.

Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. |

Series: Routledge critical terrorism studies | Includes bibliographical

references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023038796 (print) | LCCN 2023038797 (ebook) |

Subjects: LCSH: Terrorism--Research. | Terrorism--Political

aspects--Research. | Social sciences--Research--Methodology.

Classification: LCC HV6431 .M4678 2024 (print) | LCC HV6431 (ebook) |

DDC 363.325--dc23/eng/20231012

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023038796

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023038797

ISBN: 978-1-032-46956-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-46959-1 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-38396-3 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Methodological Plurality and Reflexivity

vii viii x 1

ALICE E. FINDEN AND CARLOS YEBRA LÓPEZ

SECTION I

The Field of Critical Terrorism Studies and Violence

13

1 Calibrating Violences in Critical Terrorism Studies

15

LAURA SJOBERG

2 “Terrorism” as Abjection: Queering/Abolishing Critical Terrorism Studies

29

C. HEIKE SCHOTTEN

3 A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies: Interrogating the Gendered Coloniality and Colonial Function of the Dominant Discourse on Terrorism

44

RABEA M. KHAN

SECTION II

The Eurocentricity of Critical Terrorism Studies and Global South Approaches 4 Postcolonial Spaces and Critical Terrorism Studies: Towards a Dialogic Research Agenda KODILI HENRY CHUKWUMA

65 67

vi

Contents

5 Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies: A Counter-Visuality of the 01/08 Anti-democratic Attacks in Brazil

82

MATHEUS PFRIMER

6 Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya: Coloniality and Exclusion of African Women

104

SAMWEL OANDO

SECTION III

Bridging Disciplinary and Methodological Gaps in Critical Terrorism Studies 7 Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies: Studying Counterterrorism as Contestation across Political Parties

125

127

UGO GAUDINO

8 Bringing in New Voices: Non-English Linguistic Corpora and Critical Terrorism Studies

149

ARIANE BOGAIN

9 Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies: A Mixed-Method Randomised Control Trial Study on Community Reintegration of Former Boko Haram Members in Nigeria

170

TARELA JULIET IKE

Index

191

Illustrations

Figure 9.1 Flow diagram depicting Randomised Control Trial.

177

Tables 5.1 Transversal CTS approaches intersecting Decolonial Studies and Visual Studies 9.1 Table showing the differences between the acceptability scores of the Service satisfaction scale for LETIT and Media Orientation groups at 12 weeks end of intervention Adamawa 9.2 Descriptive table showing medians and z values using Wilcoxon Sign Rank Test scores across time for baseline and end of intervention in the LETIT (LT) and media Orientation (MO) groups

87

178

179

Contributors

Ariane Bogain is a Senior lecturer in French and International Relations at Northumbria University, UK. Her research critically investigates the terrorism discourse in France, focusing on the legitimisation of counter­ terrorism measures by state authorities, the construction of national identity as a reaction to terrorist attacks, and everyday terrorism. She is a regular contributor to French political analysis for France 24. Kodili Henry Chukwuma is an Assistant Professor of International Security in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, UK. His research focuses on the politics of security, terrorism and counter­ terrorism, and straddles the field of International Relations, Critical Security Studies, Critical Terrorism Studies, African Politics, and Postcolonial studies. His works has been published in journals such as Security Dialogue, Interna­ tional Political Sociology, Critical Studies on Terrorism and African Security. Ugo Gaudino is a Guest Teacher at the London School of Economics and a lecturer at Kingston University. His research is located in the sub-fields of Critical Security Studies and Critical Terrorism Studies. Ugo researches the securitisation of Muslims in the UK, France and Italy, and the role of right-wing and left-wing political parties in normalising Islamophobia. Tarela Juliet Ike is a Senior Visiting Fellow at Coal City University, Nigeria. Her research interests and specialism revolve around terrorism, counterterrorism, the reintegration of ex-offenders and peacebuilding in a postconflict context. Tarela is a multiple award winner for research excellence. She was the recipient of the 2018 best article award from the British International Studies Association Royal African Society Post­ graduate paper prize. Rabea M. Khan is a lecturer in International Relations at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Her research interests include but are not limited to terrorism, religion, race, gender, Post- and Decolonial theory, feminist theory and Critical Discourse Analysis. Her work has been published with Critical Research on Religion and Critical Studies on Terrorism.

List of contributors

ix

Samwel Oando is a Research Associate at the Institute for the Study of African Realities (ISAR) of the Africa International University (AIU), Kenya. Samwel’s research focuses on a decolonial turn in terrorism studies covering indigenous and gender perspectives in Critical Terrorism Studies. He has published articles with Critical Studies on Terrorism and The African Review Journal. Matheus Pfrimer is Associate Professor of Political Geography and Security Studies at the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. His research interests include critical approaches to international security and political geography, terrorism and transnational organised crime. C. Heike Schotten is Professor of Political Science and affiliated faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachu­ setts Boston, USA. She has published multiple articles and book chapters in Nietzsche studies, critical political theory, feminist theory and queer theory, including the monographs Queer Terror: Life, Death, and Desire in the Settler Colony (Columbia UP, 2018) and Nietzsche’s Revolution: Décadence, Politics, and Sexuality (Palgrave, 2009). Laura Sjoberg is British Academy Global Professor of Politics and Interna­ tional Relations at Royal Holloway University of London and Director of the Gender Institute. Her work has been published in more 50 journals of politics, international relations, gender studies, geography and law. She is author or editor of 15 books, including, most recently, with Jessica Peet, Gender and Civilian Victimization (Routledge, 2019) and with J. Samuel Barkin, International Relations' Last Synthesis (Oxford UP, 2019).

Acknowledgements

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to our wonderful set of authors for their contributions to this volume and the stimulating conversations we have had over the past few years. We would also like to thank the peer reviewers of this volume for your help in shaping our set of chapters. Thank you also to the former convenors of the Critical Studies on Terrorism BISA working group, Tom Pettinger, Alice Martini and Raquel da Silva, for hosting our seminar series on methodologies in 2019–20, and for creating a lively and welcoming CTS com­ munity. Many thanks also to Richard Jackson for supporting this volume as Series Editor and thank you to our editor Andrew Humphrys and other editorial staff at Routledge for your support and patience.

Introduction Methodological Plurality and Reflexivity Alice E. Finden and Carlos Yebra López

Introduction During the 2021–22 academic year, the editors of this volume organised a seminar series entitled ‘Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies: Bridging Disciplinary Gaps and Centring Missing Voices’ which was hosted by the Critical Studies on Terrorism British International Studies Association (BISA) working group. These seminars revolved around feminist, queer, decolonial and Indigenous approaches to Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS), as well as their overlaps with Political Studies and linguistics. We asked metho­ dological questions about the relationship between CTS and violence and Eurocentricity and interrogated the epistemological space CTS shares with Terrorism Studies (TS). What follows in this edited volume is the result of such rich, significant, and challenging conversations, which we hope adds to new and exciting directions in CTS. In the wake of 9/11, the rapid expansion of Terrorism Studies (TS) coexisted with a series of epistemological, theoretical, ethical-normative and methodolo­ gical limitations, which led to a post-2006 consolidation of a critical perspective on contemporary issues of terrorism, namely: CTS. The first book to present the field as a methodological approach was Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda edited by Jackson, Breen Smyth and Gunning (2009), which made the first critical and foundational intervention in the field. The volume laid out the main problematics of “orthodox” Terrorism Studies, posing four major critiques: that TS treats terrorism as an objective reality rather than a social construct; that there is a lack of methodological rigour within TS research; that often research does not pay attention to the political environment in which TS departments are set up; and that many outputs have a narrow aim of “problem solving” which produces “simplistic and conservative understandings of the world” (Jarvis, 2016, p. 30). As part of its response to these issues, CTS scholarship has presented an abundance of innovative discussions through its commitment to “disciplinary and intellectual pluralism and a willingness to engage with a range of perspec­ tives and approaches” (Jackson, Breen Smyth and Gunning, 2009, p. 222), and to challenge unreflective scholarship in order to work towards a “broadly defined DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963-1

2

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

notion of emancipation” (Breen Smyth et al., 2008, p. 2). As the 2017 Special Issue of Critical Studies on Terrorism acknowledged: the journal aimed to (…) pluralise the (…) methodological (…) basis of terrorism-related research, (…) the special issue we present here (…) consists of a collection of articles which employ and engage with queer theory, critical realism, gender studies, memory studies, and political philosophy, among others (…). Once again, this plurality and diversity speaks to the maturing of the field and the success of its aim to provide a broad ‘home’ for the ‘critical’ study of terrorism and counterterrorism. (Jackson et al., 2017, p. 2) However, despite the commitment to methodological plurality, much CTS work continues to be focused on discourse-oriented methods and tends to shy away from bridging gaps between quantitative and political science-oriented methods (Schuurman, 2020). Additionally, there continues to be a dearth of Global South cases and voices, and decolonial and feminist approaches (AbuBakare, 2020; Chukwuma, 2022; Groothius, 2020; Khan, 2021; Majozi, 2018; Meier, 2022; Oando & Achieng, 2021; Suleiman, 2017). The Special Issue editors also acknowledged this, noting the following: it remains the case that the majority of contributors to the journal originate from and/or work in the global north, and the perspectives and concerns of the global south are still rarely heard. And, if we look at the variety of ‘critical’ approaches employed in the journal’s articles, it is noticeable that post-colonialism is rarely employed as a framework of analysis. (Jackson et al., 2017, p. 2) The bias within CTS methodological choices is understood by Stump and Dixit (2013) and Jarvis (2016) as partly originating from a narrow defini­ tion of “critical” within our sub-discipline. In their volume, Critical Methods in Terrorism Studies, Stump and Dixit (2013) raised important questions around the bias within CTS and the sub-discipline’s production of a set of “legitimate” research methods. They show that “critical” can be defined on a spectrum: at one end sits an understanding developed from the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory that can risk narrowly channelling a universal, Eurocentric definition of “emancipation”. Gunning (2007) notes that, while broadly defined as a progression away from all forms of violence, this interpretation of emancipation risks relativising certain forms of violence, and casting some as acceptable in the normative pursuit towards a “just” society. At the other end of the spectrum, “critical”, in a broader sense, “means to inter­ rogate the common-sense assumptions that inform analyses of security issues more broadly and terrorism in particular” (Stump and Dixit, 2013, p. 5). For Stump and Dixit (2013), when we maintain a narrow commitment to emanci­ pation as the definition of “critical”, we can risk limiting the possible pathways

Introduction

3

open for CTS research, thus bolstering the boundaries of what is considered to be a “legitimate” research method. However, expanding the limits of the “critical” certainly runs its own risks: as others have noted, because CTS is epistemically and sometimes financially bound to TS and the policy world of military and defence (Toros, 2016, 2017), it has not been able to extricate itself from colonial modalities of thinking (Khan, 2021), and therefore is itself bound to perpetuate some forms of violence. While this is certainly the case, and a number of our chapters investigate the role of violence within CTS further (Sjoberg, Schotten and Khan, in this volume), it is also true that maintaining a strict binary con­ struction of Critical/Terrorism Studies restricts the theoretical and methodo­ logical avenues open to critical scholars and, crucially, can deter a self-critique of our own scholarly flaws. Indeed, as Horgen and Boyle (2008) note, while calling for open dialogue between the two camps, not all work that is rejected as “orthodox terrorism studies” is necessarily bereft of self-reflection. Gun­ ning (2007, p. 241) points out that when we are not reflexive of the western, liberal underpinnings of frames of “emancipation”, we can unintentionally reproduce the structure of human security that we are seeking to challenge: the notion of human security is deeply embedded in the secular indivi­ dualist perspective prevalent among Western (and Westernised) scholars. It is moreover often linked to a principled aversion to conflict and a pri­ vileging of non-violent methods. Precisely because a critically conceived field has an ‘emancipatory’ agenda, it can end up imposing its particular normative agenda and so become just another (neo)-colonial project. Stump and Dixit (2013) argue that instead, focusing on the possibilities that methodologies open up to us (by maintaining a key commitment to reflexive practice, rather than a particular form of “emancipation”) we can expand our understanding of what is considered to be “legitimate” research. This volume builds on what was set out by Stump and Dixit, by adding further to conversations around Eurocentricity and the boundaries of the “critical” method. In so doing, we are not advocating for an uncritical use of “orthodox” literature, but instead a self-reflective praxis that notes our own replication of exclusionary narratives and further, a praxis that opens itself up to the possibility of new dialogues in the struggle towards social change and revolutionary practice (Stump and Dixit, 2013, p. 45). This commitment is mirrored across the chapters in this volume. In spite of major methodological differences between the chapters, our authors all demonstrate a commitment towards reflexivity as a key requirement of any CTS approach that is serious about forging emancipatory futures. For the purposes of this volume we use the term “methodology” to encompass the overarching theoretical and ethical standpoints that guide the considerations we take in our research and the means used to approach and examine terrorism and counterterrorism, including but not limited to our

4

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

choice of methods of data collection. Considering the rich diversity of meth­ ods and approaches presented in this volume, we advocate for a methodology that is adaptive, dynamic, and one that is open to the possibilities on offer from multiple forms of research. This edited volume seeks to respond to three key issues within CTS by exploring the possible new paths that methodologies can present to us. First, this volume explicitly engages with the question of CTS’s own relationship with and perpetuation of epistemic violence (mainly chapters by Sjoberg, Schotten and Khan; other chapters engage this question too, such as Oando, Chukwuma and Pfrimer). Second, this volume presents work that draws on postcolonial, Global South, feminist and queer approaches that continue to be marginalised within CTS, demonstrating how such methodological approaches help us to think differently about concepts within CTS, including its normative aims. Finally, we present chapters that engage with more “traditional” approaches and methods as a means to interrogate the binary that methodologically sepa­ rates CTS from TS. Our authors propose relationships with CTS’s normative aims that range from abolition and deconstruction to dialogic and relational engagement. By proposing new uses for methodology and conceptualising it as a potentially transformative process, this book also adds to debates around the role of researchers within the architecture of counterterrorism, and what more socially just forms of data gathering might look like.

The Challenges of Methodological Plurality The rich methodological diversity of CTS scholarship within this volume provides new avenues towards and ideas concerning emancipation and social justice. However, there are also some major tensions that run across our sets of chapters which are concerned with differing understandings of what is meant by the subdiscipline’s use of the term “critical” and its normative commitment to emancipation (Stump and Dixit, 2013). This volume speaks directly to these tensions and, in so doing, it provides some potentially unex­ pected conclusions. Where more “traditional” methodologies are proposed, for instance in Chapters Seven and Nine, this is done too with a commitment to reflexivity, demonstrating how methods that are less often understood as “critical” can also offer emancipatory pathways. The first key tension with which scholars of CTS will be familiar, which often characterises workshops, conferences and seminars, is the “resistance/ compliance” conundrum. This debate has been foundational across critical approaches to International Politics and International Law, in particular for feminist, queer, and postcolonial scholars in discussions over how far we can work to change and reconstruct liberal institutions and structures to “include” marginalised communities; and how far such structures should be abandoned, noting the heteronormativity and Eurocentrism of the founda­ tions of the liberal order (Charlesworth, Chinkin and Wright 1991; Kapur, 2018; Kouvo and Pearson, 2004; MacGinty, 2012; Otto, 2017).

Introduction

5

Within work on terrorism and security, scholarship tends to either resist the use of the “terrorism discourse”, noting that an engagement with the term “terrorism” and more broadly, with policy making institutions, perpetuates the forms of discrimination upon which it has been built (Lynch, 2013; Younis & Jadhav, 2019; See also Sjoberg, in this volume), or alternatively, seeks to reframe or transform the term in a new light. Examples of the latter include the “diversification” of Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) agendas to encompass the actions of white far-right groups (Jarvis, 2022; James, 2022). In this sense, arguing for the “reconstructive potential” of the discipline, Lindhal (2020a, p. 43) and Toros (2016) both point to the importance of engagement with state institutions in order to foster change. However, other work demonstrates that security practices are complex processes that therefore cannot be captured by a binary construction of resis­ tance/compliance. For instance, Spiller, Whiting, Awan and Campbell (2022) argue that there is a wide range of engagements with the Prevent duty within Higher Education, noting that sites of security are “fluid” and “active”, and that actors move between processes of negotiation, ignoring and compliance with the agenda. Similarly, Busher, Choudhury and Thomas (2019) and Kaleem (2022) demonstrate that the multifarious and everyday workings of security politics take place in multiple, overlapping ways. We can think of our own engagement with spaces of security, as researchers and academics, in much the same way. De Goede’s (2020) work on the potential synthesis between Critical Security Studies and Science-and-Technologies Studies draws on Foucault’s rejection of a binary drawn between “ideal critique” and “real transformation”. Instead, it argues that critique can be anchored within practice “as an engaged doer rather than a detached judge” as part of a “complex, ongoing, practice of political engagement and experimentation” (De Goede, 2020, p. 103). From another perspective, feminist, queer, and postcolonial approaches have offered alternative solutions to the engagement with state institutions through routes that do away with Western liberalism altogether and choose instead to learn from and invest in community-based perspectives and alternative understandings of kinship, peace and freedom that do not engage with the security state (Otto, 2017; Kapur, 2018). Within these various dynamic understandings of what constitutes actions, practice and critique, our thinking of what constitutes pathways and methodologies towards “emancipation” is therefore complicated. This tension runs across the nine chapters of the present volume, all of which sit somewhere on the kaleidoscopic landscape of resistance and com­ pliance. The chapters by Sjoberg, Schotten and Khan, for instance, portray the entanglements of CTS with epistemic violence, noting that “scholarship generally and CTS scholarship specifically is always and necessarily engaged in enterprises of the production and infliction of epistemic violence” (Sjoberg, in this volume). Schotten’s queer approach notes a commonality between the discursive figures of the “terrorist” and the “queer” through a shared abjec­ tion from humanity and social life. This perspective exposes the white settler

6

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

civilisational rendering of such figures as a threat to morality. Hence, Schot­ ten (in this volume) doubts “the relevance or usefulness of “terrorism” as a designation of political violence and, therefore, the relevance and usefulness of continuing to study it, however ‘critically’”. Instead, she calls for an abo­ litionist approach to the discourse of “terrorism”. For Khan, such epistemic violence can be understood as the perpetuation of the project of western colonial-modernity. Khan argues that it would be foolish to attempt to deco­ lonise TS and thus its counter discourse, CTS, as both disciplines (the latter indirectly) are founded upon the perpetuation of colonial-modernity. Instead, Khan proposes a “decolonial mission” for CTS that is formed solely around deconstructing and exposing the colonial-modern underpinnings of the dis­ cipline, rather than its transformation, which she notes, is not something that a discipline that is engaged with colonialism can do. Alternatively, others in this volume note the discursive entanglements with violence, and present methods that would work to unravel and rebuild the lin­ guistic corpus of Critical Terrorism Studies. Oando’s chapter focuses on Kenya and demonstrates how PVE agendas within the Global South represent a form of neo-imperialism that render local and Indigenous knowledge “informal” and therefore marginal. Unlike Khan’s call for a deconstructive mission for CTS, though, Oando argues for the need for inclusive and transformative PVE fra­ meworks that work from local knowledge production. The plurality of positions taken around the resistance/compliance debate are productive when we bring our attention back to some of the key normative questions for CTS, such as: what does “critical” and “emancipation” look like, and for whom, within our discipline? A second major tension that divides scholars within CTS broadly is how ontological and epistemological commitments are often rigidly set within strict methodological silos. The ontological and epistemological commitments of CTS as laid out by Jackson (2007, p. 3) are both the “impossibility of neutral or objective knowledge about terrorism” (which therefore poses a direct critique to Terrorism Studies for imagining terrorism as a “thing”) and epistemologically, that the production of knowledge about terrorism is fundamentally a “social process” where it is “impossible for any individual to engage in value-free and presuppositionless research” (Lindhal, 2020b, p. 42). Therefore, traditionally within CTS, scholars have tended to take a deconstructivist approach through the use of various critical theories such as postcolonial, feminist, queer, con­ structivist and qualitative methods, very often that of critical discourse analysis. This is reminiscent of the general divide within the social sciences between qualitative and quantitative methods. However, such a divide can risk creating even thicker disciplinary boundaries and can prevent fruitful cross-dis­ ciplinary conversations. Qualitative methods are often understood as provid­ ing a more holistic picture of reality because of their in-depth engagement with the subject group. However, even within qualitative methods, there is a measure of unknown and a risk that we may flatten and misinterpret our sources (Westmarland, 2001). For Westmarland (2001), the statistical survey

Introduction

7

can provide emancipatory and feminist knowledge, so long as a reflexive approach is taken to the role of the researcher and the constructed nature of knowledge. She also notes that for governments to take seriously the concerns of marginalised groups, it is essential to present research “in the… language such a research audience expects” (Westmarland, 2001, pp. 19–20). In such a way she argues that quantitative work can provide a useful “broader picture” of society. All in all, pathways towards emancipation are not characterised by what methods we apply but rather, they are about the theoretical and ethical values that guide our methodological choices. In this volume, our authors collectively demonstrate that methodological choice does not always map onto the expecta­ tions we have for ontological, epistemological and normative commitments, and indeed that a commitment to normative emancipation does not necessarily require a qualitative method. Instead, what is required is a commitment to reflexivity within research. Part Three in particular seeks to demonstrate how more “traditional” areas of political science can also be used productively to further the normative commitments of CTS. For instance, in Chapter Nine, Ike examines the use of mixed methods and argues that such approaches, when co­ designed with local communities, can be useful for CTS scholars precisely because such methods are often taken more seriously by policy-making bodies.

Parts and Chapters This volume is divided into three parts. Part I, The Field of Critical Terrorism Studies and Violence, explores the entanglements of the discipline with differ­ ent “violences”, as put by Sjoberg. Chapter One by Laura Sjoberg discusses the ways in which (Critical) Terrorism Studies wields and contains violences, from the usages of the word “terrorism” to the ways in which certain ideas about killability, grievability and group membership manifest in CTS work. Sjoberg explores violences in three interrelated ways: epistemic violences, “real world”-produced violences, and looking at the violences of reflexivity reflexively, before arguing for the necessity of “both individual and collective reflexivity towards the violences of our own work, and the work produced as a corpus in the subfield with which we identify and to which we contribute” as a modest and responsible way forward for the discipline. Chapter 2 by C. Heike Schotten argues that queer approaches to CTS are uniquely valuable in that they are capable of accounting for the moralising forms of abjection that constitute both queerness and “terrorism”, better understood not as ‘real’ objects of inquiry but, rather, ideological cudgels of imperial, (settler) colonial and white supremacist orders. In this chapter, Schotten argues that the overlay of abominations that queerness names is also what is named in the figure of “the terrorist”, an incomprehensible being whose existence signifies moral perversity and existential threat in its refusal to understand or acknowledge the sanctity of human life or the innocence of “civilians”. Her queer approach to method is embedded with a resistance to

8

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

and refusal of the “regimes of the normal” and the normalisation of oppres­ sion. For Schotten, therefore, inclusion with the norm and compliance with the ordinary is not a solution to abjection, but instead reproduces abjection elsewhere. Her politics of abolition, then, would refuse engagement with the “terrorist discourse” all together. This part is brought to a close with Chapter 3 by Rabea M. Khan who examines the forms of gendered coloniality embedded within and perpetuated by CTS. Because of the nature of the sub-discipline, as one which is inevitably tied to TS, Khan argues that calls for “decolonising” CTS are misplaced. She instead contends that CTS should not aim to “decolonise” but rather, that it should challenge and excavate the gendered-colonial implications, imagina­ tions, and logics hidden in the dominant discourse on “terrorism”. This chapter argues that CTS needs to challenge the project of Western (colonial-) modernity, which has produced the racialised and gendered, dominant dis­ course on “terrorism” today. A theoretical framework investigating “gendered coloniality” is proposed as one way of studying and uncovering the gendered and racial codes inherent to and surrounding the discourse on “terrorism”. Part II, the Eurocentricity of Critical Terrorism Studies and Global South Approaches, both acknowledges the Eurocentric limitations of CTS and seeks to move towards the transformation of the subfield through engagements with postcolonial and Global South perspectives. This section opens with Chapter 4 by Kodili Henry Chukwuma which examines different approaches to spatiality within postcolonial scholarship, and how these may help to re-examine some of CTS’s key concepts. Framing counterterrorism as a spatial practice - one that produces a contextually formed discourse - Chukwuma argues that a dialogic relationship between CTS and postcolonialism can help CTS scholars to reflect on alternative methodological and theoretical approaches. To do this, this chapter explores the debate on counterterrorism efforts in Lake Chad Basin to illustrate the complexity of space (and identity) and to render visible certain continuing logics underlying terrorism and counterterrorism in this context (and the Global South more widely), particularly those of colonial and imperialist interpellations which are often neglected in ostensibly critical inter­ ventions. Taken together, this chapter argues that the CTS research agenda (still) revolves around a seemingly Western-centric orbit which occludes the experiences, temporalities, and geographies of violence of the Global South and highlights potential synergies between CTS and Postcolonial theory. Chapter 5 by Matheus Pfrimer explores how ideas from Brazilian modern art could present CTS with a visual, decolonial approach as a modality, practice, and method. This chapter engages with the anthropophagy or the consumption of colonial culture from a decolonial standpoint. Imbued with national self-determination and anti-colonial principles, anthropophagy was conceived by the Brazilian modernist movement which held that the produc­ tion of an original and creative culture is fashioned through cooking, eating, devouring and regurgitating the coloniser’s culture. This ironic and humorous metaphor refers to times of resistance against European colonialism in that

Introduction

9

the concept of Anthropophagy conjures up scenes of cannibalism by Indi­ genous Peoples that have highly impacted the coloniser’s imagination over the centuries. By consuming and incorporating the coloniser’s culture from a dif­ ferent standpoint, anthropophagy enables hybrid epistemologies to emerge without incurring xenophobia and could present CTS with new visual and decolonial pathways. Chapter 6 by Samwel Oando brings this part to a close by providing an applied example of the problematics of Eurocentric knowledge production within Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) research and practice in Kenya. Oando problematises the missing voices of Indigenous [African] knowledge sys­ tems, and African women, within international donor-funded strategies for CVE. From interviews with local CVE practitioners in Kenya, Oando demon­ strates how knowledge production by African women on CVE initiatives is ren­ dered “informal” both within academic and policy spaces and how this comes to be reproduced in CVE practice. Oando argues that donor-funded CVE pro­ grammes on the African continent are underpinned by Eurocentric knowledge that subjugates and excludes Indigenous knowledge. The participation of local actors within CVE developments is therefore constrained, meaning that local concerns are seldom considered by interventions to the detriment of sustainability. This exclusion further subverts the voices of Kenyan women who are already restricted by local patriarchal systems. Interventions for CVE designed exclusively on Western knowledge and assumptions of knowledge transferability, therefore, present a double threat of systemic and gender exclusion. Part III, Bridging Disciplinary and Methodological Gaps in Critical Terror­ ism Studies, puts forward the question of CTS’s engagement with more “tra­ ditional” disciplines and methods. Chapter 7 by Ugo Gaudino engages with political science. Gaudino problematises executive-centric methodology used in established research in Terrorism Studies and argues for a methodological approach that instead focuses on the role of political parties. The chapter argues that the discourse on terrorism and the policies to fight it change across the Right-Left spectrum. In so doing this chapter shows that a partycentric approach provides new methodological avenues for CTS that are not limited to thinking about the state as a hegemonic entity. For Gaudino, when we think of politicians as actors who (can) disrupt hegemonic narratives of the state, we can unlock emancipatory and hopeful futures for CTS work. This argument is explored by looking at different cases of politicisation and contestation of terrorism across Western countries. Chapter 8 by Ariane Bogain explores the value of non-English corpora and linguistic studies for CTS. By exploring the difficulties in translating linguistic frames from French to English, Bogain demonstrates how context is crucial in the production of the terrorism discourse and how scrutinising where narra­ tives are created from is key to understanding the meanings attached to ter­ rorism. Using examples from the French authorities’ terrorism and anti­ terrorism discourse as well as media representations of French jihadists, this chapter illustrates how language is never neutral but serves to construct a

10

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

specific reality made to look obvious when it is contingent and ideological. Bogain then presents a reflective discussion on some of the challenges of doing cross-cultural research, including questions on positionality and the insider/outsider debate. The volume and Part III are rounded off by Chapter 9 by Tarela Juliet Ike, which brings us to contentious questions of quantitative methods, “traditional disciplines” and CTS’s engagement with the state. Ike’s chapter argues that CTS must incorporate quantitative and scientific methods if it is to have “real­ life” effects. Ike presents a mixed-method, experimental case study on the rein­ tegration of Boko Haram members in Nigeria. In so doing, she demonstrates that, when quantitative studies are complemented with qualitative, locally informed methods, research on terrorism studies is both more rigorous and reflective and is more likely to be taken seriously by policymakers.

References Abu-Bakare, A. (2020). Counterterrorism and race. International Politics Reviews, 8, 79–99. Breen Smyth, M., Gunning, J., Jackson, R., Kassimeris, G. & Robinson, P. (2008). Critical terrorism studies – an introduction. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1(1), 1–4. Busher, J., Choudhury, T. & Thomas, P. (2019). The enactment of the counter-terrorism “Prevent duty” in British schools and colleges: beyond reluctant accommodation or straightforward policy acceptance. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12(3), 440–462. Charlesworth, H., Chinkin, C. & Wright, S. (1991). Feminist Approaches to Interna­ tional Law. American Journal of International Law, 85(4), 613–645. Chukwuma, K. H. (2022). Critical terrorism studies and postcolonialism: constructing ungoverned spaces in counter-terrorism discourse in Nigeria. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(2), 399–416. De Goede, M. (2020). Engagement all the way down. Critical Studies on Security, 8(2), 101–115. Groothuis, S. (2020). Researching race, racialisation, and racism in critical terrorism studies: clarifying conceptual ambiguities. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 13(4), 680–701. Gunning, J. (2007). Babies and bathwaters: reflecting on the pitfalls of critical terrorism studies. European Political Science, 6(3), 236–243. Horgan, J. & Boyle, M. J. (2008). A case against ‘Critical Terrorism Studies’. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1(1), 51–64. Jackson, R. (2007). The Core Commitments of Critical Terrorism Studies. European Political Science, 6, 244–251. Jackson, R., Breen Smyth, M. & Gunning, G. (Eds) (2009). Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda. Routledge. Jackson, R., Toros, H., Heath-Kelly, C. & Jarvis, L. (2017). Introduction: 10 Years of Critical Studies on Terrorism. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 2, 197–202. James, N. (2022). Countering far-right threat through Britishness: the Prevent duty in further education. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(1), 121–142. Jarvis, L. (2016). Critical Terrorism Studies After 9/11. In R. Jackson (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Terrorism Studies (pp. 28–38). Routledge. Jarvis, L. (2022). Critical terrorism studies and the far-right: beyond problems and solutions? Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(1), 13–37.

Introduction

11

Kaleem, A. (2022). The hegemony of Prevent: turning counter-terrorism policing into common sense, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(2), 267–289. Kapur, R. (2018). Gender, Alterity and Human Rights: Freedom in a Fishbowl. Edward Elgar Publishing. Khan R. (2021). Race, coloniality and the post 9/11 counter-discourse: Critical Terrorism Studies and the reproduction of the Islam-Terrorism discourse. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14, 498–501. Kouvo, S. & Pearson, Z. (Eds) (2004) Feminist Perspectives on Contemporary International Law: Between Resistance and Compliance?Hart Publishing. Lindahl, S. (2020a). The end of emancipation? CTS and normativity. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 13(1), 80–99. Lindhal, S. (2020b). Conceptualising violent extremism: ontological, epistemological and normative issues. In A. Martini, K. Ford & R. Jackson (Eds), Encountering Extremism: A critical examination of theoretical issues and local challenges. Routledge. Lynch, O. (2013). British Muslim youth: radicalisation, terrorism and the construction of the “other”. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 6(2), 241–261. Mac Ginty, R. (2012). Between Resistance and Compliance: Nonparticipation and the Liberal Peace, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 6(2), 167–187. Majozi, N. (2018). Theorising the Islamic State: A Decolonial Perspective. ReOrient, 3(2), 163–184. Meier, A. (2022). Terror as justice, justice as terror: counterterrorism and anti-Black racism in the United States. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(1), 83–101. Oando S. & Achieng, S. (2021). An indigenous African framework for counter­ terrorism: decolonising Kenya’s approach to countering “Al-Shabaab-ism”. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14(3), 354–377. Otto, D. (2017). Resisting the heteronormative imaginary of the nation-state: Rethinking kinship and border protection. In D. Otto (Ed.), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks. (pp. 236–257). Routledge. Schuurman B. (2020) Research on terrorism, 2007–2016: A review of data, methods, and authorship. Terrorism and Political Violence, 32(5), 1011–1026. Spiller, K., Whiting, A., Awan, I. & Campbell, B. (2022). The Politic of Everyday Counter-Terrorism: Online Performances and Responsibilities of the Prevent Duty in UK Higher Education Institutions. Sociology, 1–19. Stump, J. & Dixit, P. (2013). Critical Terrorism Studies: An Introduction to Research Methods. Routledge. Suleiman, M.D. (2017). Eurocentrism, Africanity and ‘the Jihad’: Towards an Africa Worldview on Jihadism, Méthod(e)s. African Review of Social Sciences Methodol­ ogy, 2(1–2), 41–61. Toros, H. (2016). Dialogue, praxis and the state: a response to Richard Jackson. Cri­ tical Studies on Terrorism, 9(1), 126–130. Toros, H. (2017). ‘9/11 Is Alive and Well’ or How Critical Terrorism Studies Has Sustained the 9/11 Narrative. Critical Studies on Terrorism 10(2), 203–219. Westmarland, N. (2001). The quantitative/qualitative debate and feminist research: a subjective view of objectivity. Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung, 2(1). www.qualita tive-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/974. Younis, T. & Jadhav, S. (2019). Islamophobia in the National Health Service: an eth­ nography of institutional racism in PREVENT’s counter-radicalisation policy. Sociology of Health and Illness. 42(3), 610–626.

Section I

The Field of Critical Terrorism Studies and Violence

1

Calibrating Violences in Critical Terrorism Studies Laura Sjoberg

Introduction I reject the Western military-industrial-racist-homonationalist assemblages that dominate global politics, but I am constantly complicit in and with them. I recognise and reject the necessary sexist and racist undertones of the word “terrorist”, but I have published that word, under my name, with and without petty scare quotes, countless times. I recognise and look to combat the many layers of everyday violences along what Chris Cuomo (1996) called the “continuum of violence” in what Betty Reardon (1985) called the sexist “war system” which Mbembe (2019) identifies as necessary links between moder­ nity and terror, yet I get in a petrol-powered car to go to work using a mili­ tary-designed navigation app. These are but a few of the “contradictions” in professional life. So, I am a giant hypocrite, and that is an important point, but it is not the point of my opening paragraph. The point is about the inevitability of violence, the inevitability of contradiction, and the (related) inevitable failure of critique. Certainly, I could be more careful about my language choices, more conscious about my environmental choices, and a more careful consumer of “better” products and services – there is no doubt about that. But I could never actually find a perfect way to navigate these issues, or an ideal of pure critique, or a non-violent way to navigate either “Critical Terrorism Studies” (CTS) specifically or my life/ “the world” as such. To wit this point: the word “terrorism” is in CTS, however critical CTS is of its implications. I want to build on the argument that there is no such thing as non-violent research and that critique is always and inevitably failed (Sjoberg, 2019, 2020). I look to bring that argument to bear on an attempt to re-vision and re-interpret CTS as such. Along those lines, this chapter discusses the ways in which CTS wields, and contains, violences, from the usages of the word “ter­ rorism” to the ways in which certain ideas about killability, grievability and group membership manifest in CTS work. Rather than singling out any approach to CTS, this chapter follows several scholars’ suggestion that there is no such thing as non-violent research. As such, it asks where some DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963-3

16

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

violences of CTS are directed, at whom, and who are to hold themselves responsible for it, as a reflection on the current constitutions of the field. Using illustrative examples of the use of critique in CTS work, this chapter suggests that a (modest) approach which recognises the inevitable failure of critique might (perhaps ironically) provide a way forward for a CTS that can justify it in its own terms. This argument proceeds by looking in three direc­ tions: at epistemic violences, at “real world”-produced violences and at the violences of reflexivity reflexively. Accordingly, this chapter begins by making the argument that scholarship generally and CTS scholarship specifically is always and necessarily engaged in enterprises of the production and infliction of epistemic violence, thereafter exploring the implications of that view of the theory and practice of “critique” in CTS. It moves on to suggest that this inevitable violence and necessary failure of critique has violent effects not only in academic practice, but in the (imagined separate) “real world” “out there” to which CTS refers. It then makes a case that these violences are compounded by violences of reflexivity across the field and even in this chapter. The chapter concludes by posing a set of questions about what CTS futures might look like, methodologically, and substantively, from this perspective.

The Inevitability of Violence in Scholarship In a critique of dichotomies in just war theorising, I adapted an argument about the unavoidability of violence both in International Relations (IR) scholarship and in global politics (Sjoberg, 2020). Suggesting that scholars and commenta­ tors alike (myself included) often rely somewhat haphazardly on dichotomised notions of war and peace, violence and non-violence without either empirical or intellectual justification for presenting these concepts as dichotomised or even susceptible to dichotomisation. The argument that violence is on a continuum and unavoidable is not new. Betty Reardon’s Sexism and the War System (1985, p. 5) linked militarism and sexism, arguing that the two are not separable, rather “sexism and the war system are two interdependent manifestations of the same problem: social violence”. The term “war system” in this context is not meant to be synon­ ymous with or replace the idea of war, but to transgress traditional under­ standings of a dichotomy between war and peace. Reardon (1985, p. 10, emphasis in the original), explains: “my use of the term war system refers to our competitive social order, which… assumes unequal value among and between human beings, and is held in place by coercive force”. This “war system” is everywhere across global politics (Reardon, 1985, p. 11). Other feminist scholars have characterised local and global politics as a continuum of violence (e.g., Cockburn, 2010; Cuomo, 1996; Kelly, 1987; Moser & Clark, 2001). With these scholars, I use a feminist continuum approach to violence, which I see as having four key principles. The first key principle is that acts of violence are not just one-time events (e.g., Cuomo, 1996; Pain, 2015; Wibben, 2010). It is common to assume that

Calibrating Violences in Critical Terrorism Studies

17

violence is an “act” which can be delineated by the time that it starts and the time that it ends, and a war is a historical “event” that has a starting day, notorious battles, and an ending day and/or treaty. War, conflict, and political violence cannot be bundled into the neat descriptors often used by politicians, historians, and media outlets. Rather, feminist theorists have thought about war as a presence in everyday life (Cuomo, 1996). Even mainstream scholars have shown that war outlasts its traditionally understood timelines (e.g., Ghobarah, Huth & Russett, 2003), and feminist scholars have looked at a number of the lasting dimensions of conflicts that appear to have ended. These sorts of stories can be found across a wide variety of biographical and academic treatments of wars and conflicts (e.g., Enloe, 2010; Salbi, 2006; Wibben, 2010). The second key principle follows: rather than being a one-time event, violence is a continuum. Characterising violence as a continuum is not the same as characterising all violence as the same. Rather, violence has differ­ ent levels and types of material and moral consequences, but similar roots, similar logics, and similar permissive causes. Feminist work has laid the foundation for such an understanding. Work on everyday terrorism (Gentry, 2015; 2020) and intimate warfare (Pain, 2015) does not suggest that house­ hold violence should be confronted with the same tools as international conflict, but does argue that the violences often understood as “domestic violence” works with the logic of fear to enforce control, much like violences understood as war and terrorism. While this is an over-simple generalisation by necessity, of course, more specific logics can also be compared. Whereas these violences are not the same thing, they are of the same group. That group, “violence” has three elements in common: the use of force (including physical, psychological and epistemic violence) (Moreton-Robinson, 2011); the logics of coercion, control, annihilation, humiliation, and/or domination (Muro-Ruiz, 2002); and gender subordination. This third element has been accounted for in different ways in the literature: as sexism (Reardon, 1985); as patriarchy (Enloe, 1983, 1989); and as masculinism (Tickner, 1992, 2001). My use of the term “gender subordination” emphasises the privileging of traits, objects, and actors related to masculinities over those related to femininities, and the mapping of value onto genders by masculinisation and feminisation (Cockburn, 2010; Elshtain, 1987; Peterson, 2010; Sjoberg, 2013).1 The third key principle builds on the first two: if violence is a continuum rather than an event, there is no such thing as either absolute violence or absolute non-violence. In other words, there is no such thing as non-violence per se, but only more or less violence. Non-violence is not as much a thing as a constituted constitutive category that makes dominant discourses about war possible. For example, in just war theorising often the goal of a claimed just war is peace with justice (e.g., Williams & Caldwell, 2006) – where just peace justifies the violence that made it possible. Other scholars of war and peace talk about the possibility of “positive peace”, which supplements the non-violence of “negative peace” with justice, fairness and reconciliation (e.g., Diehl, 2016;

18

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Galtung, 1969; Kacowicz, 1997). Without setting aside fully the significant work in Peace Studies, I argue that neither positive nor negative peace is pos­ sible, and that the use of these concepts as approximations obscures those impossibilities. Specifically, I am arguing that pretending that there is a such thing as a non-violent “other” to war and violence obscures the violences in allegedly non-violent “alternative” political choices.2 It is my contention that every piece of research, every claim, and every act can be understood to contain or have complicity in violences. One difficult example that can be illustrative is the claim that there ought to be women’s equality in the world. This claim, without the nuance of understanding differ­ ences among women (e.g., Crenshaw, 1989) or the problems with the category of “woman” (e.g., Butler, 1991), can be not only violent but harmful. For now, my point is not to compare this violence relative to the violence of not making a claim to women’s equality, only that there is violence in each claim – and in claims to combat violence more generally. Given the normative implications of attributing violence to claims of non-violence, I do it carefully and intention­ ally, with four goals: 1) discovering who benefits from labelling something non­ violent (e.g., Sjoberg & Gentry, 2007; Strange, 1994); 2) thinking about who is harmed by particular framings of ideas and events (e.g., Shafer, 1994); 3) deconstructing the dichotomy between perpetrator and victim (e.g., Gentry & Sjoberg, 2015; Moser & Clark, 2001); and 4) critiquing righteous claims to non-violence or peace (e.g., Cahill, 2006; Miller, 1986). Even with these important goals, the fraught nature of this argument necessi­ tates a fourth key principle: that violence within and along the continuum of violence is not either the same or a linear progression, but distinguishable along a number of axes, including severity, intention, and impact. In other words: Violences differ significantly in their types and in their severity. There are physical violences, emotional and/or psychological violences, discursive violences, epistemic violences, violences of exclusion, violences of poverty, violences of hunger, violences of inclusion – too many types of violence to elaborate here (or perhaps anywhere). (Sjoberg, 2020).3 Any practical comparisons would necessarily be complicated, with valuebased claims about benefit, harm, severity and morality. Rather than try to solve these complexities, for these purposes, I am interested in the implica­ tions of understanding the impossibility of non-violence for thinking about the political, sociological, and ethical dimensions of CTS.

CTS’s Inevitable (Non-Violent) Violences In CTS specifically, Richard Jackson (2007) lists the field’s commitments as critiquing the methods, state centrism, and problem-solving orientation of orthodox “Terrorism Studies” while acknowledging the politically constituted

Calibrating Violences in Critical Terrorism Studies

19

nature of terrorism knowledge, the ontological instability of the category of “terrorism”, a commitment to reflexivity, and a set of progressive normative goals. In different ways and for different angles, all of these goals aim at calling out and providing corrective for the violences that those in CTS see in mainstream or orthodox Terrorism Studies (TS). This constitutes CTS as the non-violent alternative to the violent orthodoxy. Lee Jarvis (2009) suggests that there are two key elements to the production of this alternative: broad­ ening the field and turning to interpretivism. Charlotte Heath-Kelly (2019) suggests that CTS treats truth as a product of power, looking at how the concept of “terrorism” is both socially constituted and key to contemporary statecraft, where the co-constitution of “terrorism” and the state is respon­ sible for significant violence. Caron Gentry (2020, p. 3) also suggests that CTS pays attention to “why terror is draw along lines of long-standing, cultural biases” as “racism, misogyny, heteronormativity, religious bias, geopolitical structuring, and state centrism… harm the way we see, locate, construct and therefore combat terrorism” (Gentry, 2020, p. 13) Across a wide variety of scholarship, CTS has identified important failures of, omissions of, and vio­ lences of orthodox approaches to the study of terrorism. Certainly, there are controversies both about and within CTS – some scholars critique the existence of the subfield (Weinberg & Eubank, 2008), while others debate its direction (Qureshi, 2020; Stump & Dixit, 2012), or look to push its critiques further (Schotten, this volume). For the purposes of this chapter, I am not particularly interested either in the inherent worth of CTS as a subfield or the comparative value of critiques within the field. Instead, here, I assume for analytical purposes two things which may or may not be, strictly speaking, “true”: first, that the critiques that CTS makes of orthodox TS specifically concerning its violence are correct and justified; and second, that those critiques are made by scholars intending to decrease the violence of terrorism studies. In other words, I assume that work in CTS, individually and collectively, is both “correct” and well-intended. Making this assumption for the purposes of this chapter allows it to reach beyond debates within CTS to talk about the potentials of the field at its possible best for the purposes of thinking about CTS methods. If various works in CTS are correct in their critique of the violences of “Terrorism Studies” as such (see above), then it has identified and called out those violences, which in itself is a normative contribution. This, however, is often understood as paired with one of two moves: either understanding the CTS scholarship making the critique as itself non-violent or understanding the CTS scholarship as progressing towards non-violence in its deconstruction of violent scholarship on terrorism. Neither assumed move is necessarily jus­ tified, however. If one takes the premise that non-violence is impossible as a starting point, the first move of assuming CTS work is non-violent is inher­ ently flawed in general, even before adding whatever violences might be spe­ cific to the argument being made in a specific piece of research. The second move is harder to disaggregate. While the premise that non-violence is

20

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

impossible also debunks the assumption that CTS scholarship is approaching non-violence, this move is more complex than the first one. Even without a possibility of non-violence, in theory it is possible to be progressing towards some approximation of non-violence. But, as mentioned above, the con­ tinuum of violence is not linear – one cannot progress “up” and “down” that spectrum in a straightforward way. Further, the assumption that correct cri­ tique of violence is necessarily “progress” towards non-violence implicates some of the concerns with righteousness discussed above. This means that CTS can be both “fighting the good fight” and correct, and yet still both violent and not en route to non-violence either in theory or in practice. To illustrate this, I will use as an example a short piece of mine, Feminist Interrogations of Terrorism/Terrorism Studies (Sjoberg, 2009). The short overview piece notes that there is “not one feminist perspective on ter­ rorism but many”, including approaches that ask where women are in terror­ ism, what genderings exist in the practice and study of terrorism, as well as how to know and define terrorism (Sjoberg, 2009, p. 69). Taking the assumptions of the correctness of the critique and the positive intent noted above, then this critique pushes orthodox “Terrorism Studies” as such to be less gender-violent, and looks at the gender-violent dimensions of who the research studies, what the research studies, and how the research is conducted. The piece has been cited positively related to those critiques of mainstream Terrorism Studies, and critiqued for not going far enough in its criticisms. These reactions suggest either that the piece could be non-violent or that it could be on the path to non-violence, improved by further critique. The above has eliminated both possibilities conceptually, but a quick look at the text can confirm this. For example, the thesis that the text is itself non-violent can be fairly easily disproven by looking at the race and/or national origin composi­ tion of the citations, the uncritical use of the word “terrorism” or the casual use of the male/female dichotomy. The thesis that the text is progressing towards non-violence is more difficult to “disprove” but it is possible to put together a case with a view of the text. One approach would be to qualify and quantify the violences in the piece and weigh them on some multidimensional scale used to approximate the continuum of violence. While this might be a possible path, it is not the one chosen here – because this argument is meant to be both specific to the piece and general theoretically. Instead, having established both that the piece does not achieve non-violence and that it does not approximate non-violence, the question of whether it is “progress” towards non-violence becomes a theoretical one. The argument that it is relies on an assumed property of correct critique or deconstruction of violence: that this sort of work is necessarily a move away from violence, rather than simply a different sort or magnitude of violence. That assumed property, however, is neither justified normatively nor empirically. In my short piece, the recogni­ tion of violence in orthodox TS is clear, as is the violence of the piece itself, and the two do not have any clear relationship, much less a covarying one. It therefore becomes both a legitimate and important question to ask, of my

Calibrating Violences in Critical Terrorism Studies

21

piece and of CTS more generally: what are the violences in the pieces of CTS research, and in the research programme more generally? This work is too expansive to do comprehensively in one chapter. Short speculation, however, shows a number of potential directions to explore about the violences of CTS work. First, the invisibility of gender in some CTS work is a source of violence, where women, gender, femininities, and sexualities are often neglected or underestimated, resulting in gender subordination, bias, partiality of account, and obscuring of violences (Sjoberg, 2009). Second, the continued use of the vocabulary of “terrorism” (inside and outside of scare quotes) implicates many of the critiques of the violences of what scholars have called “terror talk” – where the discourses of terrorism have significant epis­ temic violent contact (Baxi, 2009). Third, scholars have critiqued race, raciali­ sation, and racism in CTS work, and the reproduction of Islamophobia in CTS work (e.g., Groothuis, 2020; Khan, 2021; for an in-depth discussion of how CTS is inevitably tied to Eurocentric knowledge production, see Khan, this volume). Fourth, significant heteronormativity in thinking about the subject/ object of terrorisms, even in CTS work, which has harmful implications in a number of areas (e.g., Puar, 2006). This list of possible violences is just a pos­ sible start. Others could certainly be explored, but, for now, this chapter will turn to a related question – why am I interested in pursuing the question of the epistemic violence in CTS work as a methodological question? The next three sections put forth a preliminary case for the importance of this discussion by exploring the potential “real-world” implications of CTS’s epistemic violences, proposing a way for CTS to take methodological account of its own violence, and thinking about futures of a CTS capable of accounting for the violences in its scholarship.

CTS’s Epistemic Violence in the “Real World” Scholars have made arguments about the “real world” implications of epis­ temic violence in academic work in a variety of contexts (e.g. Brunner, 2018; Teo, 2010, 2011). Different definitions of epistemic violence suggest that it in itself has material dimensions and direct material implications, including but not limited to delineation, bordering, and embodied injury (Brunner, 2018; Tolia-Kelly, 2016). Brunner (2018) discusses first-order and second-order vio­ lence entanglements, where second-order entanglements are the tangible impacts of discursive violences. Briefly, then, the epistemic violences in CTS could both have their own “real-world” violent impacts and trigger secondorder tangible impacts. In this situation, there might be a number of first-order violences of CTS that are worth considering. The most obvious first-order violence is the continued use of the terminology of “terrorism” and “violent extremism” with their racebiased, statist and often Islamophobic connotations. While, like I just did, we often use these terms in scare-quotes, or with caveats, many pieces of research in CTS do continue to use these terms, and do so in ways that often (whether

22

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

intentionally or unintentionally) entrench their sociopolitical meanings and significances even in the practice of critique. Given previous arguments about the necessary incompleteness of critique (e.g., Sjoberg, 2019), then, while the critical use of these terms is to be distinguished from the non-critical use of same words, it does not reach the level of unproblematic in terms of their use and deployment. Another first-order violence might be the over-emphasis on some parts of the subject-matter studied in CTS in search of scholarly nuance. For example, work that examines “women’s participation in political violence” has been overrepresented in conference panels that address issues of gender and security. In such spaces, the intellectually important points about what these framings mean for war, conflict and gender have been combined with sensa­ tionalist elements of the topic studied. The level of interest has taken away attention (in scholarly and policy terms alike) from security situations in which people understood as women (and people more generally) are significantly more likely to find themselves. In other words, CTS work, in searching for nuance and specificity, can emphasise infrequent or improbable situations, trading off with attention for more frequent and more probable situations. Third, and related to the question of the necessary incompleteness of critique, even the most critical of CTS scholarship will neglect, or fully leave out, some aspect of critical analysis or critique – the omission of which constitutes vio­ lence. So, for example, critiques of the Islamophobia of terrorism talk might reify traditional gender categories; critiques of the gendered nature of terrorism talk might reify racial or religious biases; even decolonial, feminist, anti-racist critiques of terrorism talk might reify statism or nationalism or academic pri­ vilege or any number of harmful categories or discourses. Fourth, critique of critique can be itself violent, where the legitimacy or voice of a particular cri­ tique or set of critiques is downplayed by those who discuss the incompleteness or inadequacy of those critiques. These are just a few potential first-order epistemic violences of CTS. CTS’s first-order violences can also have second-order violent effects. These include but are not limited to “policy-world” (selective) mimicry of academic term and concept usage; media quoting or adapting the research; student use of the research either as a lesson about how the world works or as a framework for how to do analysis; and any audience capitalising on the righteousness of “cri­ tical” research to wield it towards a violent political end. You might say that none of these potential uses are unique to CTS – and I would not necessarily disagree (except perhaps that the last one might be more pronounced in some sorts of work than in others). A significant part of my point is not that CTS is uniquely violent – it is instead that CTS is not uniquely non-violent. Even as my work (e.g., Sjoberg & Gentry, 2007) might work against some violences (like the sexisms of mainstream TS) it may also be deployed violently (like being used by policy-world counterterrorists to increase their understanding of their perceived enemies). In other words, CTS is not absolved of or above the violences of the scho­ larship (or policies) that it is critical of and/or positioned critically towards.

Calibrating Violences in Critical Terrorism Studies

23

On top of this, though, I am arguing that it is important to look for, recognise, and take responsibility for even the violences of violence-critical or less violent scholarship, particularly in the fraught realm of CTS. Given the gender, sexu­ ality, race, ethnicity, religion, class, and nationality bias, discrimination, and even oppression in “terrorism policy” “out there” and “terrorism studies” in the academy, attention to the (unique and non-unique) first- and second- order vio­ lences of CTS work is important. While analysis of specific works within the CTS tradition is beyond the scope of this chapter, I do argue that this sort of examination should be part and parcel of the performance of CTS research.

Looking at the Violences of Reflexivity Reflexively Given that these possible impacts of the violences of CTS are serious, figuring out how to deal with those is important both methodologically and politically. First, it is paramount to ask questions about the violences of one’s scholarship, in addition to questions about positionality and research ethics. Such an approach would normalise asking questions about the nature, level, and implications of violence in each scholarly project as it is pursued. Key questions include: Who is harmed by this work? Who is excluded from this work? Who benefits from this work? To whom do the beneficiaries of this work do harm? Who is harmed by the planetary footprint of this work? Who and what is harmed by how the work frames the concepts therein? I believe that the answer to this set of questions is never that no harm or violence is done. As a result, asking these questions is a first step to trying to understand, reconcile, shape, and minimise the violence in one’s research (and across one’s social and political choices). A second step might be to build on feminist principles of empathy and dialogue to deal with ethical structures relating research and the “real world” from the “bottom up” rather than from traditional disciplinary hierarchies and/or inherited scholarly priorities. From Christine Sylvester’s (1994) approach to empathetic co-operation, CTS scholars can look to comprehend and act within moral frameworks even of those who would be our opposites, and from there come to understand a wider variety of potential ethical quandaries. Further, with Brooke Ackerly (2000), CTS scholars could pay attention to multi-cited positionalities in order to see the variety of potential impacts across situations in global politics. In addition, the listening guide methodology put together by Carol Gilligan (1982) can support hearing nuances in others’ perspectives, needs, and choices. Supporting these approa­ ches, Laura Shepherd’s (2008) work deconstructing gender/security discourses can help to identify violences in inherited discourses. Annick Wibben’s (2010) feminist narrative framework for thinking about Security Studies is a tool for incorporating a variety of experiences into dialogues about ethical research choices and their (violent) consequences. Approaches to thinking about moral issues along the continuum of violence which are discussion-based and empha­ sise diverse viewpoints might provide more leverage for reflexivity specifically about potential violences.

24

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

This might support practices that work to think about and map continuum violence – what is violence in CTS research? What type of violences are in CTS research? What are potential measures of the severity of violences in CTS? Similar work has been done about global politics (e.g., Collyer et al., 2007; Galtung, 1969; Marshall, 1992), and in IR/War Ethics (e.g., Sarkees & Schafer, 2000; Vasquez, 2009). Across this work, though, reflexivity and reflexivity within reflexivity are limited by views on violence in scholarship that I argue just do not hold up: either that it is possible to produce non­ violent scholarship or that the responsibility for violence in one’s work ends when one either criticises the violences of others’ work effectively or works to minimise the violence in one’s own work. Taking non-violent scholarship as impossible, I argue that, while calling out violence in scholarship is good, as is attempting to minimise the vio­ lences in one’s own scholarship, those steps do not end either the process of asking questions about the violences in one’s own scholarship or the responsibility for those violences. Instead, I argue that, even when non­ violence is impossible, it is important both to try to minimise the violences one’s scholarship does and to acknowledge and take responsibility for the nature, direction, and impacts of the necessary remaining violences. In other words, personal responsibility for the first- and second-order vio­ lences in one’s work is not limited to minimising them; it also includes recognition, admission, acknowledgment, and bearing the weight of the effects.

Whither CTS? I am, then, envisioning a CTS with a steep uptick in the acknowledgment of and taking responsibility for the violences of the scholarship included within the “subfield” as such. I do not envision this being a game of pointing out the problems with others’ work and distinguishing one’s own work as (approaching or approximating) an ideal – that is a large part of why I chose not to do so here, and instead to use my work as a foil for the critical per­ spectives I was interested in taking. Looking forward, I envision both indi­ vidual and collective reflexivity towards the violences of my own work and the work produced as a corpus in the subfield with which I identify and to which I contribute. Rather than an adversarial and morally righteous system of critique-of-the-critique-of-the-critique, I am suggesting a combination of modesty (acknowledging the necessary normative shortcomings of one’s own work) and personal engagement and responsibility (looking to under­ stand, feel, and grow from those shortcomings). This would foster an atmosphere capable of doing the important work of critical approaches to “terrorism” and critique of “Terrorism Studies” without the illusion of non­ violence or scholarly righteousness in the process. Acknowledging the vio­ lences in/of my own CTS work, I hope, is a first step towards thinking about taking this approach more broadly.

Calibrating Violences in Critical Terrorism Studies

25

Notes 1 When feminist scholars suggest that there is gender subordination in violence, they are not characterising violence as something men do to women – instead, they are making a more complex argument about gender traits being related and assigned to figurations of violence. Women commit violence and men can be its victims (e.g., Moser & Clark, 2001; Sjoberg & Gentry, 2007), but that does not make those violences without genderings. 2 In the past, I have pointed out these problems in ‘peaceful’ policies like economic sanc­ tions (e.g., Arya, 2008; Gordon, 2002, 2010; Mueller & Mueller 1999; Simons, 1999). 3 For examples and/or descriptions of emotional violence (Laverne, 2017), psycholo­ gical violence (Lambert, 2017), discursive violence (Pratt, 2011), epistemic violence (Brunner, 2018; Dotson, 2011; Teo, 2010); violences of exclusion (Choi, 2014; Keen, 2005); violences of poverty (Eron, Guerra, & Huesmann, 1997); violences of hunger (Scrimshaw, 1986); and violences of inclusion (Haritaworn, Kuntsman, & Posocco, 2013). This list is not intended to be exhaustive of descriptions of these sorts of violence, and the list of sorts of violence is also not intended to be exhaustive.

References Ackerly, B. (2000). Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism. Cambridge University Press. Arya, N. (2008). Economic Sanctions: The Kinder, Gentler Alternative? Medicine, Conflict, and Survival, 24(1), 25–41. Baxi, U. (2009). Reading 'Terror': Reflections on François Debrix, Tabloid Terror: War, Culture, and Geopolitics. Theory and Event, 12(2). Brock-Utne, B, (1985). Educating For Peace: A Feminist Perspective. Pergamon. Brunner, C. (2018). Epistemic Violence. Outlining a Term for Peace and Conflict Research. ZeFKo. German Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies (SI2), 25–59. Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. Routledge. Butler, J. (1991). Gender Trouble. Routledge. Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519–531. Cahill, L. S. (2006). Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory. Fortress Press. Chesterman, S. (2001). Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention and International Law. Oxford University Press. Clegg, S. (2013). The Space of Academia: Privilege, Agency, and the Erasure of Affect. In C. Maxwell & P. Aggleton (Eds). Privilege, Agency, and Affect: Understanding the Production and Effects of Action (pp. 71–87). Palgrave. Cockburn, C. (2010). Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War: A Feminist Standpoint. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 12(2), 139–157. Collyer, C. E., Gallo, F. J., Cory, J., Waters, D. & Boney-McCoy, S. (2007). Typology of Violence Derived from Ratings of Severity and Provocation. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 104(2), 637–653. Cuomo, C. J. (1996). War Is Not Just an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence. Hypatia, 11(4), 30–45. Crenshaw, C. W. (1989) Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(8), 139−167.

26

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Diehl, P. F. (2016). Exploring Peace: Looking Beyond War and Negative Peace. International Studies Quarterly, 60(1), 1–10. Dotson, K. 2011. Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing. Hypatia, 26(2), 236–257. Elshtain, J. B. (1987). Women and War. University of Chicago Press. Enloe, C. (2010). Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War. University of California Press. Enloe, C. (1989). Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. University of California Press. Enloe, C. (1983). Does Khaki Become You? The Militarisation of Women’s Lives. South End Press. Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191. Gentry, C. (2015). Epistemological Failures: Everyday Terrorism in the West. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 8(3), 362–382. Gentry, C. (2020). Disordered Violence: How Gender, Race and Heteronormativity Structure Terrorism. Edinburgh University Press. Gentry, C. & Sjoberg, L. (2015). Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores. Zed Books. Ghobarah, H. A., Huth, P. & Russett, B. (2003). Civil Wars Kill and Maim People – Long after the Shooting Stops. American Political Science Review 97(2), 189–202. Gibbons, C. (2016). When Iraq was Clinton’s War. Jacobin6 May 2016, accessed 15 August 2018 from www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/war-iraq-bill-clinton-sa nctions-desert-fox. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice. Harvard University Press. Gordon, J. (2010). Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions. Harvard University Press. Gordon, J. (2002). When Intent Makes All the Difference in the World: Economic Sanctionson Iraq and the Accusation of Genocide. Yale Human Rights and Development Journal, 5(1), 2–28. Groothuis, S. (2020). Researching Race, Racialisation, and Racism in Critical Terrorism Studies: Clarifying Conceptual Ambiguities. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 13, 680−701. https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2020.1810990. Hartiaworn, J., Kunstman. A. & Posocco, S. (2013). Murderous Inclusions. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 15(3), 445–578. Heath-Kelly, C. (2019). Critical Approaches to the Study of Terrorism. In E. Che­ noweth, R. English, A. Gofas & S. N. Kalyvas (Eds). The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism (pp. 224–238). Oxford University Press. Jackson, R. (2007). The Core Commitments of Critical Terrorism Studies. European Political Science, 6(3), 244–251. Jarvis, L. (2009). The Spaces and Faces of Critical Terrorism Studies. Security Dialogue, 40(1), 5–27. Kacowicz, A. M. (1997). ‘Negative’ International Peace and Domestic Conflicts, West Africa, 1957–1996. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 35(4), 367–385. Kelly, L. (1987). The Continuum of Sexual Violence. In J. Hanmer & M. Maynard (Eds), Women, Violence, and Social Control. Palgrave MacMillan. Khan, R. M. (2021) Race, coloniality and the post 9/11 counter-discourse: Critical Terrorism Studies and the reproduction of the Islam-Terrorism discourse. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14(4), 498−501. doi: 10.1080/17539153.2021.1983112.

Calibrating Violences in Critical Terrorism Studies

27

Lambert, C. A. (2017). 6 Troubling Signs of Psychological Abuse. Psychology Today30 August 2017, accessed 25 August 2018 from www.psychologytoday.com/ us/blog/mind-games/201708/6-troubling-signs-psychological-abuse. Laverne, L. (2014). It’s Time to Make Emotional Abuse a Crime. The Guardian, 7 September 2014, accessed 25 August 2018 from www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ 2014/sep/07/time-to-make-emotional-abuse-a-crime. Lundahi, M. (1989). Apartheid: Cui bono?. World Development, 17(6), 825–837. Marshall, L. L. (1992). Development of the Severity of Violence against Women Scales. Journal of Family Violence, 7(2), 103–121. Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Duke University Press. McMahan, J. (1994). Innocence, Self-Defense, and Killing in War. Journal of Political Philosophy, 2(3), 193–221. Miller, R. B. (1986). Christian Pacifism and Just-War Tenets: How Do They Diverge?. Theological Studies, 47(3), 448–472. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2011). The White Man’s Burden: Patriarchal White Epistemic Violence and Aboriginal Women’s Knowledges within the Academy. Australian Feminist Studies, 26(70), 413–431. Moser, C. & Clark, F. (Eds). (2001). Victims, Perpetrators, or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict, and Political Violence. Palgrave Macmillan. Mueller, J. & Mueller, K. (1999). Sanctions of Mass Destruction. Foreign Affairs, 78 (3), 43–53. Muro-Ruiz, D. (2002). The Logic of Violence. Politics, 22(2), 109–117. Pain, R. (2015). Intimate War. Political Geography, 44(10), 64–73. Peterson, V. S. (2010). Gendered Identities, Ideologies, and Practices in the Context of War and Militarism’. In L. Sjoberg, L. & S. Via, S. (Eds), Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives (pp. 17–29), Praeger Security International. Pratt, M. L. (2011). Violence and Language. SocialText Online. 21 May, accessed 25 August 2018 from https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/violence_and_la nguage_-_mary_louise_pratt. Puar, J. K. (2006): Mapping US Homonormativities. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 13(1), 67−88. Qureshi, A. (2020) Experiencing the war “of” terror: a call to the critical terrorism studies community. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 13(3), 485–499. Reardon, B. (1985). Sexism and the War System. Teachers’ College Press. Salbi, Z. (2006). Between Two Worlds: Escape From Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam. Penguin. Sarkees, M. R., & Schafer, P. (2000). The Correlates of War Data on War: An Update to 1997. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 18(1), 123–144. Scrimshaw, N. S. (1986). Consequences of Hunger for Individuals and Society. Federal Proceedings, 45(10), 2421–2426. Shafer, D. M. (1994). Winners and Losers: How Sectors Shape the Developmental Prospects of States. Cornell University Press. Shah, A. (2002). Iraq Was Being Bombed during 12 Years of Sanctions. Global Issues5 April 2002, accessed 15 August 2018 from www.globalissues.org/article/107/iraq-was-being­ bombed-during-12-years-of-sanctions. Sharp, D. N. (2012). Addressing Economic Violence in Times of Transition: Toward a Positive-Peace Paradigm for Transitional Justice. Fordham International Law Journal, 35(4), 781–815. Shepherd, L. (2008). Gender, Violence, and Security: Discourse as Practice. Zed Books.

28

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Simons, G. L. (1999). Imposing Economic Sanctions: Legal Remedy or Genocidal Tool? Pluto Press. Sjoberg, L. (2009). Feminist Interrogations of Terrorism/Terrorism Studies. International Relations, 23(1), 69–74. https://doi-org.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/10.1177/0047117808100611. Sjoberg, L. (2013). Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War. Columbia University Press. Sjoberg, L. (2019). Failure and Critique in Critical Security Studies. Security Dialogue, 50(1), 77–94. Sjoberg, L. (2020). The Fantasy of Non-Violence and the End (?) of Just War. In S. C. Roach & A. E. Eckert (Eds), Moral Responsibility in Twenty-First Century Warfare: The Ethical Challenges of Autonomous Weapons Systems (pp. 21–46). State University of New York Press. Sjoberg, L. & Gentry, C. (2007). Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics. Zed Books. Stump, J. L., & Dixit, P. (2012). Toward a Completely Constructivist Critical Terrorism Studies. International Relations, 26 (2), 199–217. Strange, S. (1994). States and Markets. Pinter. Sylvester, C. (1994). Feminist International Relations in a Postmodern Era. Cambridge University Press. Teo, T. (2010). What is Epistemological Violence in the Social Sciences?. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(5), 295–303. Tickner, J. A. (2001). Gendering World Politics. Columbia University Press. Tickner, J. A. (1992). Gender in International Relations. Columbia University Press. Tolia-Kelly, D. P. (2016). Feeling and Being at the (Postcolonial) Museum: Presencing the Affective Politics of ‘Race’ and Culture. Sociology, 50(5), 896–912. https://doi. org/10.1177/0038038516649554. Vasquez, J. (2009). The War Puzzle Revisited. Cambridge University Press. Weinberg L. & Eubank, W. (2008) Problems with the critical studies approach to the study of terrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1(2), 185–195. Wibben, A. T. R. (2010). Feminist Security Studies: A Narrative Approach. Routledge. Williams, R. E. & Caldwell, D. (2006). Jus Post Bellum: Just War Theory and the Principles of Just Peace. International Studies Perspectives, 7(4), 309–320.

2

“Terrorism” as Abjection Queering/Abolishing Critical

Terrorism Studies

C. Heike Schotten

Introduction In September 2020, just a few months into pandemic-induced online learning at most American universities, two professors at San Francisco State University (SFSU) organised an “open classroom” held as a webinar for their students as well as attendees around the world, entitled “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, & Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled”. Organised by Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, founding director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas programme, and Professor Tomomi Kinukawa, lecturer in the Women and Gender Studies Department, the open classroom was to feature Leila Khaled in conversation with Palestinian, Black, Jewish, and South African academics and former political prisoners. Leila Khaled is a long-time Palestinian freedom fighter. She is an icon of Palestinian resistance, Palesti­ nian and Arab feminism, and radical Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. She is associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was responsible for the innovation of plane hijackings as a means of bringing international attention to the Palestinian cause – a strategy that proved successful. Khaled participated in two of those plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970. In an unprecedented move, Zoom – the web platform faculty intended to use for the open classroom – wrote a letter to SFSU administration stating that hosting Khaled could be construed as “material support” for terrorism and that they would, on legal grounds, refuse to stream the event (Speri & Biddle, 2020). Simultaneously, the university’s administration was flooded with a coor­ dinated campaign of complaints from outside Zionist groups objecting to the university hosting a “known terrorist” on its campus and, complainants claimed, creating an unsafe climate for Jewish people. The university’s admin­ istration did not defend the faculty members’ right, as part of academic free­ dom, to host guest speakers in their classroom, and instead did nothing as Zoom deleted the webinar from the faculty hosts’ Zoom accounts. When Abdulhadi and Kinukawa attempted to continue the webinar by moving it to YouTube, a coordinated campaign by outside Zionist organisations flooded the YouTube complaint function, causing YouTube to pull the plug on the webinar DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963-4

30

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

as well. Simultaneously, notices of the webinar were inexplicably deleted from people’s Facebook pages (Barrows-Friedman, 2020). One year later, and well beyond the walls of academia, the Israeli government notoriously designated six Palestinian human rights groups “terrorist orga­ nisations” (Human Rights Watch, 2021). These include, among others, Al Haq, the highly esteemed and longest-existing human rights organisation in the occupied Palestinian territories, and the Union of Agricultural Works Committees (UAWC), an organisation that supports Palestinian farmers by “empowering [their] steadfastness and sovereignty on their resources within a sustainable community-based liberational developmental framework” (UAWC Mission, www.uawc-pal.org/UAWCAbout.php). In 2018, I went to Palestine to participate in the olive harvest. I joined multiple UAWC delegations helping Palestinian families harvest their olive trees. These organised delegations intentionally brought internationals together with Palesti­ nians and also connected Palestinians with one another. One of the delegations, for example, brought Palestinian schoolchildren from Ramallah and other urban areas, who had never participated in a harvest, to more rural areas, to connect them with other Palestinian children living and working on the land. Each day’s harvesting ended with a communal meal provided by UAWC, as well as much celebratory talking, singing, dancing, and laughing. One might wonder how helping farmers harvest olives constitutes “terror­ ist” activity. The answer to this question is the same as why hosting a political figure in one’s university classroom constitutes “material support” for terror­ ism. The red thread linking those six Palestinian human rights organisations together is the same ostensible reason justifying the shutdown of an academic conversation with Leila Khaled in the US: Israel claims that all six of those organisations are connected to the PFLP, and Israel and the US still consider the PFLP a “terrorist organisation” (Ayyash, 2021; Buttu, 2022). Thus, anyone with links to the PFLP is tainted by the allegation of “terrorism” and becomes, subsequently, untouchable (Buttu, 2022). Why, so many years later, well after the demise of plane hijackings is the PFLP still considered to be a terrorist organisation? Why, for that matter, was it ever considered a “terrorist” organisation (Ayyash, 2021)? What makes Leila Khaled, the PFLP, or Palestinian armed resistance to Zio­ nist colonisation emblematic of “terrorism” in such a way that, as many have observed, the word “Palestinian” is virtually synonymous with the word “terrorist” and/or Palestinians are routinely considered to be the “original” “terrorists” (despite our knowledge that the spectacular use of political violence was not innovated by Palestinians)? One can ask a related set of questions about the larger Global War on Terror (GWOT), initiated by the US and Israel in 2001 (Bazian, 2015; Kaplan, 2018). For example, in the wake of the US government’s recent drone strike murder of Osama bin Laden’s alleged successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, much of the American pundit class declared the War on Terror was finally over. Coupled with the US’s withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan a year

“Terrorism” as Abjection

31

prior, mainstream and even progressive/left news outlets opined that Amer­ ica’s foreign policy focus has shifted away, finally, from “global jihadism” to, now, great power politics vis-à-vis China and Russia (see, e.g., Hussain, 2022). Yet the larger logic of “terrorism” discourse that both motivated and perpetuated the GWOT remains hegemonic, even as it has expanded to now include (in the US anyway) white supremacist political violence. That is, even as the GWOT morphs its focus and the injuries of 9/11 have faded from most Americans’ public consciousness (in part via the emergence of new generations of Americans who have no memory of 11 September 2001 or were not even born by this date), the framework and rhetoric of “terror­ ism” discourse remains intact in the forms of its signature Islamophobia (Bayoumi, 2015), anti-Arab racism (Salaita, 2006), and anti-Palestinian racism (Abu-Laban and Bakan, 2022). What explains the “stickiness” (Khan, 2021) of these racisms and the seeming intractability of the logic of “terrorism” discourse and policy, all of which persist well beyond the ostensible expiration of the War on Terror?1 Queer approaches to the study of “terrorism” can answer these questions, because queer theory offers an account of abjection that explains the term’s ideological intractability as well as its enduring appeal and usefulness as political rhetoric. As many have argued, “terrorism” has been such an effec­ tive discourse of punitive racialisation because it mobilises settler colonial logics of white innocence and Indigenous “savagery” (Byrd, 2011; Barker, 2021; Daulatzai, 2016). Elsewhere (Schotten, 2018a), I have argued that at the root of these settler logics is a righteous defensiveness about “civilisation” that is both moralising and existential and, consequently, capable of being seamlessly transformed into a punitive cruelty that is always already justified and infinitely justifiable. Queer theory attends to this moralising, existential lament because this is the rancour that is and has historically been directed against queer people, who are understood and classified as “queer” precisely because they pose fundamental threats to social life, the continuity of the species, or the “natural” or “self-evident” character of sex, gender, and/or sexuality, which are too often considered to be the unquestioned bases of human existence. In other words, the overlay of abominations that queerness names – simultaneously an unthinkable moral perversity that also threatens the very existence and continuity of humanity and social life – is also what is named in the figure of “the terrorist”, an incomprehensible being whose existence signifies both moral perversity and existential threat in its refusal to acknowledge the sanctity of human life or the innocence of “civilians” – better specified, of course, as settlers, whiteness, and white settler civilisation. The connection between queerness and “terrorism”, then, is not simply that “the terrorist” is a failed gender or sexual subject (Puar, 2007; Puar and Rai, 2002), although this is also true. Rather, or additionally, the abomination the “terrorist” figures in the settler imagination is akin to the abomination posed by LGBTQ+ people in the antiqueer and transphobic imaginary. The commonality in this shared abjection is the rhetorical frame of existential moralism.

32

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Attending to its constitutive role in any discussion of “terrorism”, then – whether in international relations or “terrorism” studies, no matter how ostensibly critical – thus casts significant doubt on the relevance or usefulness of “terrorism” as a designation of political violence and, therefore, the relevance and usefulness of continuing to study it, even “critically”. Instead, taking this abjection and its attendant harms seriously demands an abolitionist approach not simply to “terrorism” studies, but to “terrorism” discourse, policy, and praxis as well.

Queerness and/as Abjection It is important to remember that “queer” was (and in many cases remains) a derisive and demeaning epithet used against presumptively homosexual and/or gender non-conforming people as a slur to mean unnatural, sick, immoral, per­ verse, and/or deviant, a form of discursive violence that works in tandem with physical and economic violence to maintain heteronormativity firmly in place. Heteronormativity, an important terminological innovation of queer theory, is one name for the structures of power that produce these violences. In a fielddefining statement, Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner (1988, p. 548) explain heteronormativity as “the institutions, structures of understanding, and practical orientations that make heterosexuality seem not only coherent – that is, orga­ nised as a sexuality – but also privileged”. Heterosexuality’s privilege inheres in its naturalisation, a primary source of its normativity; others include religion and science. Taken as “regimes of truth” (Foucault, 1977), nature, religion, and/or science make claims that are either inherently or easily moralised. In other words, categorical explanations or analyses of sex/gender/sexuality that unfold in the domains of “nature” or “religion” or “biology” either inherently are or quickly become questions of true and false, right and wrong, healthy and sick, or good and evil (Rubin, 1984). These sorts of explanations thereby remove sex/ gender/sexuality from the domain of the political, rendering them immune to history, contestation, struggle, or change (Rubin, 1984). Such explanations are, for all that, nevertheless profoundly political acts – precisely because they are depoliticising (Butler, 1995; Edelman, 2004). Queer takes its meaning, in significant part, as a refusal of heteronormativity, which means that queerness is also necessarily opposed to morality and mor­ alisation. Indeed, in an unwittingly telling remark, Michael Warner notes that “queer” was “originally generated in a context of terror” (1993, p. xxvi), by which he means the historical (and ongoing) violent oppression of LGBTQ+ people. In other words, heteronormativity is a form of oppression and morality/ moralisation are primary vehicles of that oppression (Schotten 2018a, 2019). Since the 1990s US advent of queer theory as an academic field, “queer” has come to indicate any number of other dissident people and projects, all of which reject heteronormativity even as they expand the scope of its meaning and referents (to include, for example, racialisation and white supremacy, patriarchy, empire, and colonisation; Abdur-Rahman, 2012; Cable, 2020; Cohen, 1997;

“Terrorism” as Abjection

33

Halberstam, Muñoz & Eng, 2005; Morgensen, 2010). “Queer”, therefore, refers not simply to LGBTQ+ people – although it can and often does also do this – but also to a methodology and a politics that resist, refuse, and defy normalising oppression (Cable, 2022; Schotten, 2018b) and the moralised terms in which it is rendered hegemonic. Queer is thus both a distinct theoretical approach as well as a praxis. To return to Warner once again, “‘queer’ gets a critical edge by defining itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual” (1993, p. xxvi). This holds not simply for the realm of sex/gender/sexuality, but also, academically, for the realms of methodology, field formation, and discourse analysis, all of which have their own regimes of the normal which exert disciplinary violences and demand compulsory conformity. Another way of saying this might be to remember, with Chandra Mohanty, that “there can, of course, be no apoli­ tical scholarship” (1991, p. 53). The distinctly Marxist character of such an observation should not obscure its feminist, antiracist, anticolonial, and queer applications. Just as Mohanty critiqued the colonial character of ostensibly liberatory Western feminist scholarship in this classic essay, so too does queer theory critique the embedded heteronormativity of ostensibly libera­ tory critical theories of all sorts (and such a critique was precisely the point of Warner’s formative volume Fear of a Queer Planet). Queer methods queer methodology itself and the fields that issue methodological directives by resisting the “regimes of the normal” embedded in those practices – whether they be particular to sex/gender/ sexuality or to other “regimes of the normal”, including white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism, or Euro/Western-centrism. This is queer theory’s Foucauldian spin on Marxist critiques of neutral scholarship: configura­ tions of knowledge are not separate or divorced from power, and power does not function without constituting itself through regimes of knowledge (Foucault, 1978). “Queer” opposes these sedimented configurations of power/knowledge because, by definition, they produce their own abjected remainders as the conceptual outsides of discourse. These “outsiders” or remainders are what is named by queerness, which is also a mark of stigma or abjection. To be abjected is to be simultaneously excluded and denigrated, statuses that are mutually constitutive of one another (i.e., one is excluded because one is denigrated, and one is denigrated because one is excluded). As queer theory is quick to note, however, this abjection is the necessary price of social formation, cohesion, and harmony (Edelman, 2004), rendering the antagonism between queerness and normalisation fundamental to human social life and a fundamentally political struggle. It therefore can be neither abandoned nor sidestepped, even within the realm of methodological approach or choice of subject matter. This is a stark reminder that not only is there no apolitical scholarship, but there is also no apolitical methodology, either. My own contribution to this thinking-through of queer methodology has been to note that, following Nietzsche, the antagonism between normalisation

34

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

and queer abjection is often if not always couched in moralising terms (Schotten, 2018a, 2019). In other words, at root, these sorts of political con­ flicts are not distractions from “real” politics or yet one more episode in a longer, manufactured, right-wing “culture war” meant to direct people’s attention away from “the issues”. Rather, morality is the rhetoric by which a fundamental and fundamentally political antagonism – that between the coercive imperatives of social order and its inevitable by-product, queer abjection – is made to seem extra- or apolitical. Couched in the language of right and wrong or good and evil (or healthy and sick or normal and abnor­ mal), political struggles surrounding sex/gender/sexuality become arguments about what is true and false, natural and unnatural, or biologically given and fictively constructed, rather than what they in fact are: struggles for power and hegemony. These are not side squabbles about “identity politics” therefore but, rather, conflicts central to any political dispute whatsoever. This is both because sex/ gender/sexuality are central to politics and social order, but also because the abjection purchased by moralising frames can, as in the case of “terrorism”, spill over and beyond the domains of sex/gender/sexuality to encompass a broader array of similarly existential threats. The effectivity, however, remains. Queer abjection is an extremely effective tool on the part of moralisers to ensure their continued power to arbitrate just who and what are allowed to belong to the social order as its proper, upright members. This means both that resistance to morality is, by definition, a form of queerness and also that queerness is another name for resistance to the violences – indeed terror – of the social order and its demands. Both suggest, as the following sections will interrogate, the necessity of abolishing the violence of that coercive social order, rather than reconciling with it through neoliberal ideals of diversity and inclusion, or what Marx might call “critical criticism”.

Moralisation of “Terrorism” and “The Terrorist” It is by now an established fact that neither Terrorism Studies (TS) nor its “offspring” field, Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS), have any clear, agreedupon definition of its presumptive proper object. Even in so-called critical studies of “terrorism”, the term’s primary function is normative, albeit only relatively so: “terrorism” names entities or forms of violence the speaker wishes to condemn (Hage, 2003). The impossibility of defining “terrorism” is due not simply to its implicit “normativity”, however, a watered-down social scientific term that, in this context, is unequal to naming the particular inadequacies and harms of this term. The most common complaint about “terrorism” now takes the form of cliché; viz. that one person’s “terrorist” is another person’s freedom fighter. This suggests that partisan application of “terrorism” is the major obstacle to its clear definition. But the problem with “terrorism” is not that it is applied inconsistently; rather, the problem is that it functions moralistically (not simply “normatively”) in order to condemn

“Terrorism” as Abjection

35

whatever it is considered to name. This is the single and remarkable con­ sistency of “terrorism” that makes it impossible to further define, leaving it a simultaneously over- and under-determined phenomenon that can function only in an ideological manner. In this sense, CTS scholars are unfortunately not critical enough. As Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson (2014, p. 476) puts it, CTS scholars “agree with traditional accounts of terrorism that something like terrorism exists and that it is possible to identify it”, thereby rendering CTS complicit with a powerful tool – i.e., “terrorism” itself – which is wielded “to attribute legitimacy to certain forms of violence while criminalising others” (Erlenbusch-Anderson, 2014, p. 477). In the face of this dilemma, Lisa Stampnitzky (2017) has persuasively argued that, rather than pursue the Sisyphean labour of definition, scholars should instead attend to how uses of the term “terrorism” instead map the speaker’s (implied) answers to a set of political questions that are themselves the real matters at hand: 1) who is the “enemy”? 2) what constitutes “the political”? and 3) is poli­ tical violence ever legitimate? In other words, “terrorism” begs several questions of political theory that all of us would be better served by confronting directly rather than pretending, as Erlenbusch-Anderson (2014) notes, that “terrorism” is a thing (see also Erlenbusch-Anderson, 2018). This is all the more so the case because, as Stampnitzky (2013) deftly explains in her important study, Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented “Terrorism”, “terrorism” developed and took shape in the latter half of the 20th century in a particularly moralised way, reducing discussions and dis­ agreements about political violence to moral debates about who is good and who is evil. Since the mid-1970s, Stampnitzky argues, “terrorism” has been deliberately produced as both an identity category and a moral epithet. In both cases, its definitional distinctness is its evil: a “terrorist” is an evil person and “terrorism” is an evil act (Stampnitzky, 2013, pp. 179–180). In short, “evil” is the defining contemporary mark of “the terrorist”, and this figure has become a contemporary identity category, something one is rather than something one does. Liaquat Ali Khan (2005, p. 47) calls this figure “the essentialist terrorist”, a monstrous being whose “most defining characteristic is that it is driven to violence by its nature, compelled by an ingrained mental/ psychological/ cultural/ religious formation”. The essentialist terrorist is: … in spiritual love with violence. He is new because he is distinguishable from the conventional terrorist who used violence to gain personal or communitarian goals. Whereas the conventional terrorist uses violence as a means to an end, the essentialist terrorist uses violence as an end in itself. (Khan, 2005, p. 47) As many have demonstrated, this innate evil, operationalised as a senseless adherence to and worship of violence, is named specifically as Islam, whether understood as a form of religious “fundamentalism” or indoctrination

36

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

(Kundnani, 2014), on the one hand, or as mental illness or depravity (Patel, 2014), on the other. This analysis is crucially connected to work being done by Critical Indi­ genous Studies scholars and scholars of settler colonialism. Native Studies scholars and anticolonial critics alike have argued that contemporary US empire remains bound to the European incursions in North America and the violences of genocide, dispossession, warfare, disease, transfer, and forced removal that characterised the emergence and establishment of the US nation-state. These scholars suggest that the study of contemporary US empire must not only acknowledge the fact of this connection, but actively seek to excavate the historical, political, and cultural continuities between them in order to clarify the character of what Derek Gregory (2004) has called “the colonial present”. These scholars also argue that the War on Terror is itself an outgrowth and expansion of the deep structures of coloni­ alism that founded settler states (Collins, 2011). In short, the War on Terror can be understood as a continuation of the US settler colonial project and a morphing of that project into a new and specifically securitised, expansionist empire. Seen in this light, the native becomes the original “terrorist”, just as the “terrorist” becomes today’s imperial, outward projection of the native (Byrd, 2011; Jung, 2011; Lubin, 2021; Silliman, 2008). Elsewhere (Schotten, 2018a), I have suggested that the “evil” and innate propensity to violence of “the terrorist” is rooted in a specifically settler colonial understanding of life and humanity, one wherein survival is tenuous and fragile and susceptible not simply to harm, but total annihilation. At the root of this settler logic is a righteous defensiveness about “civilisation” that is both moralising and existential and, consequently, able to be seamlessly transformed into a punitive cruelty that is always already justified and justi­ fiable, naturalising (for example) atrocities such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, mass incarceration, curfews, checkpoints, massacres, and extra­ judicial killings as “necessary” “security” measures. Queer theory is attentive to both the moralising and the existential char­ acter of this rhetoric, understanding the former quality to be a by-product, in part, of the latter. Indeed, queerphobia emerges fundamentally from the nexus of moralised discourses of nature, religion, science, and medicine (Rubin, 1984), all of which have at their core a commitment to a reproductive futurism (Edelman, 2004) that abjects all those deemed to trouble or trans­ cend the bounds of its heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990). It is the dogmatic moralism at the heart of queer- and transphobias that explain and justify the historic and ongoing violences committed against queer and trans people, including but not limited to denial of health care, criminalisation and pun­ ishment, ostracism, violence, segregation, discrimination, and murder. And they are moralisms that are fundamentally existential in character: whether now-outdated concerns about species annihilation owing to the perverse, non­ reproductive “homosexual lifestyle” (although the discourse linking homo­ sexuality to paedophilia and “grooming” has alarmingly re-surfaced) or current

“Terrorism” as Abjection

37

moral panics surrounding the existence of trans children and the spectre of trans athletes, queer- and transphobias have at their base an existential anxiety about annihilations of all sorts: the end of the human species, the destruction of the sanctity of marriage, the eradication of sexual difference, or the abolition of women or gender itself (Edelman, 2004; Schotten, 2022). It is precisely because the stable and cherished existence of a particular formation of sex, gender, or desire is threatened with elimination that the moralism kicks in, and at such a high temperature and volume: because sur­ vival itself is at stake. Therefore, in order to be safe, in order to preserve what would otherwise be destroyed, it becomes necessary to eradicate the threats to survival that menace it. Today it is trans life more so than homosexuality that must be eradicated, although there is still plenty of both active and ambient homophobia circulating in the political arena being realised through murder­ ous violence and policy (Bedayn, 2022). But it is the transformation of a political fight for power into a life-or-death struggle for survival that animates the moralism and leads to the kinds of violent and annihilatory measures offered – and justified – as a “solution” in response. This same sort of moralising underpins and perpetuates “terrorism” dis­ course, its stigma, and the “stickiness” (Khan, 2021) of its Islamophobia – i.e., its endurance well beyond the ostensible end of the GWOT (which is by no means over). That is, the specific moral traction at work in the category “ter­ rorist” lies not solely in the racialisation of this category or the construction of a racialised Islam as the enemy, as so many scholars and activists have rightly suggested. Additionally, its power also rests on the construal of Islam, “terror­ ism” or, sometimes, “Islamic terrorism” as fundamentally the enemy of civili­ sation, an instantiation of nihilism and annihilationism and the embodiment of evil – that is, as a contemporary version of the Indigenous “savage”. Queer approaches to “terrorism” and terrorism studies, then, not only explain what exactly animates and affectively charges the term and its related incidents, but also what renders it such a toxic and unthinkable appellation such that to be in mere proximity to it is to become an entirely abjected and unthinkable being, outside the bounds of all humanity, rationality, or finan­ cial or moral support. This is how and why Palestinians resisting occupation and dispossession – much less receiving support to harvest their own olive trees – can be understood as “terrorist”: both constitute and uphold the per­ sistence (in Arabic, sumud) of those who were never supposed to survive. Leila Khaled, despite being 78 years old, suffering from cancer, and speaking for free, remotely, to students via the internet, is the persistence of that “savagery” in her very being, a being all the more unthinkable (that is, even queerer) for being a woman (Sjoberg & Gentry, 2007, 2015). In supporting Palestinian farmers to remain on their land, and forging connections among fragmented Palestinian populations, UAWC is helping the Indigenous “savage” to survive, whose existence is an obstacle to the expan­ sion of the Israeli settler state. As many have pointed out, a hallmark of set­ tler colonialism is its disappearance of Indigenous life and substitution of the

38

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

settler in their place – a kind of “indigenisation” of the settler (Wolfe, 2006) (which is why absurdities like “Israeli couscous” exist and the names of destroyed Palestinian villages are Hebraised to inaugurate new, Israeli towns built atop the ruins – just as, in the US, we have states called Massachusetts and Michigan, or else just name everything after Columbus). The “terrorist” is both the original, Indigenous inhabitant of settled and conquered land, as well as the con­ temporary reanimation of that figure in an imperial guise. Queer theory alerts us to these facts because it senses the existential moralism animating them, reminding us that terms like “civilisation”, “innocence”, “civilians” and “non­ violence” are keywords of a moralised settler order that ought not be respected so much as unveiled and ridiculed as the ideological props of settler empire and discarded once and for all in any “critical” theory or field of study.

Conclusion: Abjection and/as Resistance This reference to ridicule is a crucial reminder that queerness is a name not simply for abjection, but also for dissidence and radical resistance. Indeed, if queerness is a privileged focus of moralisms, it is therefore and necessarily a premier site of anti-moralist resistance. As Nietzsche reminds us, the only appropriate and effective response to those he calls the “teacher[s] of the purpose of existence” is laughter (1974 [1882]), §1). Queer theory and praxis follow Nietzsche in this regard because, if anything, queerness and queer theory are gaily dismissive of received pieties, platitudes, and moral proclamations (as Nietzsche notes, whenever one of those “teachers of the purpose of existence” appears, “he wants to make sure that we do not laugh at existence, or at ourselves – or at him” (1974 [1882]), §1)). These bromides include seemingly sacrosanct ideals like futurity, children, the sanctity of marriage and monogamy, and the natural­ ness and immutability of sex, gender, and sexuality. It is, historically, for these reasons that queer and trans people have been abjected and oppressed and why, ideologically, morality serves as this abjection and oppression’s inevitable prop. It may therefore also be for this reason that queer cultures are often defined by irreverent practices of parody, sarcasm, wit, irony, bitchiness, dis­ dain, contempt, camp, and celebratory pride in precisely those embodiments and practices deemed shameful, sick, wrong, unnatural, unhealthy, and per­ verse, a pride often experienced as life-giving affirmations of queer and trans existence, beauty, pleasure, and joy. All this is just to say that duking it out in the realm of public discourse for LGBTQ+ “acceptance” or “inclusion” is akin to liberal counters to Islamo­ phobia that champion “religious diversity” and emphasise that “not all” Muslims are “terrorists” just as not all “terrorists” are Muslim (Kanji & Hussan, 2017). That is, they are superficial arguments in the realm of neo­ liberal identity politics that do not get at the more fundamental social antagonism at work in the discourses of queer- and transphobia and “Islamic terrorism”, all of which give proper names (e.g., “gay”, “trans”, “Muslim” or

“Terrorism” as Abjection

39

“terrorist”) to the abjected, but do nothing to actually dismantle that abjec­ tion. Inclusion is not a solution to abjection; rather, it reproduces abjection by ignoring it or imagining it might be solved by foisting it onto some other group(s) (e.g., “paedophiles”, “groomers”, “extremists”, or “fundamental­ ists”); in this sense, liberal inclusion is reactionary. If queerness can be mobi­ lised for radical and liberatory political projects, it can and must teach us that the settler-normative order cannot be changed or reformed by remaining within its parameters; rather, it must be abolished. Such abolitionist posi­ tionality is, in fact, both a by-product of queer abjection and the radical uptake of queer abjection in service of liberation rather than oppression (Goldberg & Bey, 2022; Stanley & Smith, 2015). Such radical reuptake means taking the significant risk of identifying precisely with the annihilatory threat the settler-normative order has produced one as being, since it is only this identification that truly does threaten to destroy the social order that imposed it. In other words, if the “terrorist” is queer, or a figure of queerness, then queers can and should be “terrorists”, not only because we already are, but also because “terrorist” is the settler-normative order’s name for the existence and resistance of those who were never meant to survive (Schotten, 2018b). Proudly avowing that stigma and claiming it righteously are acts of sumud on the part of the colonised and acts of anti-colonial solidarity on the part of others. They are also the only possible response from figures of unthinkable perversion and nihilism, since there is no other register available to them, within the settler normative order, to speak in ways that are not understood as always already conveying or inflicting violence (Qureshi, 2021; El-Kurd, 2022). Better, then, to affirm that we do indeed intend the violent destruction of settler colo­ nialism, heteronormativity, transphobia, and white supremacy. This is both why the “terrorist” is queer (or a figure of queerness) and how and why queers – when understood and mobilised politically as such and not simply or solely as LGBTQ+ people – can pose “terrorist” threats to the white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal, imperial/colonial social order (Schotten, 2018a). In this sense, but in this sense only, “terrorism” is useful as a logic, an epithet, and a political strategy; i.e., as a name and a tactic in the arsenal of abolitionist strategising to dismantle imperialism, settler conquest, and racialised incarcera­ tion. Scholars and activists from around the world have persuasively argued that “terrorism” should be dispensed with altogether, owing to its inextricable con­ nection to and emergence from white supremacy, (settler) colonisation, racist policing and surveillance, and Islamophobia (Ahmad, 2019; Husain, 2020; Nguyen, 2019; Schotten, 2015; Shamas & Ismail, 2021). Its continued use, whe­ ther to name the violence of “Muslims” or, now, the violence of white suprema­ cists and fascists, will only end up redistributing violence and surveillance to the same vulnerable, minoritised, and racialised communities that have always been the recipients of imperial and settler state power, since the character of the state will not have changed – its definitions and policies will merely have expanded to become more “inclusive” (Meier, 2020). Such inclusion quite obviously also expands the military and carceral industrial complexes that, in the US

40

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

anyway, imprison more people per capita than any other nation in the world (Shahshani & Ahmad, 2022). The only credible way to oppose the overpowering systems of domination and oppression that bear down, albeit vastly unequally, on all of us, is to become abolitionist. This is what I mean when I entreat the being, becoming, or identify­ ing with “the terrorists” that Muslims, LGBTQ+ people, and all those who “look like” them are already considered to be. Wielded in this way, “terrorism” may then succeed at a wholly necessary and liberatory total destruction by abolishing the imperial and settler formations of power that give it intelligibility. In that radical, shimmering moment, “terrorism” will also have succeeded in abolishing itself (Edelman, 2004; Schotten, 2018a), rendering it and the white settler supremacist moralism that gave it power (much less its “critical” study) mercifully obsolete.

Note 1 On the ostensible end of the War on Terror, it is instructive to compare the predominant mainstream political analysis of the US drone strike murder of al-Zawahiri with that of Maha Hilal, founding Executive Director of the Muslim Counterpublics Lab in Washington, DC. Hilal rightly insisted that this extrajudicial killing exemplified the general approach of the GWOT and cautioned that mainstream analysis announcing its demise would only facilitate its continuation by invisibilising it. Both arguments seem right: while “global jihadism is not much of a priority anymore for the US public” (Hussain, 2022), Hilal is also correct that the parameters of “justice” have been irrevoc­ ably widened by 20 years of the GWOT, such that they now include both foreign and domestic policies that would have been unthinkable prior to the turn of the century: extrajudicial assassination of US citizens by their own government, drone warfare on unnamed and unspecified targets, foreign rendition, torture, disappearance of suspect people and populations, population registries, FISA courts, invasive mass surveillance on unprecedented scales, militarisation of domestic police forces not seen since (and greatly exceeding that of) the War on Drugs, normalisation of citizen surveillance (e.g., the nowubiquity of “See Something, Say Something”), and overall normalisation of “terrorism” and its accompanying worldview as a meaningful discourse through which to under­ stand political violence (Sen & Collins, 2021). Indefiniteness was both the declared tem­ porality of the War on Terror and continues to characterise its empirical reality (Lubin, 2021); the murder of some of its central protagonists seems unlikely to have much impact on the endurance of its imperial policies, carceral logics, and political and rhetorical leverage, whether in the US and Israel or around the world.

References Abdur-Rahman, A. I. (2012). Against the Closet: Black Political Longing and the Erotics of Race. Duke University Press. Abu-Laban, Y. & Bakan, A. (2022). Anti-Palestinian Racism and Racial Gaslighting. The Political Quarterly, 93(3), 508–516. Ahmad, F. (2019). Why ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Programs Won’t Stop White Supremacists. American Friends Service Committee blog, 6 August, accessed 14 October 2022 from www.afsc.org/blogs/news-and-commentary/why-counter ing-violent-extremism-programs-wont-stop-white-supremacists.

“Terrorism” as Abjection

41

Ayyash, M. M. (2021). What Is Israel’s Word Worth? Al-Jazeera, 7 December, acces­ sed 25 November 2022 from www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/12/7/what-is-isra els-word-worth. Barker, J. (2021). Red Scare: The State’s Indigenous Terrorist. University of California Press. Barrows-Friedman, N. (2020). YouTube, Zoom and Facebook Censor Leila Khaled for Israel, The Electronic Intifada, 23 September, accessed 14 October 2022 from https:// electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/youtube-zoom-and-facebook-cens or-leila-khaled-israel. Bayoumi, M. (2015). This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. NYU Press. Bazian, H. (2015). The Islamophobia Industry and the Demonization of Palestine: Implications for American Studies. American Quarterly, 67(4), 1057–1066. Bedayn, J. (2022). Owner of gay club: Shooting comes amid a new ‘type of hate’, AP News, 25 November, accessed 25 November 2022 from https://apnews.com/article/ business-crime-shootings-colorado-springs-774c94125cbad7cf05af2c99b81d42cc. Berlant, L. & Warner. M. (1988). Sex in Public. Critical Inquiry, 24(2), 547–566. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.

Butler, J. (1995). Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of ‘Postmodernism'.

In J. Butler & J. W. Scott (Eds), Feminists Theorize the Political (pp. 3–21). Routledge.

Buttu, D. (2022). How to Crush Palestinian NGOs: Just Use the ‘T’ Word. Journal of Palestine Studies, 52(1), 57–61. Byrd, J. (2011). The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism. University of Minnesota Press. Cable, U. (2022). Compulsory Zionism and Palestinian Existence: A Genealogy. Journal of Palestine Studies, 51(2), 66–72. Cable, U. (2020). An Uprising at The Perfect Moment: Palestine in the 1990s Culture Wars. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 26(2), 243–272. Cohen, C. (1997). Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 3, 437–465. Collins, J. (2011). Global Palestine. Hurst & Co. Daulatzai, S. (2016). Fifty Years of The Battle of Algiers: Past as Prologue. University of Minnesota Press. Edelman, L. (2004). No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Duke University Press. El-Kurd, M. (2022). Do I Believe in Violence? The New Arab, 22 November, accessed 25 November 2022 from www.newarab.com/opinion/do-i-believe-violence. Erlenbusch-Anderson, V. (2018). Genealogies of Terrorism: Revolution, State Violence, Empire. Columbia University Press. Erlenbusch-Anderson, V. (2014). How (not) to Study Terrorism. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 17(4), 470–491. Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality Vol. I: An Introduction, (trans. Robert Hurley). Vintage. Foucault, M. (1977). The Political Function of the Intellectual. Radical Philosophy 17, 12–14. Goldberg, J. & Bey, M. (2022). Queer Fire: Liberation and Abolition. GLQ, 8(22). Gregory, D. (2004). The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Blackwell. Hage, G. (2003). ‘Comes a Time We Are All Enthusiasm’: Understanding Palestinian Suicide Bombers in Times of Exighophobia. Public Culture, 15(1), 65–89.

42

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Halberstam, J., Muñoz, J. & Eng, D. (Eds) (2005). What’s Queer About Queer Studies Now? Social Text, 23(3–4). Hilal, M. (2022). Ayman al-Zawahiri Killing Proves the ‘War on Terror’ Was Never Over, Middle East Eye, 4 August, accessed 14 October 2022 from www.middleea steye.net/opinion/ayman-zawahiri-killing-war-on-terror-never-over. Human Rights Watch. (2021). Israel/Palestine: Designation of Palestinian Rights Groups as Terrorists, 22 October, accessed 14 October 2022 from www.hrw.org/ news/2021/10/22/israel/palestine-designation-palestinian-rights-groups-terrorists. Husain, A. (2020). Terror and Abolition. Boston Review, 11 June, accessed 14 October 2022 from https://bostonreview.net/articles/atiya-husain-terror-and-abolition. Hussain, M. (2022). Why No One Cared that Al Qaeda Honcho Zawahiri Got Droned. The Intercept (Aug. 2): https://theintercept.com/2022/08/02/al-qaeda-zawa hiri-drone-death/ (last accessed 10/14/2022). Jung, M. (2011). Constituting the US Empire-State and White Supremacy: The Early Years. In M. Jung, J. H. Costa Vargas & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds), State of White Supre­ macy: Racism, Governance, and the United States (pp. 1–26). Stanford University Press. Kanji, A. & Hussan S. K. 2017. The Problem with Liberal Opposition to Islamophobia. ROAR Magazine, 5, 83–95. Kaplan, A. (2018). Our American Israel: The Story of a Tangled Alliance. Harvard University Press. Khan, L. A. (2005). The Essentialist Terrorist. Washburn Law Journal 45, 47–88. Khan, R. (2021). Race, coloniality and the post 9/11 counterdiscourse: Critical Ter­ rorism Studies and the reproduction of the Islam-Terrorism discourse. Critical Stu­ dies on Terrorism, 14(4), 498–501. Kundnani, A. (2014). The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror. Verso. Lubin, A. (2021). Never-Ending War on Terror. University of California Press. Meier, A. (2020). The Idea of Terror: Institutional Reproduction in Government Responses to Political Violence. International Studies Quarterly 64(3), 499–509. Mohanty, C. (1991). Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Dis­ courses. In C. Mohanty, A. Russo & L. Torres (Eds) Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (pp. 51–80). Indiana University Press. Morgensen, S. (2010). Settler Homonationalism: Theorizing Settler Colonialism within Queer Modernities. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16, 1–2. Nguyen, N. (2019). Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror. University of Minnesota Press. Patel, S. (2014). Racing Madness: The Terrorizing Madness of the Post-9/11 Terrorist Body. In L. Ben-Moshe, C. Chapman & A. C. Carey (Eds), Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada (pp. 201–215). Palgrave. Puar, J. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Duke Uni­ versity Press. Puar, J. & Rai, A. (2002). Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots. Social Text, 20(3), 117–148. Qureshi, A. (2021). I Refuse to Condemn: Resisting Racism in Times of National Security. Manchester University Press. Rana, J. (2016). The Racial Infrastructure of the Terror-Industrial Complex. Social Text, 34(4), 111–138.

“Terrorism” as Abjection

43

Rubin, G. (1984). Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. In C. Vance (Ed.). Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (pp. 143–179). Routledge and Kegan Paul. Salaita, S. (2006). Beyond Orientalism and Islamophobia: 9/11, Anti-Arab Racism, and the Mythos of National Pride. CR: The New Centennial Review, 6(2), 245–266. Sen, S. & Collins, J. (Eds) (2021). Globalizing Collateral Language: From 9/11 to Endless War. University of Georgia Press. Silliman, S. (2008). The ‘Old West’ in the Middle East: US Military Metaphors in Real and Imagined Indian Country. American Anthropologist, 110(2), 237–247. Schotten, C. H. (2022). TERFism, Zionism, and Right-Wing Annihilationism: Toward an Internationalist Genealogy of Extinction Phobia. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 9(3), 334–364. Schotten, C. H. (2019). Nietzsche and Emancipatory Politics: Queer Theory as Anti-Morality. Critical Sociology, 45(2), 213–226. Schotten, C. H. (2018a). Queer Terror: Life, Death, and Desire in the Settler Colony. Columbia University Press. Schotten, C. H. (2018b). To Exist is to Resist: Palestine and the Question of Queer Theory. Journal of Palestine Studies, 47(3), 13–28. Schotten, C. H. (2015). Why the Charleston Massacre Isn’t Terrorism, and Palestinian Resistance Always Will Be. Mondoweiss, 15 July, accessed 19 September 2022 fro https://mondoweiss.net/2015/07/charleston-palestinian-resistance. Shahshani, A. & Ahmad. F. (2022). The Surveillance State Can’t Solve White Supremacy. The Progressive, 6 September, accessed 25 November 2022 from https://progressive.org/ latest/surveillance-state-white-supremacy-ahmad-shashahani. Shamas, D., & Ismail, T. Z. (2021). Calling the Capitol Riot ‘Terrorism’ Will Only Hurt Communities of Color. Washington Post, 10 January, accessed 14 Novem­ ber 2022 fromwww.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/01/10/capitol-invasion-ter rorism-nforcement. Sjoberg, L. & Gentry, C. (2015). Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Thinking About Women’s Violence in Global Politics. Zed Books. Sjoberg, L. & Gentry, C. (2007). Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics. Zed Books. Speri, A. & Biddle, S. (2020). Zoom Censorship of Palestine Seminars Sparks Fight Over Academic Freedom. The Intercept, 14 November, accessed 14 October 2022 from https://theintercept.com/2020/11/14/zoom-censorship-leila-khaled-palestine. Stampnitzky, L. (2013). Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented “Terrorism”. Cambridge University Press. Stampnitzky, L. (2017). Can Terrorism Be Defined?. In M. Stohl, R. Burchill & S. Englund (Eds), Constructions of Terrorism: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Research and Policy. University of California Press. Stanley, E. & Smith. N., (2015). Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (2nd ed). AK Press. Warner, M. (1993). Introduction. In Warner M. (Ed.) Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. University of Minnesota Press. Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409.

3

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies Interrogating the Gendered Coloniality and Colonial Function of the Dominant Discourse on Terrorism Rabea M. Khan

Introduction Calls for “decolonising” various disciplines, curricula, or even the university itself are trending and have become a new buzzword in many academic circles and disciplines, especially those acclaimed as “critical”. While I consider myself a scholar dedicated to the dismantling of coloniality, I contend that calls for “decolonising” Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) are unattainable, misplaced and potentially problematic. While the language of “decolonising” can be used in a theoretical context to denote and signify decolonial efforts to rid an academic field or discipline of colonial remnants and biases (see Bhambra, Gebrial & Nisancioglu, 2018; Shilliam, 2021), it remains an expression that is over-used, abused and often co-opted. This ultimately dis­ tracts from its original Indigenous call for the actual repatriation of Indigen­ ous lands (Fanon, 1961; Tuck and Yang, 2012). Nevertheless, I contend that CTS still needs to engage with decolonial thinking and decolonial efforts if it wants to remain relevant and continue to provide the challenge to Terrorism Studies (TS) it set out to provide upon its inception. I therefore propose a “decolonial mission” for CTS which does not fall into co-optive, performative and/or opportunistic claims of “decolonisation”. Such a mission, I argue, first needs to acknowledge its limitations. CTS’s limits stem from the coloniality of the discipline it originates from and responds to: Terrorism Studies. I therefore eschew other terms such as “Orthodox” or “Traditional” Terrorism Studies with which to describe Ter­ rorism Studies, because I contend that doing so implies that there is a “good” or better “Terrorism Studies” that can set itself apart from the “old” ways of doing terrorism research. CTS, however, is not and should not be about forming a new discipline that conducts Terrorism Studies “better”. Aspiring to do so would be based on the premise that “terrorism” is indeed a brute fact rather than a social fact that is produced mainly in discourse (see Jackson, 2008a). Instead, CTS is a field of study dedicated to showing how inherently problematic (and constructed) the very subject of the discipline of Terrorism DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963-5

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies

45

Studies is and not a field of study that offers better ways of doing it – which consequently would also imply offering better ways of countering the violence imagined as “terrorism”.1 Although the field of CTS has by now come to encompass work that seemingly seeks to do “Terrorism Studies” better rather than challenging its very foundation, CTS originally set out to study the “productions and constructions of terrorism” (Jarvis, 2009, p. 12). A decolo­ nial CTS, I then argue, would study how these productions and constructions of terrorism uphold the project of Western colonial-modernity. This means that if CTS wants to adopt “decolonial” approaches it needs to first acknowledge that the whole discipline of Terrorism Studies to which it is a response to and a part of at the same time, is colonial. 2 This, then, leaves the very humble option for CTS to provide a platform and community which is dedicated to dismantling this (colonial) discipline rather than conducting it in better ways. As I have argued previously, CTS has emerged as a “counter­ discourse” to Terrorism Studies (see Khan, 2021a), which means it will inevitably be shaped and restrained by the very discourses it sets out to cri­ tique. This entrapment in a counter-discourse, I argue, makes it impossible to “decolonise” CTS. However, as I further argue, this need not and should not be the goal for CTS. While CTS cannot “decolonise” in that sense, it can and does offer room to resist dominant power structures, such as the global structures of White Supremacy central to the modern-colonial system we are living in. Recognising our limitations as a discipline that is dependent on these colonial structures could be the first step in embarking on a decolonial mission that stays clear from overly ambitious, and as I would argue mis­ placed, calls for decolonisation of the field. Thus, I propose an approach that is centred on deconstruction rather than transformation. While the former allows for “decolonial approaches” the latter would seek (an unattainable) “decolonisation” of CTS or TS. I propose that such a decolonial mission, then, should be centred on investigating how the dominant discourses on terrorism uphold and serve the project of Western colonial-modernity. Terrorism, I argue, is embedded in a colonial imagination and discourse even when the language of “terrorism” is not used: other forms of violence, resistance, or protest that have challenged the modern-colonial, Westphalian state’s monopoly on violence have been imagined as terrorism (and consequently were responded to in the same way) long before the current discourse on terrorism was established. Among these are insurgencies, anti-colonial resistance and other protests. As Schotten (2018, see also Chapter 2 in this volume) further notes, early colonial dis­ courses on the native “savage” have fulfilled the same function that discourses on the “terrorist” now do. Nevertheless, it seems that “terrorism” has replaced these earlier discourses of, for example, the “savage” with that of the terrorist (Schotten, 2018). This, I suggest, highlights the importance of making discourse central to any decolonial mission that CTS wants to engage in. For it is the discourse on terrorism that continues to perpetuate coloniality, both in practice and in discourse itself.

46

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Thus, in this chapter, I provide an example of a theoretical framework that is centred on excavating the colonial foundation upon which the dominant discourse on terrorism is built. This is an approach that is decolonial in its ethos but postcolonial in its methodology. This example is one I employed for my doctoral thesis which sought to excavate the colonial origin and function of the popular category “religious terrorism” in Terrorism Studies.3 This fra­ mework – the gendered coloniality – is a discourse-centred approach with the larger aim of deconstructing and excavating coloniality and gendered-colonial origins in concepts central to dominant discourses in Terrorism Studies. In what follows, I begin with an introduction to coloniality as articulated by Quijano (1992) and further developed by Mignolo (2007) but also for­ mulated in different terms by Indigenous, feminist scholars like Rivera Cusi­ canqui (2012). Here I explain the decolonial mission which I, as a CTS scholar, seek to embark on and introduce my own framework of what I refer to as a “gendered coloniality”, inspired by the work of Lugones (2010) and Oyeˇ wùmí (1997). Unlike Lugones and Oyeˇ wùmí, however, I focus on the structural and not embodied aspect of gender as central to reproducing colo­ nial structures, especially within the dominant discourse on terrorism. Here I also provide an overview of and explain the differences between postcolonial and decolonial approaches. In the next section, I explain in more detail how gender as a unit of analysis is useful in understanding how many of the colonial, and consequently racial and racist, logics are kept in place through gendered language and thinking. Importantly, however, I demonstrate how gender is only key as a unit of analysis and structuring principle akin to race because of the colonial-Western idea and imagination of it. Both “race” and “gender” sit under the colonial order that has birthed, upheld and developed them. This makes employing the framework of a “gendered coloniality” useful for understanding and subsequently challenging colonial remnants and associations in dominant discursive constructs that structure and dictate Ter­ rorism Studies. I conclude by reflecting on the centrality of discourse and how to analyse (colonial) discursive constructions, which have become real in their consequences and harmful upon utterance as they perpetuate and uphold colonial power constructs.

Coloniality: The Western Project of Modernity The discipline of IR − of which Terrorism Studies is an offshoot − has colonial origins; was designed to fulfil colonial functions; and therefore, cannot simply be “decolonised”.4 The coloniality inherent to it, however, can be excavated (see Anievas, Manchanda, & Shilliam, 2015). The same, I argue, goes for Ter­ rorism Studies. We can excavate the coloniality upon which Terrorism Studies has been built. This means that a decolonial approach to Terrorism Studies, as I propose, would be one whose main mission is to reveal the colonial structures, discourses and functions in and of Terrorism Studies. However, what exactly is coloniality to begin with?

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies

47

Coloniality is a term which was coined by Quijano (1992) and further developed by Mignolo (2007; 2011) although it has been articulated in dif­ ferent terms by Latin American feminist authors like Rivera Cusincanqui (2012) as well. Coloniality describes the logic and intellectual and structural foundation of Western civilisation (from the Renaissance until today) which enabled the activity of colonialism but also preceded and succeeded it. It could be described as the mindset and intellectual but also structural frame­ work which has enabled the conditions which initiated colonialism. As Gani (2017, p. 11, emphasis in original) further explains, “[u]nlike the historical event of colonisation, coloniality relates to epistemologies, ways of thinking, and where one is doing that thinking”. Colonialism therefore only constitutes one aspect or outcome of the larger framework, i.e., coloniality, which it is embedded in. Dominant ideas about race, more specifically racial hierarchies and racist epistemologies, are central to this larger framework of coloniality. However, the so-called “matrix” of coloniality also includes other structures of power which together constitute the foundational structure of Western civilisa­ tion (see also Gani, 2017). One of these, which I pay particular attention to, is gender as a structuring principle. As Mignolo (2011) further notes, coloniality is constitutive of what we call “modernity” today. Indeed, coloniality constitutes modernity’s constitutive “darker side” which is composed by the different nodes that tie together capitalist, patriarchal, racist and religious hierarchies into the so-called colo­ nial matrix of power. Thus, coloniality constitutes the untold, hidden but constitutive side of modernity. Modernity itself is therefore best understood as a complex “narrative that builds Western civilization by celebrating its achievements while hiding at the same time its darker side, ‘coloniality’” (Mignolo 2011, pp. 2–3). As Mignolo (2011, p. 3) therefore notes, there is no modernity without coloniality. In fact, the “modernity” which Europe draws its self-identity from is “so deeply imbricated in the structures of European colonial domination over the rest of the world that it is impossible to separate the two” (Bhambra 2014, p. 115). The reason I therefore refer to “colonial­ modernity” instead of just “modernity” on many occasions in this chapter, is to emphasise exactly this inextricability of modernity from its darker side. I also do this to emphasise that “modernity” is not a neutral signifier of an era, spearheaded and embodied by Europe, but carries problematic imaginations and ideas that serve to reinstate Western superiority and non-Western infer­ iority. It also, as Glissant (1989) has pointed to, is an ongoing project. The dominant discourse on terrorism, as I argue, serves to uphold this ongoing project of Western modernity. Coloniality — modernity’s other side — then, is much more than coloni­ alism. It is what gets “reproduced in books, in schools and universities, in cultural and esthetic [sic] standards, in common sense” (Resende, 2018, p. 2). Thus, and as I argue, it is upheld by the dominant discourse. This discourse facilitates and aids the reproduction of coloniality and as I argue reproduces the colonial logic inherent to concepts like “terrorism”.5 Thus, my primary

48

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

concern as a CTS scholar is with coloniality/modernity and the reproduction of colonial logics in concepts central to Terrorism Studies, beginning with “ter­ rorism” itself but encompassing other concepts like “religion”, “radicalisation” and “extremism”. Challenging the dominant discourse that has upheld and the coloniality that has constructed the dominant discourse on “terrorism” is a form of resistance to this coloniality and therefore also to the structures of white supremacy, central to modernity today. Making this challenge to coloniality central to my mission when studying constructs and discourses central to Ter­ rorism Studies, is the decolonial mission I envision for CTS.

A Gendered Coloniality As indicated further above, I further seek to emphasise the essential part which the dominant Western imagination and invention of “gender” plays within colonial-modernity. While gender is already implied within the concept of coloniality, as developed by Quijano (2000) and Mignolo (2011), as one of many nodes that form the matrix of coloniality/modernity, I contend that it needs to be foregrounded in a more constructive way which makes the full extent of the coloniality of gender clear. I therefore build on the important work of Maria Lugones (2010) who has extended Quijano’s concept by introducing “the coloniality of gender”. Here, Lugones (2010) argues that an important part of colonisation was the introduction of the European concept and understanding of gender to the colonised. Not only did the European man invent the colonised as subjugated, inferior and non- or sub-human, but he also invented them as colonised non- or sub-human men and women. Thus, the colonial project further imposed a particular European understanding of gender (embedded within racialised imaginations) onto colonised societies (Lugones, 2010, p. 743). In this process, previously existing systems or con­ cepts of gender and sexuality were erased and replaced by a specifically Eur­ opean one, which is predicated on a masculinity and femininity that are strongly, binarily and hierarchically opposed (see also Oyeˇ wùmí, 1997). As Bhambra (2014, p. 119) sums up, Lugones “demonstrate[s] how coloni­ ality not only divides the world according to a particular racial logic, but also creates specific understandings of gender that enable the disappearance of the colonial/raced woman from theoretical and political consideration”. As Lugones herself (2010, p. 742) further states, “I understand the dichotomous hierarchy between the human and the non-human as the central dichotomy of colonial modernity”. However, she then clarifies how this dichotomy was accompanied by the Western dichotomous hierarchical distinction between men and women: “This distinction became a mark of the human and a mark of civilization. Only the civilized are men or women”. Thus, adding Lugones’ (2010, p. 745) coloniality of gender to Quijano’s approach of “coloniality” means “complicat[ing] his understanding of the capitalist global system of power”. Although Lugones mainly uses her theoretical framework to theorise about the colonised woman and the implications of the coloniality of gender

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies

49

more generally for individuals and collective individuals, she also frames her theory in more general terms. I take this as the starting point for theorising about a gendered coloniality for the purpose of excavating the coloniality behind much of the dominant discourses on terrorism. Lugones (2010, p. 748) and Oyeˇ wùmí (1997) both note how gender constitutes a “colonial imposition”, and how colonialism introduced a gender(ed) order that did not pre-exist in the colonised societies it was introduced in. While this has important implications for the relations, positions and social movement for women (and men) in these societies and Women of Colour today, I am more concerned with the implications of the coloniality of gender beyond the indivi­ dual level and how it has implications on a more abstract level. I seek to dis­ mantle how colonial gender identities have been inscribed into concepts like “terrorism”. This means that I interrogate how the Western-colonial imagination of gender has enabled the colonial, racialised construction of “terrorism”, but also that of “religion” and/or “religious terrorism” more specifically. While post-structural feminists have done important work (as I show fur­ ther below in this chapter) in pointing to how gender identities are inscribed into more than just men and women and how gender therefore matters on a more abstract level in the transnational realm, they have largely failed to acknowledge gender as a colonial imposition and therefore as part of the coloniality of power. I therefore employ the contributions of post-structural thought on discourse and gender for a specifically decolonial purpose. This warrants a more detailed discussion on the difference between postcolonial and decolonial approaches. Although I frame my approach as decolonial in its mission and ethos, its methods and theoretical approach might best be considered predominantly postcolonial because it still utilises postmodern theories, thinkers and thought rather than radically departing from Westerndominated literature and scholarship. Indeed, completely “delinking” from it, I argue, is not possible in a discipline like CTS which continues to be depen­ dent on (and responsive to) the discourse dictated and produced by Terrorism Studies. This is another reason calls for “decolonisation” are misplaced and unattainable for CTS.

Decolonial versus Postcolonial Approaches Mignolo (2007) explains the difference between a postcolonial and decolonial approach by implying that a decolonial approach goes beyond the mission of postcolonialism (see also Tlostanova 2010). Postcolonialism is still “heavily dependent on post-structuralism as far as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida have been acknowledged as the grounding of the post­ colonial canon: Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha” (Mignolo, 2007, p. 452; see also Passada, 2019, pp. 3–4). While postcolonial theory is focused on “scholarly transformation within the academy”, a decolonial pro­ ject is a project of “delinking” and drawing from sources outside of the Wes­ tern-centric academy (Mignolo, 2007, p. 452). This main criticism of

50

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

postcolonialism, then, is that it still relies on the same resources which have also been used to produce colonial logics in the first place. Postcolonial scholars, such as Chakrabarty (2000, p. 4), have acknowledged this dilemma of criticising Eurocentric knowledge production of the academy, while still writing from within this European intellectual inheritance themselves. Postcolonialism has also been accused of being more limited with the time period it is concerned with as it is mainly focused on the colonial develop­ ments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and its implications. Decolo­ nial approaches on the other hand extend this time period to the much earlier, first European incursions to the Americas in the fifteenth century (Bhambra, 2014, pp. 115–119). It is also not only focused on the activity of colonialism per se but rather its preceding and enabling structures (i.e. “coloniality”). Postcolonial theory on the other hand is criticised for actually (re)centering colonialism: on the one hand the very assumption of the prefix “post” implies an “inadequate temporality” and suggests that colonialism has been over­ come today; on the other hand, it also makes colonialism “the marker of historical difference” (Ahmed, 2000, p. 10). Both are aspects which decolonial scholarship seeks to challenge and work against. Even more interesting is Aijaz Ahmad’s (1995) critique of postcolonialism. He argues that postcolonialism’s focus on colonialism as a marker of time ultimately serves to recentre capitalist modernity “as the primary engine in determining historical change” (Ahmad as cited in Ahmed, 2000, p.10). Instead, colonialism “is almost incidental to this history insofar as moder­ nisation took place whether or not particular nation-states were colonised by the Europeans” (Ahmad, 1995, p. 7 as cited in Ahmed, 2000, p. 10). What matters the most in determining history is capitalist modernity which hap­ pened to take the colonial form in some places but not all. Sara Ahmed (2000, p. 10) further implies the importance of focusing on the “constitution of modernity” more generally, which included colonialism among other things. This is very much in line with decolonial thinking (see Mignolo, 2007 and Quijano, 2000). Coloniality is positioned as the other side of modernity and signifies everything (including and especially capitalism) that enabled colonialism in some places and at particular times but did not necessarily occur everywhere and in the same form. Thus, decoloniality provides a plat­ form for de-centering colonialism and its inadequate focus on it as primary. Tlostanova (2010, p. 20) further argues that postcolonialism still often limits itself by relying on postmodern approaches, rather than looking beyond Western Europe and Northern America for knowledge production. Rather than limiting itself to merely criticising or critiquing Western-centric knowl­ edge production, decolonial approaches aim to deconstruct Eurocentrism (Tlostanova 2010, p. 21). Nevertheless, both postcolonialism and decoloni­ ality are united in their goal to radically depart from colonial knowledge production, be it through transformation or deconstruction. This is why I frame my approach to CTS as one that is decolonial in its mission (centred on the dismantling of modernity/coloniality), even when the methodologies and

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies

51

approaches available to us as CTS scholars are likely to remain pre­ dominantly postcolonial, given that we (have to) continue to respond to TS and therefore Western-centric discourses and scholarship. Consequently, to be decolonial as a CTS scholar would mean relying on Gani’s (2017, p. 11) and Maldonado-Torres’s (2011, p. 2) seemingly broader understanding of a decolonial approach as an approach which focuses on coloniality and the dismantling of it as its prime mission. Maldonado-Torres's (2011, p. 2) for example argues that a “decolonial turn” must not necessarily be constituted by one and the same theoretical school, “but rather points to a family of diverse positions that share a view of coloniality as a fundamental problem in the modern (as well as postmodern and information) age, and of decolonization or decoloniality as a necessary task that remains unfinished”. CTS, I therefore argue, can be decolonial if it aims to deconstruct rather than transform. As I contend, Terrorism Studies cannot be transformed (i.e. made “better”), and the field of CTS should not be seen as one such transformation but rather a platform for deconstruction. In the following I will outline, in more detail, how insights of post-structural feminists can be employed and improved through a decolonial lens. These insights are important as they explain in more detail some of the important mechanisms that uphold coloniality, especially through notions of masculinity encoded in Western discourses. Post-structural feminist theory might have pointed to how gender on this structural level and within language is indeed a Western characteristic of the post-Westphalian, modern world we live in. They have largely failed, however, in acknowledging these as clearly and inherently colonial by default. The next section will explain how gender is indeed every­ where and not just one of many nodes that uphold Western modernity but more accurately imagined as a code through which it is upheld (and therefore much more important in a way that is recognised by scholars like Lugones and Oyeˇ wùmí).

Gender as a Structuring Principle in the Modern-colonial World The idea of gender, as post-structural feminists have pointed out before, is a construct and has been and can be re-negotiated. It continues to function as a tool for power and as an organising principle. However, what is not always acknowledged or focused upon by feminist scholars is that gender is also a (modern-)colonial invention. One of the most well-known examples for this is provided by Oyeˇ wùmí (1997, p. 31) who explains how in Yoruba society (in present day Nigeria), “gender was not an organizing principle […] prior to colonization by the West”. Yoruba categories for “man/male” and “woman/ female” were not binarily opposed or hierarchical in the way they are in our (Western) modern understanding (Oyeˇ wùmí, 1997). Consequently, patriarchal structures, such as the exclusion of women from the public sphere were then often imported into the colonies from the West.

52

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

What the colonial example of the introduction of gender to Yoruba society illustrates is how the Western concept of gender functions as an organising principle that is based on the dichotomous and hierarchical distinction between masculinity and femininity. This Western idea of gender, just like race, also functions as a structuring principle more generally which means that it goes beyond just relating to individuals (i.e. “men” and “women”). Gender not only signifies a structure of “unequal power relationships between women and men” but also signifies a “system of social hierarchy in which masculine characteristics are more valued than feminine ones” (Tickner, 2014, p. 260). Gender identities, then, are not just inscribed onto “male” and “female” bodies but also, as post-structural feminists have pointed out, inscribed on states and institutions as well as concepts, such as foreign policy and war-making (see Peterson & Runyan, 2010, p. 3; Peterson, 1992, 2007; Sjoberg, 2013, p. 79; Tickner, 1992). The feminisation of certain non-state actors or institutions and the masculinisation of certain (usually Western and white) states, the army, military institutions and actors has consequences for international relations and is based on the Western idea of gender as hier­ archical and binarily opposed. The Western idea of gender implies the valorisation of masculine traits, which is dependent on the devalorisation of feminine traits. Thus, a femini­ sation of states or other actors within International Relations has con­ sequences and as I argue, is closely tied to the racialisation of the same. Inscribing femininity onto a state within IR also means making it “less white”, I argue. An example for this is the discourse on “failed states” in IR. Traits associated with masculinity, i.e. strength, autonomy, power, indepen­ dence, use of force and rationality are also the traits commonly most valued in the conduct of international politics (Tickner, 1992, p. 6). Thus, states seen to observe these traits in the international system are lauded, while states who are seen to not comply with them are frequently labelled as “weak states”, “fragile states” or even “failed states”. I would argue that the “weakness” or “failure” of these states relates to their (imagined) failed or weak masculinity, which serves to imply inferiority and indeed feminise these states as in need of protection or invasion by more capable, stable states. However, a closer look at which states frequently get feminised as “weak” or “failed” reveals the racial identity that is accrued to feminised states. The “failed states” discourse is hardly ever connected to Western states but most frequently relates to African, Middle Eastern and other Global South states. Indeed, as postcolonial scholar Gruffydd Jones (2015, pp. 64–65) points out, “the discourse of good governance/state failure is irredeemably rooted in an imperial and racialised imagination”. I argue that this colonial and racialised imagination of non-Western “weak” or “failed” states is upheld linguistically and conceptually through the Western gender code. This gender code fem­ inises racialised states as irrational, weak, dependent and incompetent. This feminisation then has real life consequences in providing the justification or rationalisation of invasions or “interventions” into so-called “failed states”. It

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies

53

further displays a resemblance to colonial logic and discourse, which justified the invasion and colonisation of non-European states based on the racist idea of its peoples as less developed, “dependent” and therefore also feminised. This is also where the discourse on terrorism becomes relevant again. While on the one hand there is a notable resistance to the idea of “state terrorism” in dominant terrorism discourse, (Jackson, 2008b), when it is discussed, it is usually discussed as something that “weak” or “failed” or “fragile” states are prone to. Both the usual resistance of discussing “state terrorism” and its predominant attachment to non-Western (“weak”) states is a gendered, and I argue colonial, discourse. The resistance to the idea of state terrorism becomes apparent in dominant terrorism discourse’s association with and imagination of terrorism as perpetrated mainly by non-state actors. This in itself can also be understood as a gendered and racialised phenomenon. As Gentry and Sjoberg (2015, p. 41) have noted, states in the Westphalian system are constructed as masculinised entities and non-state terrorist organisations are therefore “written into the masculine-feminine binary as the actors with­ out the legitimate authority to use violence”. As Gentry (2016, p. 146) further observes, there is a so-called epistemic bias against non-state actors in IR scholarship more generally, which she argues to be the direct result of the gendered “Westphalian narrative”. This narrative is the foundational idea of the primacy and legitimacy of sovereign states in IR scholarship which leads to the “hermeneutical injustice of denying power, credibility and ultimately legitimacy to non-state actors” (Gentry, 2014, p. 21). This automatically delegitimises violence perpetrated by non-state (or non-state approved) actors and makes them prone to be labelled as “terrorist”. What Gentry referred to as simply the “Westphalian system” and “narrative” on this occasion, cannot simply be abstracted from coloniality. The Westphalian system being the very symbol of the constitution of modernity in Europe, is inherently colonial. The modern state-system as we know it today emerged at the same time as European colonial expansion. In fact, as Ahmed (2000, p. 10) notes, “the colonial project was not external to the constitution of the modernity of European nations: rather the identity of these nations became predicated on their relationship to the colonised others”. Thus, the (gendered) primacy of states within IR scholarship, pointed out by feminist scholars like Gentry and Sjoberg, is not only the primacy of states, it is the primacy of the Western, white ideal state. Thus, while non-state actors might be written into the masculine-feminine binary as the feminised counterpart to the masculine, modern nation-state, the non-Western state, too, is imagined in opposition to the ideal, masculine, modern nation-state. This means it is also feminised (and can be to a higher or lower degree depending on its perceived proximity to the West). This, then, explains why state terrorism, on the rare occasions where it is attributed to a state, is attributed to those feminised/racialised states imagined as non-White, non-Wes­ tern and therefore prone to being a “weak” or “failed” state. Indeed, gendered binary constructions are central to theorising about global politics more generally. Distinctions between domestic and foreign,

54

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

inside and outside, order and anarchy, civilised and uncivilised, developed and underdeveloped as well as centre and periphery continue to inform significant assumptions in theory construction, and order how actors view and theorise about the world, and how they divide it linguistically (Peterson and Runyan, 1991, p. 70; Tickner 1992, p. 19; Tickner & Sjoberg, 2016, p. 185). These gendered dichotomous constructions not only signify inferiority, as well as danger regarding those associated with the outside (or “periphery”), but they also always have explicitly racial implications. An example for this is also found in the Orientalist distinction between “East” and “West” which, as Edward Said (1979, p. 40) points out, is tied to the distinction made between “inferior” and “superior” races, “uncivilised” and “civilised” ones. These binary distinctions, then, have justified the colonisation of “Oriental” coun­ tries which were constructed as “passive”, “supine” and “feminine” (Said, 1979, p. 138). Zooming Out: Gender on the System Level As I have already implied with the introduction of a “gendered coloniality”, looking at gender in the way I have outlined above, means zooming out from gender on the individual level (issues relating to “women” and “men”) and onto gender on the system-level (gender as inscribed into international con­ cepts and institutions). This, I argue, reveals gender as an essential structural mechanism upholding the colonial and global structures of white supremacy. Understanding and applying gender lenses in this way is a commitment to adopting gender lenses as a “meta-lens” (Peterson & Runyan, 2010, p. 3). Such a focus on gender as a structuring principle means acknowledging how the interpersonal binary between masculinity and femininity has been abstracted or transferred to bigger concepts, such as “states” or “non-state actors” within the international arena (Gentry, 2016, pp. 147–148). Thus, by focusing on the gendered coloniality (rather than just coloniality or just women/gender), I am “zooming out” from merely focusing on women’s issues or gender relations between women and men in order to look at the bigger picture and account for gender on the system level, as well as analyse gender constructions in language and discourse (gender on the “macro”- or system-level). However, through a decolonial lens, this system, language and discourse into which I argue gender is inscribed, is the moderncolonial system, language and discourse and therefore adds a complication to the picture which post-structural feminists have neglected so far. Such a system-level understanding of gender is also heavily discoursecentred. As Peterson (2015, p. 174) explains, gender operates discursively “as a governing code that conceptualizes gender as differentiating hierarchically between masculinized and feminized identities, qualities or characteristics”. Thus, it pervades language and meaning systems and orders “how we think (and hence shaping how we act) by privileging that which is associated with masculinity” (Peterson, 2015, p. 174). Gender order and hierarchy therefore

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies

55

need to be seen as part and parcel of the international system (Sjoberg, 2014, p. 100). However, I argue that this gender order is a specifically Western structuring principle and functions as yet another tool for the imposition of Western (masculine) superiority. It is, as I have argued above, an element of coloniality, but also defines colonial-modernity. As pointed out by Wilcox (2010 as cited in Sjoberg, 2010, p. 3), “[g]ender symbolism describes the way in which masculine/feminine are assigned to var­ ious dichotomies that organise Western thought” where higher value is always placed at the trait or value identified as masculine. The dominant (Western): “understanding of gender is based on a set of culturally determined and fixed binary oppositions attached to masculinity and femininity, such as public versus private, autonomy versus relatedness or reason versus emo­ tion, where the latter is usually associated with femininity”. (Scott, cited in Tickner, 1992, p. 8) Other binary constructions that are linked to the masculinity/femininity dichotomy are rational/emotional, strong/weak, dominant/submissive, active/ passive, independent/dependent, order/anarchy and objective/subjective (Hooper, 2001, p. 43). In these dichotomies, while the former term is always associated with masculinity, the latter usually signifies femininity. These gendered dichotomies serve to sustain the perception of men/masculinity as political (public), active, assertive, autonomous, strong and rational and women/femininity as personal (private), passive, dependent, weak and irrational (Peterson & Runyan, 2010, pp. 52–68). In Western modernity, they have further justified female sub­ ordination to male power and authority, as well as provided the justification for females to be excluded from political and public life (Elshtain, 1981; Pateman, 1988; Steans, 2013, p. 9) by associating women with feminised − hence devalorised − concepts of irrationality, passivity and dependency. Feminisation as Racialisation This narrative stemming from classical white feminists like Pateman and Elshtain, and later further refined by, among others, post-structural feminists, demonstrates a disregard for how these gendered dichotomies extend beyond the Western focus and onto the rest of the world. This ideal type of masculinity with all the traits outlined above relates to the white, colonial man and not any universal man. They have further justified the privatisation of native and Indigenous cultures and reli­ gions (see Khan, 2021a) which were feminised and put in opposition to the rational coloniser’s religion and culture. The above list of masculinity/femininity dichotomy further includes dichotomies which are very clearly stemming from a colonial and imperial imagination where dominant/submissive, active/passive, independent/dependent, order/anarchy, self/other have very obvious foundations in the colonial imagination of the non-white, feminised other.

56

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

As Peterson (2007) argues, feminisation is always also devalorisation. And as I argue this feminisation as devalorisation is a mechanism upholding coloniality, colonial logic, and —connected to this — racialised and racist assumptions. As Sara Ahmed (2004, p. 3) states, “becoming feminine” also implies becoming “less white”. Becoming less white always implies a “moving backwards in time” to a lesser stage of development of human and social life (Ahmed, 2004, p.3). Being feminised as irrational and emotional implies being less developed, which in turn implies a distance to the ideal type of whiteness, which in turn is premised on the ideal type of white masculinity. An obvious example is how British colonial administrators in India feminised the darker-skinned Bengali men as weaker and more effeminate than the superior light-skinned Punjabis (Hooper, 2001, p.71). Other very pertinent examples include the feminisation of the Orient and the “Oriental” man more specifically, as illustrated by Said (1978, p.40). Oriental, i.e. usually Arab Muslim, men have been constructed as childlike and feminine putting them in opposition to the Western, white and rational man (see Said, 1978, p.40). While there are very obvious examples showcasing how feminisation implies “less white”, there are also cases where this is not so obviously tied to visibly darker or lighter-skinned people and the geographic regions they inhabit. Instead, given that race is a construct and the idea of a “white” race does not have any actual biological foundation, whiteness can be implied and attached to practices or concepts. “Terrorism” is feminised too, which also implies a distancing from whiteness. I argue that ascribing terrorism or the terrorist label to a person — even if that person is “white” — not only feminises but also racialises them and distances them from whiteness.6 This means that the discourse of “terrorism” aids the project of Western modernity. It helps the West define itself by negation, that is by being the counter-terrorist. Thus, while discourses of the so-called “savage” prevailed during the colonial era and served to define the West and whiteness by negation (i.e. with the white man as “civilised” in opposition to the “savage”), the term “terrorism” now serves a similar purpose functioning through the same gendered-racialised and ultimately colonial, binary.7 What the example above shows, is that gendered-racialised binaries are always relational. As Hooper (2001, p.43) notes, within the masculinity/femininity binary, femininity merely constitutes a “residual category, a foil or Other for masculinity to define itself against”. This means the concept of gender functions to create an oppositional category against which masculinity can define itself against and gain meaning from in the first place. In other words, masculinity, as a relational category, has meaning because it constitutes everything femininity is not (see also Tickner, 2014, p.260). This becomes even clearer from race as a concept which functions to give “white” meaning. The category race therefore only functions to establish “White” as not just another race, but rather “that to which race relates as its norm” (Lynch, 2017, p.289). This is similar to how masculinity relates to femininity as the norm as well as the superior attribute. The idea of race was developed not just to distinguish “other” races from the

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies

57

white race but to imply their inferiority. Similarly then, “the West” only has meaning because it defines itself against the so-called “rest”. Edward Said (1978, p.7) argued the same for the construction of the “Orient” in opposition to the West/Occident: The West needs the Orient to prop up its own identity by constructing the Orient as everything that the West is not. The dominant discourse on terrorism, as I have noted above, functions to substantiate the fragile identity of the West which is forever dependent on a non-Western other to define itself against. The discourse on terrorism functions as one way to uphold and aid this project of defining the West in opposition to an inferior other. In other words, it upholds the project of Western modernity. Dominant Discourse Western modernity cannot be fully understood without its darker side, coloniality. As mentioned above, I further contend that the gendered aspect of this coloniality can be foregrounded in a constructive way to better illustrate how one consequence of the modern-colonial world order is also that Western thought and discourse is gender-coded, privileging a Western idea of masculinity. I therefore refer to a gendered coloniality to draw attention to how much this gender code is infused in Western thinking and discourse. Paying attention to this gender code is particularly useful in making sense of the colonial constructions of power which are also encoded in everyday language. I argue that these colonial constructions are natur­ alised because they have taken on the form of “truths”. What counts as “true” in a society is produced through and in discourse (Edkins, 1999, p.15; see also Said, 1979, p. 3). Language is therefore never a neutral medium of communication but carries within it the systems of power which produce and sustain what counts as “true” and therefore establish that which is normalised and goes unquestioned in society (Edkins, 1999, p. 15). Thus, what we “know” about concepts, such as “terrorism” or “religion” for example, is produced through discourse, reflecting the structures of power in a society. More specifically it is produced in what Terdiman (1985, p. 57) refers to as “dominant discourse”. As Third (2014, p. 17) explains, there are always multiple discourses compet­ ing for dominance at any point in time. However, the discourse which prevails in gaining supremacy is what Terdiman (1985) refers to as the “dominant dis­ course” which is sanctioned by the general culture and “granted the legitimacy of institutional knowledge and support” (as cited in Third, 2014, p.17). I argue that this discourse, by default, is the colonial discourse. The lack and oversight of referring to it as such by post-structural theorists demonstrates the limits of its theory and the need for decolonial approaches instead. There is much reference to and awareness of how the structures of power and knowledge are stemming from Western ideals and values. However, more direct reference to how this “Western” ideal is also colonial is missing and

58

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

aids the erasure of coloniality from modernity. It further demonstrates how these approaches, while critical, are still embedded within the Western, hence colonial, intellectual heritage and tradition. However, while acknowledging these limitations, as I stated above, I am also guilty in still engaging with and partly relying on a lot of the methods and insights post-structural thinkers have been credited with. Nevertheless, and as I have argued before, I approach CTS with a decolonial mission and not the goal of a “decolonisation”. A substantial contribution to decoloniality would have to involve the discarding of post-structural, post-modern tools to begin with. Something I consider to be not only difficult but also non-desirable for CTS, given that I do not seek to build a better “Terrorism Studies” that is decolonial but rather, to challenge the same with a decolonial ethos and postcolonial methods. Thus, the dominant, i.e. colonial, discourse I seek to dismantle within the dominant discourse on terrorism, is the discourse that is naturalised, seems as “common sense” and upholds the coloniality of power. Third (2014, p. 18) refers to the dominant discourse as always elusive because it is naturalised, that means it “appears as self-evident and commonsensical and therefore evades perception” (see also Terdiman, 1985, p. 61). As Terdiman (1985, p. 61) further notes, “[b]ecause of that implicit potential toward automatism, the dominant is the discourse which, being everywhere, comes from nowhere: to it is granted the structural privilege of appearing to be unaware of the very question of its own legitimacy”. This, as I have argued before, is the colonial discourse — the discourse upholding coloniality/modernity. Not all discourse is power. The dominant discourse that is, is the colonial discourse privileging masculinity and whiteness without appearing to do so. This discourse also upholds the coloniality of “terrorism”. Stickiness One concept that is also useful in understanding how this discourse operates, is Sara Ahmed’s (2004) concept of “metaphorical stickiness”. Ahmed explains how some words “stick’ to certain bodies or objects. As she explains, if a word is used in a certain way and attached to a certain body or object repeatedly then it becomes “sticky” with that body/object, and it becomes difficult to associate something else with that word (Ahmed, 2004, p. 90). Ahmed gives the example of the derogatory word “P*ki” and how this word has come to be associated with (i.e. sticky with) various other unspoken words such as “immigrant”, “dirty” or “outsider”. Thus, as she explains with regards to bodies, words (or signs) such as “P*ki” evoke other words which “have become intrinsic to the sign through past forms of association” (Ahmed, 2004, p. 92). They also stick to these bodies and restrict their freedom of movement, behaviour and action (Ahmed, 2004, p. 79). This further confirms that words do things. As Ahmed (2004, p. 79) further notes, emotions such as fear stick to certain bodies and objects more than they do to others. This is

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies

59

because of the metaphorical stickiness of signs which cannot be separated from their histories. “Arabs”, “Islam”, “Asian” and “East” are all bodies which are associated with “terrorism”, and where fear has stuck on them. This in turn has real-life consequences, such as these bodies’ restriction in freedom of movement for example (Ahmed 2004, p. 79). This not only refers to individuals but also states (for example “rogue states”), which are seen as or associated with the above terms, which in turn have become sticky with “terrorism” and therefore also fear (Ahmed, 2004, p. 79). As a result of (colonial) historical processes, some bodies, then, have become so sticky with certain words that I argue it constitutes an element of the dominant discourse on this body. As Terdiman (1985, p. 61) states: “The inherent tendency of a dominant discourse is to ‘go without saying’”. It goes without saying, for example, that terrorism constitutes an absolute evil, although it is unlikely that we have experienced it (Third, 2014, p. 17). How­ ever, it has become something which has acquired “truth” in our societies through constant repetition in dominant discourse. It is further a concept which has become sticky with many gendered and racialised terms, such as “irrationality” and “illegitimacy”. It has become further sticky with “reli­ gion”. Religion similarly has become sticky with many other gendered terms which uphold its coloniality (see Khan, 2022). This has consequences for how these terms can be used and what its use in discourse does and affects. However, discourse always contains within itself the possibility for resistance (Edkins 1999, p. 59). As Third (2014, p. 26) points out, dominant discourse is not stable: “on the one hand it appears as timeless and authoritative; on the other hand, this appearance must be continually and closely regulated – its assertions must be ceaselessly reaffirmed”. The well-known obsession of terrorist scholars to define “terrorism” or constrain the term within some boundaries constitutes an example for this (Third, 2014, p. 25). A critical analysis of these dominant discourses then constitutes a site for the resistance of hegemonic, dominant dis­ course as it seeks to uncover that which would otherwise evade perception. This would further serve to make the dominant discourse visible in the first place, which in itself is a form of resistance. A commitment to this form of resistance is what I argue to be a realisable, anti-colonial, counterhegemonic mission that CTS can claim as decolonial.

Conclusion Asking what upholds the colonial discourse on “terrorism” through a deco­ lonial approach also means asking what precedes and underpins the discourse on terrorism. I argue that the structures of white supremacy as an element of coloniality do. It is this coloniality which has preceded the discourses that have eventually come to produce the dominant discourse on terrorism and guarantee its continued popularity. These discourses can be summarised as the dominant discourse, which I argue is the colonial discourse privileging masculinity and whiteness. Challenging the colonial discourse that has

60

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

produced “terrorism” and challenging the colonial constructs surrounding it is the decolonial mission I envision for CTS. While it is “terrorism” (and especially “religious terrorism” as I have argued elsewhere) today which has been conceptualised through a colonial gender code and in order to fulfil the function of upholding and aiding the project of Western modernity, it has been other constructions before and it will be other constructions still when or if “terrorism” ever gets replaced by another concept whose dominant discourse will fulfil the same function. It would be CTS’s task to recognise when this happens, what colonial language and mechanism hold the current one in place and how these can be challenged and deconstructed in present time. Thus, the decolonial mission I envision for CTS is one that makes it the main goal to detect where and how “terrorism” (or its past and future place­ holders) functions to uphold, aid and facilitate the project of Western colonialmodernity. The dominant discourse on terrorism, as I have shown in this chapter, works for Western society and not against it. It helps the West define itself by negation and through a gendered-colonial binary. There have been and will be other concepts which will replace the current one imagined as “terror­ ism” which function to fulfil the same purpose of upholding colonial-moder­ nity. Making the dismantling of it the prime mission of a decolonial CTS can ensure a future for CTS that stays true to the emancipatory ethos underpinning its inception in response to the Global War on Terrorism.

Notes 1 As has been noted by other scholars, the purpose of most scholars of Terrorism Studies has been to either debate its definition (which departs from an epistemolo­ gical position that takes terrorism as a brute fact rather than a social fact) and/or to determine better ways of fighting what is imagined as terrorism – a role that sees the terrorism scholar as a counter-terrorist by other means (see Schuurman 2018). 2 Note here that my use of ‘colonial’ is not meant to signify the era of colonialism or colonisation as a practice but rather signifies the colonial structures and logics that have preceded and succeeded this era and are embedded in dominant thinking, writing and speaking, as I explain in more detail further below in this chapter. 3 The gendered coloniality of the Religious Terrorism Thesis: A Critical Discourse Analysis of religious labels and their selective use in Terrorism Studies (unpublished). PhD Thesis submitted at University of St Andrews. 4 For more information on IR’s colonial origins see also Vitalis (2015). 5 It is also inherent to concepts like “religion” as I have argued elsewhere (Khan, 2022). In my doctoral thesis (2021c-b) I therefore investigated the concept “religious terrorism” which as I demonstrated is built on the problematic, modern-colonial invention of “religion” in post-Westphalian Europe. 6 An example that is well-known here is how the Irish, today seen as “white”, were racialised as non-White not too long ago (Bonilla-Silva, 1997, p.472; Delgado & Stefancic 2017, pp.88–89). The association of Irish people with “terrorism”, too, showcases this inherent racialisation that goes hand in hand with the assigning of the “terrorist” label whether that person is “white” or not. 7 See Chapter 3 by Schotten for a detailed analysis of how queer methods resist “regimes of the normal”, including white supremacy, colonialism and Euro-/Western-centrism).

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies

61

References Ahmad, A. (1995). The politics of literary post-coloniality. Race and Class, 36(3), 1–20. Ahmed, S. (2000). Strange encounters: Embodied others in post-coloniality. Routledge. Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge. Anievas, A., Manchanda, N. & Shilliam, R. (2015). Confronting the Global Colour Line: an Introduction. In A. Anievas, N. Manchanda & R. Shilliam (Eds), Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line (pp. 1–16). Routledge. Bhambra, G. (2014). Postcolonial and decolonial dialogues. Postcolonial Studies, 17(2), 115–121. Bhambra, G., Gebrial, D. & Nisancioglu, K. (2018). “Introduction: Decolonising the University?” In G. Bhambra, D. Gebrial & K. Nisancioglu (Eds), Decolonising the University, (pp. 1–18). Pluto Books. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble. Routledge.

Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical

Difference. Princeton University Press. Connell. R. (2005). Masculinities. Polity Press. Edkins, J. (1999). Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political Back. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Elshtain, B. J. (1981). Public Man, Private Woman: women in social and political thought. Robertson. Fanon, F. (1961). The Wretched of the Earth. Penguin Books. Gani, J. K. (2017). The erasure of race: Cosmopolitanism and the illusion of Kantian hospitality. Millennium, 45(3), 425–446. Gentry, C. (2014). Epistemic Bias: Legitimate Authority and Politically Violent Nonstate Actors. In C. Gentry and A. Eckert. The future of just war: new critical essays (pp. 17–29). Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Gentry, C. (2016). Gender and Terrorism. In S. Sharoni, L. Steiner, J. Pedersen & J. Welland (Eds), Handbook on Gender and War, (pp. 146–169). Edward Elgar Publishing. Gentry, C. & Sjoberg, L. (2015). Beyond Mothers, Monsters and Whores. Zed Books. Glissant, E. (1989). Caribbean discourse: Selected essays. M. Dash (Trans.).University of Virginia Press. Gruffydd J. B. (2015). ‘Good Governance’ and ‘state failure’: The pseudo-science of statesmen in our times. In A. Anievas, N. Manchanda & R. Shilliam (Eds), Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line, (pp. 62–80). Routledge. Hooper, C. (2001). Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics. Columbia University Press. Jackson, R. (2008a). An Argument for Terrorism. Perspectives on Terrorism, 2(2), 25–32. Jackson, R. (2008b). The ghosts of state terror: knowledge, politics and terrorism stu­ dies. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1(3), 377–392. Jarvis, L. (2009). Times of Terror: discourse, temporality and the War on Terror. Palgrave Macmillan. Khan, R. M. (2021a). Race, coloniality and the post 9/11 counter-discourse: Critical Terrorism Studies and the reproduction of the Islam-Terrorism discourse. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14(4), 498–501. Khan, R. M. (2021b). The gendered coloniality of the religious terrorism thesis: a critical discourse analysis of religious labels and their selective use in terrorism

62

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

studies (Doctoral dissertation, University of St Andrews). DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.17630/sta/124 Khan, R. M. (2022). Speaking “religion” through a gender code: The discursive power and gendered-racial implications of the religious label. Critical Research on Reli­ gion, 10(2), 153–169. Kinsella, H. (2017). Feminism. In J. Baylis, S. Smith & P. Owens (Eds), The globali­ zation of World Politics, 189–203. Oxford University Press. Lugones, M. (2010). Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia, 25(4), 742–759. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2011). Thinking through the decolonial turn: Post-continental interventions in theory, philosophy, and critique − An introduction. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(2), 1–15. Mignolo, W. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality. Cultural Studies 21(2–3), 449–514. Mignolo, W. (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke University Press. Newman, E. (2007). Weak States, State Failure, and Terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 19(4), 463–488. Oyeˇ wùmí, O. (1997). The invention of women: Making an African sense of western gender discourses. University of Minnesota Press. Passada, M. N. M. (2019). Discourses Analysis by a Decolonial Perspective. In L Suciu (Ed.), Advances in Discourse Analysis, IntechOpen www.intechopen.com/books/adva nces-in-discourse-analysis/discourses-analysis-by-a-decolonial-perspective. Pateman, C. (1988). The Sexual Contract. Polity Press, in association with Basil Blackwell. Peterson, S. (2007). Thinking Through Intersectionality and War. Race, Gender & Class, 14(3/4), 10–27. Peterson, S. & Runyan, A. (1991). The Radical Future of Realism: Feminist Subver­ sions of IR Theory. Alternatives, 16(1), 67–106. Peterson, S. & Runyan, A. (2010). Global gender issues in the new Millennium. Westview Press. Peterson, V. S. (1992). Transgressing Boundaries: Theories of Knowledge, Gender and International Relations. Millennium, 21(2), 183–206. Peterson, V. S. (2015). International/global political economy. In L. Shepherd (Ed.), Gender Matters in Global politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations (pp. 173–186). Routledge. Quijano, A. (1992). Colonialidad y modernidad/racionalidad. Perú indígena, 13(29), 11–20. Resende, V.M. (2018). Decolonizing critical discourse studies: for a Latin American perspective, Critical Discourse Studies, 18(2), 1–17. Rivera Cusicanqui, S. (2012). A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization. The South Atlantic Quarterly, Winter. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. Penguin. Sarup, M. (1993). An introductory guide to Post-structuralism and postmodernism. Harvester Wheatsheaf. Schotten, H, C. (2018). Queer Terror: Life, Death, and Desire in the Settler Colony. Columbia University Press. Schuurman, Bart (2019). Topics in terrorism research: reviewing trends and gaps, 2007 −2016, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12(3), 463–480. Shilliam, R. (2021). Decolonizing Politics: And Introduction. Polity Press.

A Decolonial Mission for Critical Terrorism Studies

63

Sjoberg, L. (2013). Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War. Columbia University Press. Sjoberg, L. (2014). Gender, War and Conflict. Polity Press. Sjoberg, L. (2010). Introduction In L. Sjoberg (Ed.), Gender and International Security: Feminist Perspectives (pp. 1–14). Routledge. Steans, J. (2013). Gender and International Relations. Polity Press. Terdiman, R. (1985). Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The theory and practice of symbolic resistance in nineteenth-century France. Cornell University Press. Tickner, J. A. (1992). Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. Columbia University Press. Tickner, J. A. & Sjoberg, L. (2016). Feminism. In T. Dunne, M. Kurki & S. Smith (Eds) International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (pp. 179–195). Oxford University Press. Tickner, J. A. (2014). Gender in World Politics. In J. Baylis, S. Smith & P. Owens (Eds), The Globalization of World Politics (pp. 258–271). Oxford University Press. Tlostanova, M. (2010). Gender Epistemologies and Eurasian Borderlands. Palgrave Macmillan. Third, A. (2010). Imprisonment and excessive femininity: reading Ulrike Meinhof’s Brain Parallax 16(4), 83–100. Third, A. (2014). Gender and the political: deconstructing the female terrorist. Palgrave Macmillan. Tuck, E. & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. Vitalis, R. (2015). White world order, black power politics: The birth of American international relations. Cornell University Press. Wadley, J. (2010). Gendering the state: performativity and protection in international security. In L. Sjoberg (Ed.), Gender and International Security: Feminist perspectives (pp. 56–76). Routledge.

Section II

The Eurocentricity of Critical Terrorism Studies and Global South Approaches

4

Postcolonial Spaces and Critical Terrorism Studies Towards a Dialogic Research Agenda Kodili Henry Chukwuma

Introduction This chapter interrogates the research agenda and methodological paths within Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) to highlight certain limitations therein, as well as possible synergies, especially with/in postcolonial scholar­ ship. This chapter is in part motivated by various calls to deepen knowledge (s) about (counter)terrorism to re-orient the spatial configuration of the field of Terrorism Studies (Abu-Bakare, 2020; Barnard-Wills & Moore, 2010). It is a follow-up on the call by Barnard-Wills and Moore (2010, p. 383) for a “form of Critical Studies on Terrorism which takes seriously the histories and experiences of the Global South” in debates about terrorism and political violence more broadly. While much critical work has been done to illuminate, examine and study the complexity of terrorism in CTS research projects (and beyond), there is (still) a nagging gap for contributions from postcolonial approaches to the study of (counter)terrorism. The approach taken in this chapter, however, moves beyond identifying existing theoretical and metho­ dological gap(s) in CTS and therefore injecting postcolonial remedies or alternatives. Rather, this chapter explores how different levels or approaches to space/spatiality in postcolonial scholarship – as well as empirical examples of counterterrorism in the Lake Chad Basin – help us to think about CTS research agenda, its limitations and futures, as well as about terrorism (research) more generally. Put differently, it conceptualises (counter)terrorism as a spatial practice which produces specific, and often competing, notions of threats, identity and knowledge claims shaped by certain colonial and post­ colonial trajectories, experiences and temporalities. The chapter begins by sketching the diversity of approaches to space and spatiality within postcolonial scholarship, including the following: 1) space as material, tangible, geographical; 2) as imagined, discursively constructed and, often, contested; 3) and finally, space, used more broadly, as a metaphor for problematising the contours and contents of disciplinary spaces in relation to our postcolonial present. From here the chapter elaborates on “the spaces and faces of Critical Terrorism Studies” (Jarvis, 2009) to pinpoint certain core research commitments, gaps and problems in view of the spatial politics of DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963-7

68

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

knowledge production and circulation. To demonstrate these notions of postcolonial spaces and the limitations of CTS in particular, the chapter explores the debate on counterterrorism strategies in the Lake Chad Basin, before turning to reflect on the dialogic possibility and collaborative futures between CTS and postcolonial theory. The chapter concludes by arguing that ideas about postcolonial spaces encourage critical terrorism researchers and students to reflect on key methodological and theoretical questions, including those related to the aims, purpose(s) and approaches to (researching) terrorism and counterterrorism.

Postcolonialism and Space It is worth re-stating here that postcolonialism consistently evades attempts to pin it down to a formulaic, coherent theory in the “conventional” sense and has been (and is still) used variously to problematise continuing epistemological and representational issues, as well as material practices involving power relations between coloniser(s) and colonised, the global North and South (Bhabha, 1990; Chukwuma, 2022; Said, 1978). Postcolonialism is also routinely invoked to describe specific “conditions” which involve peoples, states, spaces, societies and so on, that have been through processes of (de-)colonisation or experiencing neo-colonialism (Spivak, 1999; Young, 2001). However, postcolonialism means more than these and as Hall reminds us: It follows that the term ‘post-colonial’ is not merely descriptive of ‘this’ society rather than ‘that’, or of ‘then’ and ‘now’. It reads ‘colonisation’ as part of an essentially transnational and transcultural ‘global’ process, and it produces a decentred, diasporic or global rewriting of earlier, nation-centred imperial grand narratives. Its theoretical values therefore lie precisely in its refusal of this ‘here’ and ‘there’, ‘then’ and ‘now’, ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ perspective. (Hall, 1996, p. 247) Hall’s intervention above points to the rejection of fixed binaries and tem­ poralities – such as North/South, coloniser/colonised, colonial/postcolonial – which is evidently central in postcolonial thought(s) and praxis. Instead, a relational logic which recognises the mutual constitution and deeply entan­ gled relationship between coloniser and colonised, the Global North and Global South across different times, though characteristically accentuated by power difference and inequality, pre-eminently underpin postcolonial approa­ ches (Abrahamsen, 2003). In other words, we could define postcolonialism here as “involving a set of ideas, concepts and problematisations relevant to social and political situations in the global South, as well as the global North” (Abrahamsen, 2003, p. 191). As such, it is diverse, multiple and rejects dichotomies and classificatory systems. Postcolonial approaches, nonetheless, “share a common aim of rethinking and exploring the role of

Postcolonial Spaces and Critical Terrorism Studies

69

power in the formation of identity and subjectivity” (Abrahamsen, 2003, p. 191), and material practices of subjugation or colonisation. From its inception as an academic field of inquiry, a heuristic or conceptual approach, as well as in earlier theoretical influences such as Subaltern Studies and Colonial Discourse Analysis (Chakrabarty, 1992), the importance of space – in all its forms – has always been recognised as fundamentally inte­ gral to postcolonial experiences and analysis thereof (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, 1989; Chambers & Curti, 1996; Said, 1978). After all, colonisation, decolonisation and neo-colonialism entail spatial practices (and discourses) of mapping, dividing and controlling populations, as well as resistance to these which often take the form of decentring, re-writing and re-drawing those lines. Clayton (2003) notes that postcolonial work is predominantly infused by spatial images of mapping, marginality, exile and location. This spatial tenor of Postcolonial Studies therefore helps us to interrogate colonial and postcolonial projects and experiences in different contexts. In view of the above, this chapter mobilises three specific levels of, or approaches to, space in postcolonial scholarship to examine prevailing meth­ odological approach(es) to (counter)terrorism as developed within CTS. This includes: first, space as something tangible, objective (such as geographical location), or a set of material practices which (re)produces colonial and neo­ colonial forms of control or inequality. A second definition of space explored in this chapter sees it as a social and cultural artefact; more specifically, as discursively constructed, imagined and, often intensely, contested. Third, and finally, space is described below as a metaphor for mapping the outlines and contents of academic (sub)disciplines and fields –say, for example, Social Sci­ ence, International Relations, Security Studies and CTS – to illustrate the spatial politics of knowledge production within these academic contexts. Since the early 1990s at least, postcolonial geographers have peered more directly into “the physical realities of colonialism, and the material struggles of postcolonial societies”, as Blunt and McEwan (2002, p. 1) show. These geo­ graphical interventions often take different forms, such as calls to reform geo­ graphical knowledge and practice to recognise the experiences of postcolonial societies (Blunt and Wills, 2000; Crush, 1994), and methodological interventions in postcolonial theory to foreground the materiality of space alongside dominant literary and cultural modes of articulation in postcolonialism (we shall return to this debate later) (Barnett, 1997; Blunt and McEwan, 2002; Sharp, 2008). For Clive Barnett (1997, p. 137), this “interdisciplinary appropriation by (human) geographers pays greater attention to material practices, actual spaces, and real politics” than cultural inflections of spatiality. According to Sharp (2008), such a focus on “real” space by postcolonial geographers offers postcolonial theory potential ways of going beyond the limitations of textualism. This approach to space thus highlights the intricate connections between geographies and (neo) colonisation, space and place, as well as the link between spatiality and – the production of – different national/racial formations. As Mbembe (2003, p. 12) notes, space is:

70

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies the raw material of (post-)colonial sovereignty, and colonization writes new relations on colonialised spaces through territorializing practices such as the production of boundaries and hierarchies, classification of people, extraction of resources, and so on.

Following Mbembe’s articulation we can tentatively surmise that space is, accordingly, the raw material par excellence of social practices involving the work of human actors and communities which reproduces it in different ways and for specific purposes (cf. West-Pavlov, 2008). Notwithstanding differences between these notions of space as “given” and as material social “practices”, this perspective underlies the importance of material elements in the conceptualisation of spatiality which is distinguished in this chapter from metaphorical approaches to space in postcolonial scholarship as discussed below. Said’s works (1978, 1990, 1994) typically serve as references to earlier reflections about space in Postcolonial Studies, particularly in relation to the cultural and literary theorisation of postcolonial geographies as “imagined”, discursively constructed and, in most cases, intensely contested. In Orient­ alism, for example, Said (1978, p. 4) argues that “both geographical and cultural entities such as locales, regions and geographical sectors as ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ are man-made or (re)produced”. Approached in this way, geography is seen as central to imperialism and (neo)colonialism as well as to anticolonial projects, as Said (1994, p. 271) describes: If there is anything that radically distinguishes the imagination of antiimperialism, it is the primacy of the geographical element. Imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence through which virtually every [space] in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under con­ trol. For the native, the history of colonial servitude is inaugurated by the loss of the locality to the outsider; its geographical identity must there­ after be searched for and somehow restored… the land is recoverable at first only through the imagination. Said’s call for attention to the spatial politics of imperialism, colonialism and anti-imperialism, which is specially reinforced through “imagination”, has been taken up by a plethora of postcolonial writers to demonstrate the richness, and to develop a textured analysis, of spatial discourse within Postcolonial Studies. Bhabha’s (1990) idea of the “Third Space” as the location of creative hybridity and the nation as a site of colonial encounter highlights the link between space and place in (re-)defining postcolonial identity and subjectivity. Other inspiring works have variously explored the (im)possibility of postcolonial identities and experiences in different “local” contexts and across national boundaries, especially regarding discourses of globalisation (Krishnan, 2017b; Noyes, 2006; Soja, 1996; 2011). These metaphorical and cultural approaches to space, however, have been

Postcolonial Spaces and Critical Terrorism Studies

71

routinely criticised for their lack of attention to other material features and power difference in postcolonial contexts, as well as for their “over-reliance” on language and discourse. As the foregoing indicates, space, whether described as “imagined” in Said’s terms, or as real or “raw material” according to Mbembe, occupies a vitally significant place in colonial and postcolonial discourses. This binary, however, is unhelpful and increasingly a false one, not least because it undermines the importance of inter- and trans-disciplinarity which is central to postcolonial theory and the conceptualisation of spatiality in particular, involving different facets of human geography, culture and politics (Krishnan, 2017a). As Noyes (2006) suggests, this could be approached as different levels on which space is produced in postcolonial settings rather than a methodological chasm to be resolved. Sharp invokes the idea of practice – which entails “writing spatiality in its broadest terms” (see Teverson & Upstone, 2011, p. 10) – to demonstrate the close relationship between real and imagined geographies, material and cultural inflections of spatiality. All in all, space, as approached in this chapter, is multiple and contradictory, geographical and cultural, consisting of material and discursive practices aiming at the expropriation, re-appropriation and contestation of (post-)colonial spaces and logics. The third and final approach to space is as a metaphor that illustrates the politics of knowledge production, along with certain material conditions that make this possible. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (1992) charge to “provincialize Europe” is worth highlighting here, not least because of the use of spatial terminologies (i.e., province) and reference to geography (Europe) in posing broader epistemological questions: For generations now, philosophers and thinkers shaping the nature of social science have produced theories embracing the entirety of humanity. As we well know, these statements have been produced in relative, and sometimes absolute, ignorance of the majority of the humankind, i.e., those living in non-Western societies. This in itself is not paradoxical for the more self-conscious of European philosophers have always sought theoretically to justify this stance (Chakrabarty, 1992, p. 338) Indeed, this uneven global landscape of academic knowledge production which continues to shape our postcolonial present has been discussed in Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Studies and other related fields (Jazeel, 2011; Spivak, 1999). Despite the emergence, and rapid proliferation, of various cri­ tical intellectual developments, “the infrastructures through which the knowledge we call theory is produced take place in a world that (still) bears the imprints and inequalities of globalization”, as Jazeel notes (2011, p. 167). Put differently, the production of critical academic scholarship (including CTS) is inevitably embedded within a geography marked by residual asym­ metries of power emerging from both colonialism and neo-colonialism. Such

72

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

concerns about the configuration of disciplinary spaces, of course, transcends epistemological and methodological questions and includes practical pro­ blems such as research funding and grants, access to journals and editorial boards, academic conferences and so on. As Jazeel (2011, pp. 168–169) put it more succinctly, “the unequal globalization of academic knowledge produc­ tion raises a series of related questions including epistemological issues con­ cerning the shape of theoretical knowledge and practical concerns about who is able to enter certain spaces”. The field of International Relations and sub-fields of Security Studies, and Terrorism Studies (both mainstream and critical currents alike) has been increasingly scrutinised, highlighting the continuing problem of Eurocentrism, blindspots and epistemic biases towards non-Western knowledges and experi­ ences (Bilgin, 2010; Barkawi and Laffey, 2006; Seth, 2011). Barkawi and Laffey’s (2006) influential work, which advocates strongly for a “postcolonial moment in Security Studies”, interrogates the spatialisation of knowledge production in which the categories that emerge from Western experiences determine the prio­ rities and dominant approaches to security. Similar concerns, though within Terrorism Studies, were raised in Barnard-Wills’ and Moore’s (2010) call for a form of Critical Studies on Terrorism which takes seriously the histories, contexts and experiences of postcolonial societies in analysing terrorism and political violence. Space, in these terms, describes the configuration of academic dis­ ciplines and (sub-)fields and how this reproduces (neo-)colonialism and global inequality. The aim of such a spatial discourse though, drawing insights from Jazeel’s (2011) idea of “criticism and community”, is to illustrate the cultural geographies of theory itself (in the very ways we think, write and imagine the world through our research), on the one hand. And on the other one, to write in – and with – those histories, ambivalences, contradictions, located-ness, spaces and contexts that are oft-neglected. All of this demands a certain degree of “open-ness and dialogue”, while recognising the incompleteness of knowledge. With the foregoing discussion in mind, the next part of this chapter examines CTS research project in light of its core commitments, contribution, absences and problems. From here the chapter explores the debate on counterterrorism efforts in Lake Chad Basin to illustrate more vividly the constitution and contestations of postcolonial geographies and to further illuminate certain blindspots associated with so-called critical research on terrorism. A final section below reflects on the dialogic possibility and collaborative futures between CTS and Postcolonial theory.

The Spaces and Faces of Critical Terrorism Studies The dissatisfaction with contemporary knowledge and practices of counter­ terrorism, particularly in post-9/11 research and policy contexts broadly, underpins the research agenda of Critical Terrorism Studies (Jackson, 2007; Jackson, Jarvis, Gunning and Breen-Smyth, 2011). As an emerging field in its own right, CTS has made significant methodological and normative

Postcolonial Spaces and Critical Terrorism Studies

73

contributions to the study of terrorism and political violence. Jarvis (2009) for example, considering the prevailing orthodoxy and positivism prominent within Terrorism Studies, argues for a space for critical engagement(s) around the normative and analytical commitments grounding much of the field. Such a re-configuration of the field to expand its scope, focus and aims, as Jarvis continues, can be organised around two important points or frameworks: broadening, and deepening (of Terrorism Studies). “Broadening”, on the one hand, mostly refers to various attempts to expand our understanding and knowledge about terrorism beyond specific forms of (non-state) violence and/ or actors. On the other hand, “deepening” points to a reflexive – and reflec­ tive – approach which recognises terrorism and counterterrorism as inevitably a product of (our) discourses and practices. In a sense, CTS’s methodological, epistemological and normative questions are posed in relation to its so-called orthodox opposite to challenge certain prevailing assumptions about (counter)terrorism, as Jackson (2007) indicates. Among the problems of this orthodox or traditional current in Terrorism Studies are its lack of historicity, the dominance of positivism and its heavily problem-solving orientation. All of this, of course, illustrates the spatial poli­ tics of knowledge production within the field of Terrorism Studies, which stirs up important questions concerning its shape, content and purposes (i.e., what should Terrorism Studies look like and do?; who can enter this space, and what forms of knowledge and experiences are relevant?) Moreover, CTS research and political agenda has been variously interrogated (see other chapters in this volume) (Chukwuma, 2022; Khan, 2021; Horgan & Boyle, 2008), including by less sympathetic critics who question its “hypocritical” stance and contribution to Terrorism Studies (Jones & Smith, 2009). My concern in this chapter, though, is regarding the lack of contextual and theo­ retical depth as it pertains to wider discourses, temporalities and geographies of violence, particularly those of postcolonial societies. As Barnard-Wills and Moore (2010, p. 384) note, “there is a dearth of the cultures, context and evolution of (counter)terrorism within postcolonial societies in critical terror­ ism studies”. In other words, the prevailing methodological and theoretical approaches within CTS are seemingly inadequate for making sense of terror­ ism and counterterrorism in our postcolonial world. Ahmad’s idea of “amnesia and fatigue”, which connotes “a sense of forgetting, or without a trace of memory of earlier and continuing discussions about the conditions of postcolonial societies” (Ahmad, 1995, p. 1), I suggest, helps us to think about the epistemic and methodological weaknesses of CTS. Despite the prioritisation of a historicist approach to deepen knowledge about (counter)terrorism, CTS’s epistemic, political and temporal connection to the post-9/11 events, context and discourses – which are evidently Western-orien­ ted – often ignore alternative discourses, experiences and geographies especially those of postcolonial societies (see also Chapters Three, Five and Six of this volume). Moreover, there is a notable lack of contributions from postcolonial approaches and/or commentators from the Global South, particularly those who

74

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

live and work in the Global South to the CTS research project (Chukwuma, 2022). This is somewhat perplexing not least because many recent terrorist attacks occur in these spaces, as well as the effects of contemporary counter­ terrorism practices – which CTS ostensibly seeks to challenge – on the Global South, or those from the Global South (Nazir, 2010). The blindspots, meth­ odological and epistemic fatigue inherent in the field of Terrorism Studies invariably facilitates the reproduction of dominant Western-centric narra­ tives, including those developed by so-called “critical scholars”. The link between poverty and violence, as well as the near exclusive focus on the State within (counter)terrorism discourse, for example, largely reinforces prevailing Western and state-centred ideas about (counter)terrorism. This, in turn, often encourages the spread and normalisation of potentially harmful counter­ terrorism practices, such as various interventionist efforts to promote democracy, development and state-building in certain ostensibly “backward” societies (Aning, 2010). Despite these limitations, I argue in this chapter that there is a veritable ground for methodological innovation which promotes inter/trans-disciplinarity and facilitates a potentially fruitful engagement between CTS and Postcolonialism to deepen knowledge(s) about terrorism (Chukwuma, 2022). In a sense, then, to “provincialise” (Critical) Terrorism Studies is “to see the field as an inevitably contested space, to write over its privileged narratives and counternarratives and to open it up to emergent (methodological) possibilities and futures” (Chakrabarty, 1992, p. 353). The remaining sections of the chapter fur­ ther highlight important limitations within CTS and methodological possibilities by, first, exploring the debate about counterterrorism in the Lake Chad Basin (which illustrates the material and discursive levels of postcolonial space). Second, by reflecting on the possible collaboration between CTS and Postcolonialism (which illustrates space in view of the production of academic knowledge). Taken together, I conceptualise counterterrorism through these analyses as a spatial practice which produces specific, and often competing, ideas of threats, identity and knowledge claims underlined by specific colonial and postcolonial trajectories, experiences and temporalities. It goes without saying, however, that such an approach to counterterrorism acknowledges wider calls for embedding issues of race and racism, gender and sexuality into our methodolo­ gical and theoretical frameworks. This recognition is relevant, not least because coloniality entails dominant systems of oppression which are often entangled and consistently interact in the constitution of the modern world.

Counterterrorism in the Lake Chad Basin The debate surrounding counterterrorism efforts in the Lake Chad Basin (LCB), I suggest, allows for a considerable exploration into the functions and consequences of the spatial discourse (and practices) in postcolonial African contexts. In doing so, this chapter pushes methodological and theoretical approaches in CTS beyond its largely Western-oriented trappings and

Postcolonial Spaces and Critical Terrorism Studies

75

temporality as described above. While the LCB spans across an area of about 2.4 million square kilometres which includes eight countries in West, Central and North Africa, much of the ongoing counterterrorism interventions take place within the so-called conventional basin (including Nigeria, Chad, the Republic of Niger and Cameroon). These spaces are usually associated with issues related to transborder crimes, depletion of freshwater and food security (Okpara, Stringer & Bila, 2015), border disputes, among other problems, in many policy and academic commentaries (Tar & Bala, 2019). Indeed, this background is important not least because much of the analysis of terrorism and insecurity in the LCB frequently refer to these contextual details as jus­ tification of, and remedy for, terrorism. That said, the ongoing debate about counterterrorism strategies in this region encompasses a range of concerns, such as on the development of regional security complexes and military alliance, on geopolitics and hegemony, on issues related to human security and on “ungoverned spaces” (Abgiboa, 2017; Albert, 2017; Chukwuma, 2022; Tar & Mustapha, 2017). Tar and Mustapha argue (2017), for example, that regional security alliances offer a compelling pathway for counter­ terrorism interventions in the region especially in light of certain threats to national security and sovereignty. The Boko Haram crisis, as Albert (2017, p. 120) notes, is “a collective security threat to countries in the LCB and thus present legitimate grounds for regional cooperation”. Boko Haram, among other “reli­ gious” terrorist groups such as An-saru and the Islamic State West Africa Pro­ vince, has carried out terrorist attacks across the LCB and beyond, especially since 2009 (Tar & Mustapha, 2017). However, the re-purposing of the Multi­ national Joint Task Force (initially constituted in 1998 to deal with transborder crimes and conflicts) to respond to terrorism in the LCB has fostered military co­ operation among the participating States (including Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, the Republic of Niger and Benin Republic). As Ike (Chapter 9, this volume) shows, state-led responses to Boko Haram have taken diverse shapes, from mili­ tary campaigns through to deradicalisation and reintegration programmes. Yet competing regional and geopolitical interests, the arbitrary nature of territorial borders, human security dilemmas such as the shrinking of Lake Chad and its socio-economic impacts, and funding, frequently constrain these regional security arrangements (Albert, 2017). Notwithstanding the contestability of the “referent of security” in the above discourse of regional/collective security, we see here a spatial discourse in which the LCB is constructed as fun­ damentally a geographical space with similar state-oriented interests, objectives and capabilities. Such State/regional/military-centred notions of security are of course not new. However, existing historical, cultural and social connections between communities in and around the LCB which cuts across (nation-)State boundaries, as Abgiboa (2017) notes, significantly obscure statist or regional counterterrorism ambitions. Terrorist groups and other transborder criminal networks, he continues, “frequently exploit these socio-historical, cultural and geographical channels and thus pose considerable problems for Nigeria’s domestic security” (Abgiboa, 2017, p. 412).

76

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Moreover, official discourse of counterterrorism in Nigeria, as I have argued (Chukwuma, 2022), designates north-east Nigeria and the LCB more widely as “ungoverned spaces”. This evokes at least two spatial readings. On the one hand, this discourse designates the LCB as “geographies of insecur­ ity” and terrorists’ sanctuaries ostensibly owing to state weakness, porous borders, among other vulnerabilities, to make state-led intervention possible. As noted above, such perspectives about the causation of – and remedies for – terrorism, which draw from Western-oriented frameworks of statehood and discourses of development (or lack thereof), saturate much of the literature on security in Africa and the Global South more widely, though no less proble­ matic. As Bachmann (2008) writes, discourses of state weakness and ungov­ erned spaces in the LCB and the Sahel region more broadly underpin US foreign policy in Africa and provide grounds for US intervention, especially with respect to the war on terror. On the other hand, this notion of “ungov­ erned spaces” within Nigerian counterterrorism discourse, constructs the LCB itself as a significant threat to Nigeria’s domestic and regional hegemonic ambitions, as I have demonstrated (Chukwuma, 2022). Moreover, Nigeria has been criticised by its neighbours for failing to curtail the conflict within its territorial borders, thus creating a wider regional problem (Albert, 2017; Onuoha & Ugwueze, 2019). While analysis of security co-operation between these countries frequently portrays a supposedly natural and unproblematic relationship given their “common post-colonial experience and reality” (Chukwuma, 2022, p.412), the foregoing suggests an alternative understanding of such complex relationships and spatiality more broadly. Yet this goes beyond such simple binaries – such as between co-opera­ tion or conflict, regional or domestic – as these run the risk of glossing over important nuances of this relationship, which is underpinned by relevant histor­ ical and political elements especially in relation to (pre/post) colonial encounters. Transnational identities and cross-border linkages, the management of colonialinherited borders, migration, geopolitics and colonial vestigial relationships especially between Francophone and Anglophone countries, are constitutive of this relationship and thus shed light on the complexity of counterterrorism practices and (the politics of) space in the LCB. The preceding, thus, highlights the spatialisation of counterterrorism dis­ course (and practices) which renders the LCB as a site for external interven­ tion and neo-colonial practices ostensibly subsumed within the war on terror rhetoric, as well as other competing regional hegemonic interests which reveal longstanding colonial legacies and what this might mean for security in these spaces. Indeed, various calls for decolonisation in Africa have consistently problematised existing colonial borders and their implications for African mobilities, identities, communities and futures (Adotey, 2020). These realities are nonetheless mobilised in official discourses about counterterrorism – as well as within nationalist discourse (Adotey, 2020) – for different purposes which pose significant consequences including for citizenship, Indigenous communities and migration.

Postcolonial Spaces and Critical Terrorism Studies

77

In sum, by examining the ways in which space is constructed, imagined and contested in relation to counterterrorism strategies in the LCB context, this section has highlighted important nuances of counterterrorism discourse which transcend the theoretical, spatial and temporal orientation of much critical terrorism interventions. This situates colonialism, imperialism and neo-colonial practices, which are often overshadowed by state-centred and western-oriented discourses, at the centre of (counter)terrorism discourse.

Postcolonial Spaces and CTS: Dialogic Possibility and Collaborative futures Having examined the importance of space in the debate about counter­ terrorism strategies in the LCB, in this final section I explore the possibility and implications of a dialogic synergy between Postcolonialism and CTS. Before outlining this, however, it is relevant to highlight certain similarities between these fields. First, as we have seen, space is vitally important to CTS and postcolonialism and is approached differently (as imagined, material practices and in relation to academic knowledge production). Second, space is constitutive of, and reproduces, social reality and identities which are of course open to contestation, “repair” and re-constitution for fruitful engage­ ment and collaboration (see Mbembe, 2021). These similar concerns with regard to the importance of space or spatiality, I argue, provide a starting point for reflecting on “collaborative futures” between CTS and postcolonial thought(s). Moreover, the immense contribution of postcolonial thought to IR and Security Studies has increasingly been acknowledged, especially in relation to the various calls for decolonisation of teaching curriculums, pedagogy and the university in general. Thus, to develop such an interdisciplinary research agenda involving CTS and postcolonialism, scholars and activists associated with CTS research project must engage more frequently with, and indeed acknowledge insights from, postcolonial approaches. Doing so, I hope, will expand CTS research agenda and repertoire beyond – and away from – its Western-oriented focus, particularly its connection to 9/11 which CTS has somewhat become bound-up with and often derives its political and aca­ demic relevance from. Taking these initial steps, I suggest, offer two crucial implications outlined in turn. First is that this offers a leeway into developing alternative vocabularies, con­ cepts and ideas for explaining terrorism and counterterrorism in different domestic and global contexts. This is evidently useful in view of new and emer­ ging frameworks increasingly employed in terrorism research after 9/11 such as “extremism” and “radicalisation” which notably reinforce familiar Western bias and assumptions (Kundnani, 2012). Moreover, such an engagement between CTS and postcolonialism increasingly puts (counter)terrorism (research) itself “on trial”, given the dominant, western (neo)colonial trappings which typically characterise knowledge and practices of counterterrorism. Put otherwise,

78

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

(research on) terrorism is fundamentally invoked to govern populations, to isolate dangerous subjects from certain spaces – as well as the study of these practices, risky subjects and spaces – all of which reinforces hegemonic, symbolic and material privileges of the Global North in relation to “the rest” (McQuade, 2020). While this chapter does not – neither can it – resolve these broader issues at stake, however, developing alternative terminologies such as care, protection, safeguarding and so on, encourages collaboration and “reparation”.1 A second implication involves widening the scope of terrorism research beyond security threats facing Western societies to recognise other forms of violence, including those of colonial and imperialist designs, which typically remain outside the remit of (counter)terrorism discourse (see Chapter 1, this volume). Moreover, taking the “politics of care and repair” seriously, parti­ cularly with regard to colonial violence, offers useful ways for conceptualising terrorism and counterterrorism beyond the liberal emancipatory politics of CTS. In this case, the acknowledgement of histories of violence and inequal­ ity goes side-by-side with emancipation in order to create a better future for all, as recent commentaries on emancipation, including by CTS researchers, often occlude a comprehensive account of the structures of oppression and coloniality which produce “subjects of emancipation” and indeed make such an emancipatory praxis (or research) possible.

Conclusion This chapter has explored the research agenda of CTS by drawing upon three related approaches to space as conceptualised within postcolonial theory, as well as the debate about counterterrorism strategies in the LCB. As discussed above, concerns around broadening and deepening knowledge about terror­ ism as variously articulated within CTS endure certain methodological and epistemic fatigues as a result of its overwhelmingly western-oriented focus. This, in turn, restricts (counter)terrorism discourse within the remit of Wes­ tern experiences while ignoring other histories, epistemologies and approaches to (counter)terrorism, especially those from non-Western contexts and the Global South in particular. In conclusion, however, this chapter argued that postcolonial approaches (to space) offer useful ways for studying longer, deeper and continuing discourses (and practices) of terrorism, provides ave­ nues to develop new and potentially useful vocabularies for conceptualising violence and responses thereof and also enables the interrogation of the link between (research on) terrorism and coloniality.

Note 1 I approach reparation here as a collaborative enterprise with the aim to repair and re-make the world in ways that cater for all. This notion of repair goes beyond – though recognise the importance of – certain materialist connotations often asso­ ciated with reparation. As Mbembe (2021, p.185) writes, drawing upon Fanonian

Postcolonial Spaces and Critical Terrorism Studies

79

and Glissanian humanism, “we will have to learn to remember together, and, in doing so, repair the world’s fabric and its visages”. In the context of terrorism, however, the politics of repair challenges much of the assumptions embedded within – and reinforced through – discourses and practices of (counter)terrorism which divides the world into various unequal spaces and render particular identities vulnerable to interventions and control.

References Abu-Bakare, A. (2020). Counter-terrorism and Race. International Politics Reviews, 8(1), 79–99. Abrahamsen, R. (2003). African Studies and the Postcolonial Challenge. African Affairs, 102(407), 189–210. Abgiboa, D. E. (2017). Borders that Continue to Bother Us: The Politics of Border Security Cooperation in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin. Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 55(4), 403–425. Adotey, E. (2020). An Imaginary Line? Decolonisation, Bordering and Borderscapes on the Ghana–Togo Border. Third World Quarterly. Agnew, J. & Corbridge, S. (1995). Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy. Routledge. Ahmad, A. (1995). The Politics of Literary Postcoloniality. Race & Class 36(3), 1–20. Albert, I. O. (2017). Rethinking the Functionality of the Multinational Joint Task Force in Managing the Boko Haram Crisis in the Lake Chad Basin. African Development XLII (3), 119–135. Aning, K. (2010). Security, the War on Terror, and Official Development Assistance. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 3(1), 7–26. Ashcroft B., Griffiths, G. & Tiffin, H.. (1989). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. Routledge. Bachmann, J. (2008). The Danger of ‘Under-governed’ Spaces: The ‘War on Terror’ and Its Effects on the Sahel Region. In The Social Life of Anti-terrorism Laws: The War on Terror and the Classifications of the Dangerous Other (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag). edited by J. M. Eckert, (pp. 131–162). Transcript Verlag. Barkawi, T. &. Laffey, M. (2006). The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies. Review of International Studies 32(2), 329–352. Barnard-Wills, D. & C. Moore. (2010). The Terrorism of the Other: Towards a Contra­ puntal Reading of Terrorism in India. Critical Studies on Terrorism 3(3), 383–402. Barnett, C. (1997). “Sing Along with the Common People”: Politics, Postcolonialism, and Other Figures, Environment and Planning D, 15, 137–154. Bhabha, H. (1990). The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. (pp. 207–221). Lawrence & Wishart. Bilgin P. (2010). The ‘Western-centrism’ of Security Studies: ‘blind spot’ or constitutive practice. Security Dialogue 41(6), 615–622. Blunt, A. & Rose, G. (1994) Writing women and space: colonial and postcolonial geographies. Guilford Press. Blunt, A. & McEwan, C. (2002). Introduction. Postcolonial Geographies. In A. Blunt & C. McEwan, Reviews: (pp. 1–6). Blunt, A. & Wills, J. (2000). Decolonizing Geography: Postcolonial Perspectives. In A. Blunt and J. Wills (eds), Dissident Geographies: An Introduction to Radical Ideas and Practice (pp. 167–207). Harlow: Longman.

80

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Chakrabarty, D. (1992). Provincializing Europe: postcoloniality and the critique of history. Cultural Studies, 6(3), 337–357. Chukwuma, K. H. (2022). Critical Terrorism Studies and Postcolonialism: constructing ungoverned spaces in counter-terrorism discourse in Nigeria. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(2), 399–416. Clayton, D. (2003). Review of the book Postcolonial Geographiesby B. Alison &. C. McEwan. Reviews, 6(2), 341–344. Groothuis, S. (2020). Researching Race, Racialisation, and Racism in Critical Terror­ ism Studies: Clarifying Conceptual Ambiguities. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 13 (4), 680–701. Crush, J. (1994). Postcolonialism, de-colonization and geography. In A. Godlewska & N. Smith (Eds), Geography and Empire (pp. 333–350). Blackwell. Hall, S. (1996). When was the ‘postcolonial’? Thinking at the limit? In I. Chambers & L. Curti (Eds), The post-colonial question: common skies, divided horizons (pp. 242–260). Routledge. Horgan, J. & Boyle, M. J. (2008). A Case against ‘Critical Terrorism Studies. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1(1), 51–64. Jackson, R. (2007). The core commitments of Critical Terrorism Studies. European Political Science, 6, 244–251. Jackson, R., Jarvis, L., Gunning, J. & Breen-Smyth, M. (2011). Terrorism: A Critical Introduction. Palgrave Macmillan. Jarvis, L. (2009). The Spaces and Faces of Critical Terrorism Studies. Security Dialo­ gue, 40(1), 5–27. Jazeel, T. (2011). The geography of theory: knowledge, politics and the postcolonial present. In A. Teverson & S. Upstone(Eds), Postcolonial Spaces: The Politics of Place in Contemporary Culture (pp. 164–184). Palgrave Macmillan. Jones, D. M. and M. L. R. Smith (2009). We’re all terrorists now: Critical – or hypo­ critical – Studies “on” Terrorism. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 32(4), 292-302 Khan, R. M. (2021). Race, Coloniality and the Post 9/11 Counter-discourse: Critical Terrorism Studies and the Reproduction of the Islam-Terrorism Discourse. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14(4), 498–501. Krishnan, M. (2017a). Introduction: Postcolonial Spaces across Forms. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 53(6), 629–633. Krishnan, M. (2017b). From Empire to Independence: Colonial Space in the Writing of Tutuola, Ekwensi, Beti, and Kane. Comparative Literature Studies, 54(2), 329–357. Kundnani, A. (2012). Radicalisation: The Journey of a Concept. Race & Class, 54(2), 3–25. Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11–40. Mbembe A. (2021). Out of the dark night: essays on decolonisation. Columbia Uni­ versity Press. McQuade, J. (2020). A genealogy of terrorism: colonial Law and the origins of an idea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nazir, P. (2010). War on Terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan: Discursive and Political Contestations. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 3(1), 63–81. Noyes, J. K. (2006). Colonial Space: Spatiality in the Discourse of German South West Africa 1884–1915. Routledge. Okpara, U. T., Stringer, L. C., Dougill, A. J. & Bila, M. D. (2015) Conflicts about water in Lake Chad: are environmental, vulnerability and security issues linked? Progress in Development Studies 15(4), 308–325.

Postcolonial Spaces and Critical Terrorism Studies

81

Onuoha, F. & Ugwueze, M. (2019). Special Operation forces, counter-terrorism, and counter-insurgency operations in the Lake Chad area. In U. A. Tar &. B. Bala (Eds), New Architecture of Regional Security in Africa: Perspectives on Counter-terrorism and Counter-insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin (pp. 267–295). Lexington Books. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Penguin. Said, E. (1985). Orientalism reconsidered. Cultural Critique, 1, 89–107. Said, E. (1990). Geography, Narrative, Interpretation. New Left Review, 180, 81–97. Said, E. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. Vintage. Said, E. (1994). Representations of the Intellectual. Vintage. Seth S. (2011). Postcolonial theory and the critique of International Relations. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 40(1), 167–183. Sharp, J. (2008). Geographies of Postcolonialism. London: Sage. Soja, E. W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Blackwell. Soja, E. W. (2011). Foreword In A. Teverson & S. Upstone (Eds), Postcolonial Spaces: The Politics of Place in Contemporary Culture. Palgrave Macmillan. Spivak, G. (1999). A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Harvard University Press. Tar, U. A. & Bala, B. (2019). New Architecture of Regional Security in Africa: Perspectives on Counter-terrorism and Counter-insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin. Lexington Books. Tar, U. A. &. Mustapha, M. (2017). The Emerging Architecture of a Regional Security Complex in the Lake Chad Basin. African Development, XLII(3), 99–118. Teverson, A. & Upstone, S. (Eds) (2011). Postcolonial Spaces: The Politics of Place in Contemporary Culture. Palgrave Macmillan. West-Pavlov, R. (2008). Postcolonialism and the Politics of Space: Towards a Postcolonial Analysis of Material Spatial Practices. Journal of English Philology, 126(2), 258–277. Young, R. C. (2001). Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Blackwell.

5

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies A Counter-Visuality of the 01/08

Anti-democratic Attacks in Brazil

Matheus Pfrimer

Introduction Visual Analysis (VA) is gaining traction in Critical Security Studies (CSS) and Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS). By delving into different methodological possibilities to understand how images, practices and modalities of seeing are conceived, visual methods are able to access into various visual cultures. Undeniably, images and the visual cultures embedded therein are an inevi­ table part of the contemporary world, enabling and taking part in construct­ ing what security and terrorism are. Despite visual methods’ advances in CSS and CTS, such contributions are rife with Eurocentric views and claims that obfuscate the subaltern’s ocularity. Brushing off other visual epistemologies, such as those produced by the subaltern, is detrimental to advancing a critical visual research program since, according to Gregory (2012, p. 152), “post­ colonial theorizing is deeply rooted with visibility and the politics of knowl­ edge construction”. Henceforth, if CTS and CSS are to grapple seriously with critical approaches, both should consider engaging visual methods with Decolonial Studies. As Dixit (2014, p. 340) explains, “decolonizing visuality means revealing the Orientalist systems of meaning-making or ‘regimes of truth’, wherein seeing is tied in with recognizing others as specific kinds of others and thus controlling what can (and ought to be) done about them”. In sum, methods and methodologies are an inextricable part of construing reality; thus, employing varied-perspective interventions to scrutinise visual cultures is germane. Despite being relatively less used in CSS (Dixit, 2015), VA literature emer­ ging from the pictorial and aesthetic turns has, in various and fundamental ways, thrown light into new layers of security realities, including terrorism. Consequently, VA has unveiled different dimensions of security reality linked to the senses by treating visuals not only as artifacts, as part of visual security, but also as techniques of knowledge, as a visuality of security (Andersen et al., 2014). A significant part of this vibrant literature has turned its eyes to the visualities of security as a) a modality of security, representations and signs (Hansen, 2011, 2017; Vuori, 2010); b) a practice of enacting security (Andersen et al., 2015; Guillaume et al., 2018); and c) a method for investigating security DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963-8

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies

83

(Bleiker, 2019; Lisle & Johnson, 2019; Särmä, 2019). Besides departing from diverse transversal approaches, this literature has also broached various security themes, including the visuality of far-right populism and violence (Katja et al., 2022), the enactment of certain visualities as terrorism (Amoore, 2007; Conti, 2017; Pfrimer, 2021), the biopolitical profiling of migrants as criminals (Hansen et al., 2021), the visuality of flags and uniforms as symbols of (in)security (Andersen et al., 2015; Guillaume, et al., 2016; Guillaume et al., 2018), and the representation of the feminine and queer bodies in comics as symbols of (in) security (Cooper-Cunningham, 2020; Heck & Schlag, 2013). In conjunction with this literature, CTS publications have concentrated chiefly on analysing the ter­ rorism visuality during the “War on Terror” period (Amoore, 2006, 2007; Der Derian, 2005). Lately, there has been a burgeoning interest in analysing how certain visualities modulate the meaning of terrorism in everyday practices (Dixit, 2015, 2016; Dixit & Miller, 2022; Martin, 2018). However, few mentions of decolonial and postcolonial visual approaches to CTS exist. Of this scant lit­ erature on decolonial visual methods to CTS, we can mention Dixit (2014) unveiling how Bin Laden’s visuality is constructed in the ambiguity of hiding and making visible. Apart from Dixit, Ryan (2015) discusses a different methodology to present a counter-visuality regarding Palestinian refugees. Therefore, a VA that critically anchors CTS’s research agenda must diligently engage with deco­ loniality to make the subaltern’s ocularity appear, i.e. the subaltern’s way of seeing. By not dealing with a decolonial gaze, both CSS and CTS reproduce Eurocentric claims and principles, which leads to construing (in)security through the lenses of coloniality. Unlike academic parochialism and positi­ vism, to adequately address the significance of (in)security and terrorism, visual methods should allow different methodologies and other forms of knowledge to emerge to let the silenced and invisible appear. Decolonising visual methods involves at least two stances. First, it entails sharpening the senses and sensibilities to gauge how visualities intertwine with practices and symbologies of the silenced. According to the positivistic canon, such a research posture is inevitably considered pseudo-scientific. However, critical scholars have evinced how emotions might influence researchers’ interpreta­ tion (Bleiker & Hutchison, 2018; D’Aoust, 2012; Widdowfield, 2000). Second, decolonial undertakings require researchers to politically position themselves since ontological and empirical choices are politically oriented. Venturing into decolonial pathways requires an attentive behaviour toward how different linguistic, social, political and theoretical elements, not to mention visual ones, are intertwined in construing and interpreting empirical material. Such attentive and self-inquisitive behaviour is also known as criticality (Guil­ laume, 2013). In sum, taking the decolonial gaze forward is essential to being more attuned to research strategies that care for real emancipation. This chapter sets out how critical VA engaged in the decolonial gaze could turn CTS’s attention to the subaltern visuality as a modality, practice and method. For such a venture, I set forth the idea of anthropophagy conceived

84

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

by the Brazilian modernist movement during the Week of Modern Art in 1922. Decades later, the Tropicalia movement recaptured and reshaped the concept of anthropophagy in the 1970s in Brazil. Imbued with national selfdetermination and anti-colonial principles, both artistic movements held that producing an original and creative culture is all about cooking, eating, devouring and regurgitating the coloniser’s culture. This ironic and humorous metaphor refers to times of resistance against European colonialism in that the concept of anthropophagy conjures up scenes of cannibalism by Indigen­ ous Peoples that have highly impacted the coloniser’s imagination over the centuries. Eating adversaries’ flesh, bones, entrails and blood was believed to enable the cannibals to acquire the corpse’s personality and mental char­ acteristics. However, cannibalistic rituals are laid out as dramaturgical per­ formances within colonial times to instil terror against colonisers purposefully as resistance (Sanborn, 1998). As a cultural analogy, anthropophagy is a strategy to subvert the ties of terrorism with coloniality and create a counter­ visuality. Despite being relatively applied to social sciences, an anthro­ pophagic approach is unknown to CSS and other IR subareas except for Cooperation Studies (Abdenur, 2019). By consuming and incorporating the coloniser’s culture from a different standpoint, anthropophagy enables hybrid epistemologies to emerge without incurring xenophobia. I develop this argu­ ment in the following way. First, I present an overview of visual decolonial approaches in CTS. Then, I scrutinise how anthropophagy can contribute to subverting the visual ties between terrorism and coloniality. Finally, I put anthropophagy into practice by investigating terrorism visuality during the recent episode of far-right attacks against the sieges of the three constituent powers in Brazil on 8 January 2023.

Tasting the Mix of Visual and Decolonial Approaches in CTS Generally speaking, CTS literature at the juncture of Decolonial and Visual studies has yet to be full-fledged. Although there is room for delving into intricate relations of Visual and Decolonial studies, CTS literature still needs to be expanded to unveil certain power relations and not brush off gender and race issues. Aside from visual methods traditionally being less applied in CSS, this paucity also stems from a lurching effort of CTS to seriously grapple with Visual Decolonial studies to countervail the orthodoxy of traditional scho­ larship. Of this literature, a more considerable portion situates itself at the axis of decolonial undertakings to CTS, which can be arranged under Mignolo’s (2011) partition of coloniality into the coloniality of power, being and knowledge. In the same vein, Khan’s (2021), along with Dixit and Mill­ er’s (2022) undertakings with race and coloniality and Shepherd’s (2022) considerations on black feminism and violent extremism, are more attuned to the coloniality of being. Other studies, such as Ilyas’s (Ilyas, 2021, 2022) interventions decolonising CTS scholarship and accounting for the terrorism industry in Indonesia, fall under the coloniality of knowledge. Finally, Oando

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies

85

and Achieng’s (2021) piece reveals the power relations underlying the imple­ mentation of a foreign counterterrorism framework related to the coloniality of power. While unrelated to decolonial studies, another portion of this literature undertakes VA in CTS. These publications can be gathered into three groups according to their understanding of visuality, namely as a modality of security representations, as a practice in enacting security and as a method for inves­ tigating security (Andersen & Vuori, 2018). Among the publications dealing with visuality as a modality, some scrutinise the ties of visuality with the spatiality of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Bönisch, 2015), while others pro­ blematise the visuality of leftist militants and women depicted as a terrorist (Kearns, 2017; Loken, 2021; Pfrimer, 2021). Under the blanket of visuality as a practice, Amoore (2007) lays out how a vigilant mode of watchful visuality was deployed at the homeland front of the War on Terror. Likewise, HeathKelly (2012) showcases the egregious consequences of false negatives in the policy framings of counterterrorism in the UK. In contrast to these reflec­ tions, further publications have brought the perspective of the violent perpe­ trators to light by pondering on ways of seeing their violence mediated by musical-video performances and public displays of choreographed violence (Conti, 2017; Friis, 2018). The last group of articles is committed to casting a sight into visuality as a method for investigating security and terrorism and imbued with movie-plot analysis, collaging, searches on museums websites and visual auto-ethnography (Bleiker, 2019; Dixit & Miller, 2022; Särmä, 2018, 2019; Thobani, 2019). Notwithstanding this burgeoning literature, bridging the void of decolonial­ visual-connected reflections is paramount. Undeniably, publications integrat­ ing decolonial and visual approaches in CTS are scant and lack more invol­ vement with the decolonial agenda. Apart from an incipient number of pieces putting postcolonial and visual perspectives together, I have found very few papers or book chapters grappling with a decolonial research agenda in CTS. Among these, I highlight Dixit’s accounts of Bin Laden’s death visuality (Dixit, 2014). According to her, the various lines of textual and pictorial representations of Bin Laden’s deaths have stemmed from plots to (in)visibi­ lise certain features of this event to project what was to be forgotten or remembered. Such (in)visibility undertakings arise out of racialised accounts immersed in coloniality. In conjunction with Dixit’s contribution, Martin (2018) demonstrates how the process of (in)visibilisation of certain persons at the behest of others considered liable to become future terrorists is embedded in the training of a pastoral-security gaze. Therefore, training and performing specific ways of seeing security events can make visible those deemed as “potential threats” and, consequently, normalise a racialised and gendered gaze towards the subaltern through a “vulnerability indicator” (Martin, 2018, p. 12). Another significant sample of this literature is Agathangelou’s (2012) decolonial examination of popular images of Bin Laden right after the 9/11 attacks. According to Agathangelou, dominant regimes of visuality are

86

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

concomitantly constitutive and disrupted within. In the face of this realisation, she engaged in an insurgent practice of deconstructing universalist narratives put forward by Eurocentric discourses (Agathangelou, 2012). Dixit and Martin’s considerations embraced visuality as a security practice, while Agathangelou worked out visuality as a method of insurgent practice. In virtue of CTS publications’ paucity at the juncture of Decolonial and Visual Studies, I propose a research agenda that intersects modes of visuality, according to Andersen and Vuori’s (2018) classification, with parts of coloni­ ality as proposed by Mignolo. Andersen and Vuori (2018) set forth a threemove approach to visual security to take part as a subject matter in Visual Security Studies. The first move regards material visuality depicted by security representations such as photos, images and cartoons. These material visuals aside, Andersen and Vuori also bring to light a second move centred on how sight and appearance are an inextricable part of security routines, bureau­ cratic ambiances and everyday events. However, visual modalities are not circumscribed to textual or material ones but embrace other practices, such as visual research practice, as an engagement with both images (first move) and practice (second move). This three-move approach to visual security lays transversal into three parts comprising an engagement with coloniality, per Mignolo and other decolonial scholars (Ilyas, 2022; Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Mignolo, 1995, 2011). The first part relates to the ongoing reproduction of colonial structures of domination, which are not simply economic or political but are at the intersection of gender, race and class, known as the Coloniality of Power. The second part is the Coloniality of Knowledge, which stands for the Global North episteme imposition and other subtle ways of domination over the subaltern thinking, imagining, and knowing foregrounded on prin­ ciples of objectivity, universality and neutrality (Grosfoguel, 2007, 2011). Lastly, the Coloniality of Being and Not Being takes on structured shapes of (re)signifying how various peoples should be regarded along the lines of a colonial hierarchy of identities (Maldonado-Torres, 2007). Various fecund research questions and themes can emerge from the inter­ section of Decolonial and Visual Studies to CTS. By means of illustration, I have suggested some of these questions and themes in table 1 and added therein, whenever available, examples of publications already handling such questions and themes. The proposed research agenda can deal with the Coloniality of Power and visuality by pondering how political and economic structures conceive and circulate visual materials, practices and methods to stabilise colonial relations in terrorism scholarship, policies and depictions. Imbued with the Coloniality of Knowledge and visuality, CTS perspectives can address the ways in which visual materials, practices and methods are a fundamental part of determining and constructing terrorism realities. How­ ever, colonial power relations mediate what these sorts of visualities can manifest as knowledge about terrorism. At the junction of the Coloniality of Being and visuality, CTS undertakings can be concerned with how gender, race and other subaltern identities, based on colonial relations, intersect with

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies

87

certain visualities to make sense of terrorism and terrorists. First, the pro­ posed research agenda depicted in table 1 presents various possibilities for those interested in carrying out CTS research integrating Decolonial and Visual Studies, and hence, it lies at a point of departure. Second, this frame­ work serves as an analytical device for evaluating future publications in the field and, third, as a reference aiming at understanding the pros and cons of new perspectives in the field. By situating an anthropophagic approach as a point of convergence among Decolonial and Visual studies, we can use the above framework to evince anthropophagy’s main contributions to the field. First of all, Anthro­ pophagy’s main strength resides in its epistemic disobedience and bold stance against colonising cultural and political architectures. From this, anthro­ pophagy can more thoroughly endow CTS with a reasonable comprehension of matters situated in the intersection of both the coloniality of knowledge and being with visuality. Second, despite Anthropophagy contesting the Table 5.1 Transversal CTS approaches intersecting Decolonial Studies and Visual Studies

Coloniality of Power

Coloniality of Knowledge

Coloniality of Being/not being

Visuality as a modality

Visuality as a practice

Visuality as a method

How the economy and politics of images, pics, videos among others cir­ culate what terrorists and terrorism resemble, thereby intersecting race and gender to reproduce colonial structures. How, according to the colonising epistemes, do certain visuals validate ter­ rorist events while others do not.

How terrorism visuality is performed by various practices embedded in the poli­ tical and economic structures of State bodies and elites.

How do different visualities as a method count or not for terrorism scholar­ ship regarding grants, policies and other incentives for publishing, researching and foregrounding action and other knowledge? How visuality as a method ends up reproducing and imposing the Global North epistemes over alternative epistemes of the Global South to study terrorism (e.g., Dixit, 2016) How visuality as a method can depart from different epis­ temes (re)signifying who a terrorist is (e.g., Agathangelou, 2012)

How visuals inter­ sect various iden­ tities to signify what a terrorist is.

How different visua­ lities as practices of (in)visibility can result in different ways of knowing and therefore determining what accounts as terrorism (e.g., Dixit, 2014) How visuality is com­ prised of various prac­ tices, e.g., as pastoral practice, that deter­ mine which identities are associated with terrorism or not (e.g., Martin, 2018)

88

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

orthodoxy of Eurocentric canons, it still keeps a watchful regard toward them so as not to disdain them but instead to take beneficial features from them. Third, as a vernacular visual metaphor inculcated in both the coloniser and the colonised collective imaginary, the anthropophagic gaze, other than just swinging around to the subaltern’s gaze, can operate as a counter-visuality stance, taking “Global South thinking from and with subalternized… spaces and bodies” (Grosfoguel, 2007, p. 212). Taken together, these reasons evince how an anthropophagic perspective sets the stage for manifold possibilities and opens new avenues for research.

Anthropophagy as a way to Devour Eurocentric Claims and Practices in CTS Conjuring up memories of cannibalistic rites and practices of Indigenous Peo­ ples in Brazil, the anthropophagic idea established itself as a landmark in the Brazilian culture formation when the avant-garde artistic movement organised the 1922 Modern Art Week in São Paulo, an event timed to tie in with the centennial independence from Portugal. Under the leadership of Oswald de Andrade along with his artistic fellows and unfeigned by the nationalist tone of the celebrations, the nascent anthropophagic movement made a vigorous and concomitantly jocular defence of anti-classical and anti-conservative principles prescribed by the European aesthetics. In contrast to vaguely imitating foreign art trends, the movement’s chief tenet drew on cannibalising European culture, a motto calling for imaginatively applying European artistic canons to the Brazilian circumstances to achieve Brazilianness. The 1924 Anthropophagist Manifesto quintessentially lays as a cornerstone of such directions. Interestingly, decades prior to the development of the decolonial perspective, de Andrade had already sketched out the principles of a subaltern perspective that later came to be painted by decolonial scholars (García, 2020). In other words, having realised that colonialism is an intricate instrument of domination at social, economic and cultural dimensions, de Andrade envisions, through anthropophagy, an original political project that produces a new being from its native primitivism and postmodernist critique (García, 2020; Nunes, 1972). Despite the various further conceptual strands attached to anthropophagy by several authors (Azevedo, 2018; Castro, 2016; Marino, 2022; Veloso, 2012), in this chapter, I restrain this concept to de Andrade’s version (de Andrade, 2011). With this in mind, I excavate the various avenues that an anthropophagic perspective affords to CTS research at the crossroads of Decolonial and Visual Studies. In this chapter passage, I propose to address two main issues. First, I put forward some considerations about anthro­ pophagy and its connections with the decolonial gaze. Second, I explore how an anthropophagic approach can tackle Eurocentric assertions in the realm of CTS. Finally, by considering some of the CTS Eurocentric claims and prac­ tices regarding colour, race, trauma, time and method I showcase how anthropophagy can support a decolonial gaze to overturn such claims.

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies

89

If initially, the legend of Indigenous Peoples, such as the “Carab” (“man-eater”, from which the Caribbean stems) remained deep-seated in European coloniser’s imagination as in the stories of Hans Staden and James Cook, later this concept was reinstated by Brazilian writer and philosopher Oswald de Andrade in his Anthropophagist Manifest (Abde­ nur, 2019). As opposed to the shocking colonial imagination depicting the colonisers as civilised and the original people as barbaric, de Andrade held that anthropophagy’s task was to overcome the Eurocentric legacy (Azevedo, 2018; Nunes, 1972). His view comes close to that in which Indigenous Peoples’ cannibalistic rituals were dramaturgical performances meant to induce terror in foreign audiences, thus constructing a displayed identity that only functioned in the coloniser’s presence (Sanborn, 1998). As such, anthropophagy can be portrayed not simply as i) a cultural metaphor applied against the mechanism of colonisation to be assimilated or otherwise overwhelmed, but more than that, anthropophagy corre­ sponds to ii) a diagnosis of a society shattered by colonial coercion; and iii) a therapy for intellectual conventions that turns colonial trauma into a collective superego (García, 2020; Nunes, 1972). Therefore, as coined by de Andrade, anthropophagy lays out not only as a psychoanalytic allegory but also as a methodology to construe and overcome colonial ties. In turn, as terrorism genealogy historically is interwoven with that of coloniality, an anthropophagic approach can also be extended to unravel terrorism as a colonial manifestation. The historical connection between terrorism and coloniality derives from the words terror and territory, sharing the exact common origin, the Latin word terrere, which meant to frighten away. In light of this same Latin lineage, Elden (2007) holds that the word territorium is associated with both ideas of land (terra) and terror to desig­ nate a place from which people are frightened or where terror is exercised. Undeniably, territory and terrorism are dispositifs entangled with the pro­ cess of modern state formation in colonised regions where the European colonisers exerted terror and extreme violence to conquer and control large extensions of land and native peoples while concomitantly employing tropes classifying local resistance as terrorism to stabilise the memories of such catastrophic events as the arrival of civilisation and, subsequently moder­ nisation (García, 2020). Such unstinting fabrics of the national states for some and to the detriment of others, even nowadays, resonate with national security anxieties that are profoundly manifest and entrenched in practices of coloniality and terrorism tropes. Therefore, anthropophagy stands as a decolonial approach to CTS i) as a cultural metaphor reminding us of resistance to the terror of colonialism in the past and present times; ii) as a diagnosis of a society plagued by coloniality which classifies acts of resis­ tance as terrorism; and iii) as therapy against coloniality, turning the colo­ nial trauma into a superego in which the Eurocentric perspectives are viewed as a role model to study what terrorism is.

90

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

One of the main passages of the Anthropophagist Manifesto that could assist in addressing the Eurocentric claims in CTS resides in an aphorism that reads as follows: “Only Anthropophagy unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically” (de Andrade, 2011). Clearly, this excerpt references the Manifesto of the Communist Party’s last phrase calling the Proletarians of all countries to unite (Azevedo, 2018). Curiously though, is the sequence of dimensions elicited to be reconnected through anthropophagy. It was not haphazardly mentioned. Unlike the Marxian economically based conception, de Andrade asserts that anthropophagy will, first and foremost, socially unite us, and he, thus, substitutes the economic pair bourgeoisie-proletarian, prioritised in the Marxian concoction, for the patriarchy-matriarchy opposi­ tion shown in the following pages of the Manifesto (Nunes, 1972). As opposed to the Eurocentric explanation depicting economic relations as the origins of capitalism, here, social practices and relations comprise a broader structure of domination in which economic relations are inserted as one variety thereof. Hence, social relations precede economic ones. According to de Andrade, what fundamentally foregrounds this assembly of social relations is patriarchy, a social order that extols patriarchal family, patrimony or private property of land and the state of class. As a prescription against such a dom­ ination matrix, anthropophagy affords matriarchy, which draws on the collec­ tive land tenure and on the belonging of children not to the father, but to the tribe. Moreover, instead of the State order, the social organisation is kept under the ancestral customs of the community, namely the tribe, which patriarchy converted into a fatherland during the State formation (García, 2020). While applying the idea of matriarchy to CTS, one can switch over to the sight of the subaltern to comprehend that repertoires viewed as terrorism are categorised as such according to customs and ways of seeing, not of the commonality, but according to the social rules of the fatherland and the arbitrariness of those operating the state apparatus of justice. In various ways, the law is a legacy of this patriarchal order, and its ways of seeing, or better stated, certain practices are classified as crime and terrorism, taking as refer­ ence the visuality of patriarchy and, subsequently, turned public as a rule. In conjunction with this, patriarchy sliced tribal lands into multitudinous prop­ erties and the communality into families and classes, only the hegemonic groups wielding patrimony and a higher standing per the European standard were “honourable” to occupy positions of power in the state bureaucracy. Affected by inequality, disgruntled Indigenous Peoples, Afro-Brazilians and peasant workers ended up deemed as terrorists. Economically, anthropophagy can unite us by proposing an organisation structured around a commonality, namely the tribe, and with principles to be handed down from generation to generation. If the oikos (i.e. the household care) of modern society rests on the market, for anthropophagy, that of the tribe is nature, where the concepts of commodity, production and labour are secondary. Contrary to a search for eternal growth and the never-ending sur­ plus extraction by exploring the vitality of the silenced, an anthropophagic­

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies

91

based economy revolves around deploying technological techniques that reconnect peoples and nature where time is not commensurate with the amount of money produced or cycles for capital reproduction (García, 2020). The economic prescription of anthropophagy casts a light on how the security of the fatherland has prioritised the logic of the market to the detriment of the logic of communal security of the tribe. The security of the tribe displayed an allegiance-based relationship from a constituent toward collectivity. In opposition, the formation of the Modern State derived from allegiance to a sovereign, not to mention a fatherland, which in contemporaneity gained a modern veneer, that of the Capital (Leirner, 2020). Consequently, security affairs grew into a money-making scheme, which explains why the Military­ Industrial-Media-Entertainment network galvanised terrorism to the utmost importance after the 9/11 attacks. This has enabled security affairs to pervade all social dimensions and diffuse terrorism visualities attending to the liking of its security-anxiety-laden consumer market (Der Derian, 2000). In sum, anthropophagy shows how the fatherland’s notion of security has turned ter­ rorism anxieties into fabrics of economic opportunities and terrorism visuality diffusion (Ilyas, 2022). Both social orders, represented by patriarchy and matriarchy, result in dif­ ferent conceptions of the economy. To deliver stability to these conceptions of economy, patriarchy and matriarchy, respectively, advance the cultural notions of messianism and anthropophagy. As a Christian strand, messianism closely adhered to the legitimation of patriarchy, for it put forward two cul­ tural elements: the idea of a future life and its high valorisation of labour. With the captivity of Indigenous and black people amid colonisation, the European catechism conveyed the idea of a well-off future life after death in recompense for slavery, such that enslaved people’s permanent and unsparing rebellions did not ensue. Another cultural trait upholding patriarchy’s status quo is an overrated consideration for labour as an expiatory work rewarded with the advent of a future life. As opposed to Messianism’s strict observance of dogmas, anthropophagy features a standpoint wary of alterity and according to which the world is a space composed of a plethora of perceptual bodies to be considered as a way to elicit more comprehensive visions of existence (García, 2020). In de Andrade’s words, anthropophagy enacts a “metaphysical operation”, namely “the transformation of the taboo into totem” (de Andrade, 1978, p. 77), i.e., the transformation of what is pro­ hibited and invisible, in virtue of social mores, into something publicly visible and sacred for the community (Nunes, 1972). In the philosophical sense, anthropophagy is an epistemic operation to let the subaltern’s counter­ visuality emerge, more specifically regarding what terrorism is to mean. Imbued with the above recommendations, anthropophagy can tackle CTS’s Eurocentric claims and practices, especially concerning colour, race, trauma and time. Despite the more recent CTS undertakings with colour, for most of its short history, CTS has taken colour for granted as though it was “ideolo­ gically neutral”. While neglecting that most of those profiled as terrorists, not

92

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

to say as cannibals, throughout colonisation history and after, had black and brown skin colour, CTS ends up ignoring how colour-biased profiling of ter­ rorism by state institutions manifests itself from the subaltern’s perspective as a matter of security, for instance, in the quotidian military operations against black and Indigenous communities. At the same time, this long-lived intel­ lectual posture erases State institutions’ tendency to classify far-right white supremacist violence as activism and not terrorism (Dixit & Miller, 2022). Therefore, this academic attitude of looking on those considered terrorists as achromatic only unveils CTS’s lack of concern for the intersections of colour and race (Andersen et al., 2015). As a system of signification and practice, colours are deployed to classify, hierarchise and profile individuals, bodies, ideas and repertoires as terrorism (Dixit, 2016). Thus, this CTS pretence of neutrality for colours manifests as not positioning against racism and the coloniality underlying practices of terrorism profiling. By letting emerge a counter-visuality, anthropophagy can draw attention to how colours as a semiotic system partake in the meaning-making of terrorism visuality, for instance. Another Eurocentric claim concerns trauma and time. Some authors have urged CTS scholars to forget 9/11, in as much as various tropes on terrorism have brought about egregious consequences to collective memories and world­ wide perceptions of time (Toros, 2017; Zehfuss, 2003). Differently, anthro­ pophagy has underscored how looking down on past traumas can be therapeutic, given that we can transform taboos into totems. Therefore, the subaltern turning their gaze to the past is a way of better accounting for the origins of events recounted as terrorism and people viewed as terrorists. Like­ wise, and even more therapeutic would be for political and intellectual elite members to look back on their ancestors’ misdeeds to engage in redressing predecessors’ past misdoings. Otherwise, prescriptions for forgetting terrorism evince psychoanalytically a pent-up desire of the white collective subconscious to brush aside or self-deny that one’s own ancestors and entourage might have or still supports ongoing colonial practices, such as State terrorism and thereby not feeling remorse for relatives’ past actions. Since colour, race, trauma and time are convoluted in a regime of visuality, anthropophagy, as shown, arose as a strategy to confront Eurocentric claims and practices in CTS. Many other Eurocentric claims by CTS scholars could have been tackled here but plunging into such a task is beyond the scope of this manuscript. In the next section, I will illustrate how to apply an anthropophagic approach.

Regurgitating a Terrorism Visuality Through 08/01 Anti-democratic Attacks in Brazil In this section, I show how to harness an anthropophagic approach to a largely controversial event in Brazil, the 08/01 far-right attacks against democratic institutions. In the shadow of such occurrences, it became clear how modes and practices of seeing matter to categorise identical repertoires performed by

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies

93

different bodies, colours and people as terrorism or crime. Therefore, the scope of this part is to describe how visuality, as a practice passed down to military and police officers during their training, was more recently divulged to the lay people through vernacular accounts of green and yellow patriotism acts on social media. In what follows, I take up the notions of anthropophagy as a cultural metaphor, diagnosis and therapeutic so as to devour and subvert the far-right attacks’ visuality concerning colour, race, body, time and trauma. The 08/01 Anti-democratic Attacks in Brazil The far-right attacks on 8 January 2023 in Brazil resulted from a lengthy process that gained traction, owing to Bolsonaro’s government constantly attacking democratic institutions in his four-year term. During this time, even under Bol­ sonaro and his bigots’ constant attacks, some members of the Supreme Court have asked for more respect towards far-right manifestations asking for a Mili­ tary Regime comeback (UOL, 2022). Even Bolsonaro’s Ministry of Justice has sprung into a defence of these manifestations (O Globo, 2020). The last democ­ racy’s bulwark was a handful of judges at the Brazilian Supreme Court who were under attack not only from the chief of the executive but also a substantial quantity of the congressional representatives. To top it off, even high-rank mili­ tary and police officers were supporting such manifestations. The loss of the presidential election by Bolsonaro as an incumbent was the last straw in this tension between the summit of the Executive, the Legislative and Military powers along with an extremist throng against some members of the Supreme Court and a minority of left-wing congresswomen/men. Unconvinced of the ballot’s outcomes, Bolsonarists have taken to the streets in green and yellow since announcing the second-round outcome of the presidential elections held on 30 October 2022. In different regions of the country, they have gathered and even held well-sponsored camping sites in front of Army facilities to ask for “a military coup with Bolsonaro in power”. This inflammatory coup rhetoric and repertoires flared up to lure radicalright adherents, entrepreneurs, former petty criminals, radical Christian zeal­ ots, Reserve and active-duty military officers and monarchists. Amid several fortnights and without any public endorsement of the elections’ outcomes by the defeated-incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, these camping sites grew from mere ideological gatherings to well-organised groups with considerable resources. Although having set foot in a military area, curiously, these demonstrations have remained untouched by police forces and even the Army police, under the allegation that they were “democratic protests”. However, according to the Brazilian Penal Code, any attempt to abolish the State Democratic Law using violence or threat was considered a crime against the state (Biten­ court, 2019). This situation came to a head on the preceding days and the eve of President Lula’s third term inauguration ceremony when protestors tried to unsuccessfully explode a fuel tank lorry nearby Brasilia’s interna­ tional airport, set fire to vehicles and destroyed the headquarters of the

94

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

federal police. Nevertheless, even after all these misdoings, the authorities did not disband the camping sites under allegations that just a few radical Bolsonarists perpetrated these mishaps and did not represent those in front of the Army barracks. On the eve of the attacks, caravans of buses organised by evangelical pas­ tors and entrepreneurs brought in more supporters to Brasilia while multiple posts circulating on social media and rumours were flying around behind the scenes to summon supporters to a massive protest to take over the main buildings of the three democratic powers (Correa & Fonseca, 2023). Yet, regardless of all this evidence, the military police of the Federal District and the presidential security guard, composed chiefly of blatant-Bolsonarist-sup­ portive officers, have turned their eyes from the impending attacks and done nothing more than exchange intelligence reports. By that time, even Lula’s newly sworn defence minister issued a public statement classifying the protests as a “manifestation of democracy” and said that he had friends and relatives who participated in the movement (Netto, 2023). On the day of the attacks, early in the morning, Bolsonaro’s followers headed to the seat of the three powers. Before departing from their camping in front of the Army Barracks in Brasilia, online videos exhibited police offi­ cers, who were to escort the crowd, conveying that they were there to protect the demonstrators (Poder360, 2023). Wearing yellow and green national soccer team jerseys and holding the Brazilian national flag along with a Bra­ zilian Monarchist flag, a nationalist group walked up to the Congressional Building shouting slogans such as “my flag will never be red”. This catch­ phrase referred to their anti-communist stance and, in opposition to a sup­ posedly communist one of Lula’s Workers’ Party. The hive was primarily composed of middle-aged caucasian men and women that, upon arriving at the Congressional Building, confronted just a handful of passive and even negligent officers forming a men-lined barricade (UOL, 2023). After ploughing through the security forces, this nationalist multitude stormed into the main buildings ravaging whatever they found. Such was the pride these vandals took in their actions that they have even beamed live their caused damages through their social media outlets. In these broadcastings, repertoires of shouting in prayer and kneeling with the national flag in hand are the most notorious in which these activists associate God and the fatherland with their cause. In one of the most repugnant appearances, a photographer’s camera captured a low-rank judge invading the dependencies of the Supreme Court building. She car­ ried a poster with the saying: “Supreme is the people”. Obviously, the people mentioned by her were not whichever people, but the “people of god”. Dumbfounded, the Minister of Justice Flavio Dino monitored the attacks from his office window. No sooner did the security reinforcement take control of the situation, he asked General Dutra de Menezes, one of those responsible for the Federal District security:

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies � � �

95

‘How many prisoners?’ ‘Arrested?’, Dutra de Menezes replied. ‘Arrested, General. You have to arrest, general. They committed a crime, general’, Dino snapped with his nerves already on edge. (Jardim, 2023)

Days later, the Brazilian Supreme Court prosecuted more than 2000 Bolsonarists for terrorism (Veloso, 2023). Though it may be understood that the entire justice apparatus took action against Bolsonarists, actually it was just a minor part of it comprised of a group of judges headed by Alexandre de Moraes, whom the Bolsonarists have been menacing and harassing since the beginning of Bolsonaro’s term. Despite the eloquent acknowledgement and praise from various sectors of Brazilian society, this group of judges from the Supreme Court took action mainly as a measure of self-protection against far-right extremism. One single example of the Judiciary Power co­ option is noted by the support given by former members of Operation Car Wash, who were involved in the illegal condemnation of President Lula. For instance, the former judge and now congressman Sergio Moro tweeted on the day of the attacks that the protests were legitimate. Furthermore, it is widely acknowledged that the origins of the debacle of democratic institutions in Brazil can be traced back to the times of Operation Car Wash led by Moro (Machado, 2023). Socially devouring anti-democratic attacks in Brazil Socially, anthropophagy can cast a light on how the far-right manipulate the colours of flags, shirts and skins, in conjunction with choreographies and repertoires in their political manifestation to compose a semiotic system based on patriarchy as a founding principle (Guillaume et al., 2016; Guil­ laume et al., 2018). As Mendonça and Caetano (2021) show, Bolsonaro’s visual aesthetic and repertoire enabled him to take over national symbols and adhere to them his symbolism through parody: “He achieves this by empha­ sizing the extremes of each theme through exaggeration” and by navigating “patriarchal and authoritarian stereotypes, eccentrically to reinforce the idea that he is a genuine representative of the people” (Mendonça & Caetano, 2021, p. 221). This was done through the division of Brazilian society by categorising his supporters as patriotic while his opponents as not belonging to the fatherland. In the case of the anti-democratic attacks, the green and yellow shirts and flags were closely associated with patriotism and the father­ land, even more so when protesters had a national soccer team jersey. At the same time, red referred not only to the communist flag but, far more than that, red indicated the skin colour of Indigenous Peoples in a racist verna­ cular language. This spectrum of colours is in line with the political ideology spectrum in recent years in Brazil: green and yellow for Bolsonarist, and red for leftist.

96

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Here, the anthropophagic notion of looking back to the past sheds light on the fact that the green and yellow in the Brazilian flag is a historical heritage of the colours of the Hapsburgs and the Bragança families’ coat of arms. Not by chance, monarchists in Brazil also joined Bolsonaro’s ranks at the begin­ ning of his government (Araujo & Gomes, 2022). This detail evinces a close connection to the Portuguese colonisation in Brazil, which decimated multiple Indigenous Peoples. Later, during the military dictatorship of the 1960s, the military visuality used to associate leftist militants and Indigenous Peoples with the red colour as much as they were considered a threat to the Brazilian nation. An illustration of this visuality was manifested in the book “The Yanomami farse,” widely used in military education and portraying the Yanomami land’s demarcation as a foreign plot to take control of the Amazon resources (Barreto, 1995). It becomes clear that the far-right fore­ grounds its repertoires and visuality in patriarchy, stirring up colonial remi­ niscences to determine who owns the state. By controlling the apparatus of justice, the coloniser’s visuality is reproduced through stereotypes, those redskinned or dressed in red represent a menace to the state. While those whiteskinned or dressed in green and yellow for representing the fatherland will never be viewed as terrorists, as the dialogue between Dino and Dutra de Menezes revealed. The findings of a poll performed by AtlasIntel vindicate this assertion: almost 38 percent of the respondents considered the 01/08 attacks somehow justifiable (Queiroz, 2023). Economically Devouring Anti-democratic Attacks in Brazil Economically, anthropophagy demonstrates how the fatherland has priori­ tised the logic of the market. The state and its symbols belong to some, to the detriment of others. As the Bolsonarist catchphrase “my flag will never be red” evinces, symbols as manifestations of power pertain to some. But to whom? The word “my” implies an individualist consideration of the state and its symbols, and clearly, the answer resumes to those running the state and the fatherland. The individualistic use of the word my in the catchphrase implies that the state is understood as a private entity instead of a collective one. As individualism is a principle closely associated with the logic of the market, it becomes clear that the state pertains to some. As the poster displayed by the judge during her invasion of the Supreme Court indicates, “supreme is the people”, according to her rationale the “people of god”, or better stated those marked down as Christians, White and specially privileged ones: the heirs of the colonisers. Following this argument, the ownership of the state continues to be expressed in the contemporary continuation of the Coloniality of Power. Undeniably, the legacy of colonisation led to the formation of modern states, that even after colonialism, continue to be run by colonial heirs who are now disgruntled and requesting the continuation of their economic privileges. Such a far-right demand is upheld by a delusional reactionary belief that during the Empire or the military regime in Brazil, these lands were grandiose. Hence,

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies

97

the justification for their call for a comeback of the economic relations that characterised these periods. From this perspective, this grandiose past can be resumed in the present to reconstruct Brazil as a nation of the future. Philosophically Devouring Anti-democratic Attacks in Brazil Philosophically, anthropophagy as a therapy countervails the Messianism implicit in Bolsonarism by showing how this is an ideology attached to the construction of Brazil as “a nation of the future” and at the same time foregrounded on reactionary principles, such as family, fatherland and God. Messianism was highly attached to the far-right’s message and repertoire during the anti-democratic attack. The idea of a better future life was expressed by the fact that every sacrifice is worth it, even after living in camping sites for months and being prosecuted and arrested by justice after the attacks. This was all done to attain a better country, according to Bolso­ narism. Such an idea was highly diffused during his government in his slogan: “Brazil above everything, God above everyone”. The reconstruction of Brazil as a land of the future is connected to the biblical promise of a holy land to the chosen ones, in other words, to the supreme people, as portrayed in the judge’s poster. In such imagination, the far-right white supremacist act of storming into the buildings of the Constituents’ Power was considered some­ thing tenable. Messianism can show how a demonstration of middle-aged and elderly caucasian women and men with nationalist symbols was seen by the military, judiciary and legislative members as no less than a patriotic demon­ stration and sacred practice. The reasons for such a modality of seeing are found in the relations of power that regulate what should be remembered and how they should be viewed in the past. As demonstrated before, the resistance of Indigenous Peoples against colonisation was described as cannibalism. During the Bra­ zilian Military Regime (1964–85), peasants and members of leftist movements were viewed as terrorists. As Furtado (2023, p. 377) holds, “stories and tales are not only defined by what they say, but the truth is that they are equally, if not more so, defined by what they leave unsaid.” Viewing that amnesty was given to the military leaders by the end of the regime, and that, later, Brazil’s National Truth Commission (2013) has not adequately redressed these atro­ cities, it is not unusual that a substantial part of past violence is nowadays misconstrued (Pfrimer, 2021; Furtado, 2022). Therefore, what is left unsaid is forgotten and does not appeal to the observer. For instance, most Bolsonarists militants are unaware that military officers disgruntled with the end of the regime have set off bombs in Rio de Janeiro (Carvalho, 2019). Other than that, these militants are misinformed that even Bolsonaro has plotted a plan to set off bombs in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro. In sum, what is left unsaid becomes invisible once visuality and memory are undissociated. In turning taboos into totems, anthropophagy excavates traumas by unveiling past unsaids and unseens to make them visible.

98

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Conclusion: stewing over CTS In our journey of savouring all the possibilities anthropophagy can afford, I have touched upon absences in CTS literature concerning decolonial approaches. First, I pointed out the need for various approaches, particularly decolonial ones, to subvert CTS visuality. This argument is aimed at allowing more inclusive visualities and mainly counter-visualities. Second, I have shown that decolonial publications are scant, and we are just at the onset of a more profound and prolific debate in the CTS field. Third, I reflected on the possibilities of decolonising CTS. As shown, I am not fully convinced that CTS can be decolonised. However, by employing anthropophagy we can weave creativity to devour orthodox terrorism studies and create something new. In this chapter, among other decolonial methodologies and methods, anthropophagy is just one of the budding decolonial possibilities. Hence, if CTS is to be honestly critical, it inevitably will have to deal with the various processes that silence and invisibilise the subaltern. Using anthropophagy to devour CTS does not translate as an outright negation of other theories. I have underscored that digesting exogenous approaches to create something entirely new and original results in a hybrid undertaking. Along these lines, anthropophagy can be an epistemological tool to devour CTS’s Eurocentric claims while not wholly disregarding its dis­ ciplinary history. Across this chapter, I implemented anthropophagy to address a case of terrorism visuality in Brazil during the 08/01 far-right attacks against state institutions. By devouring concepts such as colour, race, trauma and time to erase Eurocentric claims, I have shown how anthro­ pophagy unveils the colonial way of seeing. As a particular visual modality, the colours of the Brazilian national team jersey on such radical mutiny can indicate what terrorists are/are not. Since colour is indissociable with the body, both also take part in visualising terrorism. Bodies featuring specific skin colours and ages, even if acting out raucous repertories against national symbols, can be profiled as patriots, according to the visual culture of farright rioters. Colours and bodies are representations constructed alongside past experiences and future expectations; thus, for visual cultures, colours and bodies vividly interplay with memorising and forgetting traumatic events. For instance, despite nowadays supporting military intervention, the far-right imagination is oblivious that by the end of the Brazilian military regime in the mid-1980s, disgruntled militaries have perpetrated bomb attacks. Even Jair Bolsonaro, former far-right president, was caught red-handed with a drawing depicting a plot to set off bombs at the time. On balance, devouring colour, body, trauma and time constitute a device for unveiling the visual coloniality manifested interpretation of the 08/01 attack. Anthropophagy can be likened to an insubordinate research strategy that positions itself juxtaposed to the colonialist manifestations of terrorism. Not only does anthropophagy subvert the colonial gaze, making a counter visuality emerge, as it positions itself to be a research attitude and a myriad of

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies

99

visual memories resisting colonialism. Taken together, all these anthro­ pophagical strands can lend support to more sensible and creative decolonial research that goes beyond parochial academicism and specific ways of seeing. For instance, other than just visuality, anthropophagy can be unpacked to cannibalise modalities of listening and engaging with soundscapes and silence (Dingli, 2015; Guillaume, 2018). Another possibility is to take up how var­ ious repertoires and other corporeal interventions, such as theatre, can present themselves as a counter-colonial tool. For instance, Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed stands out as a community-based intervention to make the oppressed opinions and perspectives be considered and taken into account by the political elite (Boal, 2006, 2014). Therefore, just like in Khan’s (2021) proposal for a decolonial approach to CTS (see also Chapter 3 of this volume), rather than proposing a fully fledged decolonisation of CTS, an anthropophagic approach presupposes an entanglement of decolonial and traditional approaches to terrorism to create something different. Therefore, it seeks to foster decolonial creativity without completely disregarding and ignoring other approaches to CTS. A stew of CTS is on the plate, enjoy it!

References Abdenur, A. E. (2019). Devouring international relations: Anthropophagy and the study of South South cooperation. In E. Mawdsley, E. Fourie & W. Nauta (Eds), Researching South–South Development Cooperation (pp. 32–48). Routledge. Agathangelou, A. M. (2012). Anxieties of Global Empire: Politics of Visibility Epis­ temologies and ‘Terror'. In C. Hellmich & A. Behnke (Eds), Knowing al-Qaeda: The Epistemology of Terrorism (pp. 29–56). Routledge. Amoore, L. (2006). Biometric borders: Governing mobilities in the war on terror. Political Geography, 25(3), 336–351. Amoore, L. (2007). Vigilant Visualities: The Watchful Politics of the War on Terror. Security Dialogue, 38(2), 215–232. Andersen, R. S. & Vuori, J. A. (Eds) (2018). Introduction: Visual security studies. In Visual Security Studies: Sights and Spectacles of Insecurity and War (pp. 1–19). Routledge. Andersen, R. S., Vuori, J. A. & Guillaume, X. (2015). Chromatology of security: Introducing colours to visual security studies. Security Dialogue, 46(5), 440–457. Andersen, R. S., Vuori, J. A. & Mutlu, C. E. (2014). Visuality. In C. Aradau, J Huysmans, A. Neal & N. Voelkner (Eds), Critical Security Methods: New Frame­ works for Analysis (pp. 85–117). Routledge. Araujo, C. & Gomes, B. (2022, 14 September). Bandeira da monarquia é exposta durante discurso de Bolsonaro no RN. UOL. https://noticias.uol.com.br/eleicoes/ 2022/09/14/bolsonaro-natal.htm. Azevedo, B. (2018). Antropofagia: Palimpsesto selvagem. Editora SESI-Serviço Social da Indústria. Barreto, C. A. L. M. (1995). A farsa Ianomâmi. Biblioteca do Exército Editora. Bitencourt, C. R. (2019). Código penal comentado. Saraiva Educação SA. Bleiker, R. (2019). Visual autoethnography and international security: Insights from the Korean DMZ. European Journal of International Security, 4(3), 274–299.

100

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Bleiker, R. & Hutchison, E. (2018). Methods and Methodologies for the Study of Emotions in World Politics. In M. Clément & E. Sangar (Eds), Researching Emo­ tions in International Relations: Methodological Perspectives on the Emotional Turn (pp. 325–342). Springer International Publishing. Boal, A. (2006). The aesthetics of the oppressed. Routledge. Boal, A. (2014). The Theatre as Language: Theatre of the Oppressed. In R. Caines and A. Heble (Eds), The Improvisation Studies Reader: Spontaneous Acts (pp. 97–104). Routledge. Bönisch, D. (2015). Geopoetics of Terror(ism): Spatiality and Visuality in Two ‘Post-9/ 11’ Novels. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 51(1), 15–26. Carvalho, L. M. (2019). O cadete e o capitão: A vida de Jair Bolsonaro no quartel. Todavia. de Castro, E. V. (2016). Os involuntários da pátria. Aula Pública, Cinelândia, 20. Conti, U. (2017). Between rap and jihad: Spectacular subcutlures, terrorism and visuality. Contemporary Social Science, 12(3–4), 272–284. Cooper-Cunningham, D. (2020). Drawing Fear of Difference: Race, Gender, and National Identity in Ms. Marvel Comics. Millennium, 48(2), 165–197. Correa, M. & Fonseca, N. (2023, November 1). Pastores articularam caravanas e convocaram ataques em Brasília | Sociedade | Galileu. Revista Galileo. https:// revistagalileu.globo.com/sociedade/noticia/2023/01/pastores-articularam-caravana s-e-convocaram-ataques-em-brasilia.ghtml. D’Aoust, A. M. (2012). Do you have what it takes? Accounting for emotional and material capacities. In M. Salter & C. Mutlu (Eds), Research Methods in Critical Security Studies (pp. 33–36). Routledge. de Andrade, O. (2011). Manifesto Antropófago-Edição crítica e comentada. Periferia, 3(1). Der Derian, J. (2000). Virtuous War/Virtual Theory. International Affairs, 76(4), 771–788. Der Derian, J. (2005). Imaging terror: Logos, pathos and ethos. Third World Quarterly, 26(1), 23–37. Dingli, S. (2015). We need to talk about silence: Re-examining silence in International Relations theory. European Journal of International Relations, 21(4), 721–742. Dixit, P. (2014). Decolonizing visuality in security studies: Reflections on the death of Osama bin Laden. Critical Studies on Security, 2(3), 337–351. Dixit, P. (2015). Visualizing others: A conversation with Cynthia Weber on films and visuality in the ‘war on terror’. In P. Dixit & J. L. Stump (Eds), Critical Methods in Terrorism Studies (pp. 165–176). Routledge. Dixit, P. (2016). Interrogating representations of “militants” and “terrorists” in the United States’ Militant Imagery Project and the Counterterrorism Calendar. Cri­ tical Studies on Terrorism, 9(1), 97–119. Dixit, P. & Miller, K. (2022). Erasing historical violence from the study of violent extremism: Memorialization of white supremacy at Stone Mountain, United States. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(1), 61–82. Elden, S. (2007). Terror and Territory. Antipode, 39(5), 821–845. Friis, S. M. (2018). ‘Behead, burn, crucify, crush’: Theorizing the Islamic State’s public displays of violence. European Journal of International Relations, 24(2), 243–267. Furtado, H. T. (2022). Politics of Impunity: Torture, The Armed Forces and the Failure of Transitional Justice in Brazil. Edinburgh University Press. Furtado, H. T. (2023). From the ‘victim societies’ to the ‘societies of victimisation’: The memory of military atrocities in South America. In M. Mälksoo (Ed.), Hand­ book on the Politics of Memory (pp. 377–389). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies

101

García, L. F. (2020). Only Anthropophagy unites us – Oswald de Andrade’s decolonial project. Cultural Studies, 34(1), 122–142. Gregory, D. (2012). Dis/ordering the Orient: Scopic regimes and modern war. In T. Barkawi & K. Stanski (Eds), Orientalism and War (pp. 151–175). Routledge. Grosfoguel, R. (2007). The Epistemic Decolonial Turn. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 211–223. Grosfoguel, R. (2011). Decolonizing post-colonial studies and paradigms of politicaleconomy: Transmodernity, decolonial thinking, and global coloniality. Transmo­ dernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(1). Guillaume, X. (2013). Criticality. In M. Salter & C. Mutlu (Eds), Research Methods in Critical Security Studies: An Introduction (pp. 29–32). Routledge. Guillaume, X. (2018). How to do things with silence: Rethinking the centrality of speech to the securitization framework. Security Dialogue, 49(6), 476–492. Guillaume, X., Andersen, R. S. & Vuori, J. A. (2016). Paint it black: Colours and the social meaning of the battlefield. European Journal of International Relations, 22(1), 49–71. Guillaume, X., Vuori, J. A. & Andersen, R. S. (2018). Making norms visible: Police uniforms and the social meaning of policing. In J. Vuori & R. S. Andersen (Eds), Visual Security Studies 150–170. Routledge. Guillaume, X., Vuori, J. A. & Andersen, R. S. (2016). Flags. In M. B. Salter (Ed.), Making Things International 2: Catalysts and Reactions (pp. 137–152). University of Minnesota Press. Hansen, L. (2011). Theorizing the image for Security Studies: Visual securitization and the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis. European Journal of International Relations, 17(1), 51–74. Hansen, L. (2017). Reading comics for the field of International Relations: Theory, method and the Bosnian War. European Journal of International Relations, 23(3), 581–608. Hansen, L., Adler-Nissen, R. & Andersen, K. E. (2021). The visual international politics of the European refugee crisis: Tragedy, humanitarianism, borders. Cooperation and Conflict, 56(4), 367–393. Heath-Kelly, C. (2012). Reinventing prevention or exposing the gap? False positives in UK terrorism governance and the quest for pre-emption. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 5(1), 69–87. Heck, A. & Schlag, G. (2013). Securitizing images: The female body and the war in Afghanistan. European Journal of International Relations, 19(4), 891–913. Ilyas, M. (2021). Decolonising the Terrorism Industry: Indonesia. Social Sciences, 10(2). Ilyas, M. (2022). Decolonialisation and the Terrorism Industry. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(2) 417–440. Jardim, L. (2023, 29 January). Negligência do Exército com invasão no Planalto foi interrompida após diálogo duro entre Dino e general. O Globo. https://oglobo. globo.com/blogs/lauro-jardim/post/2023/01/negligencia-do-exercito-com-invasa o-no-planalto-foi-interrompida-apos-dialogo-duro-entre-dino-e-general-leia.ghtml. Katja, F., Frank, G. & Christine, U. (2022). It Just Feels Right. Visuality and Emotion Norms in Right-Wing Populist Storytelling. International Political Sociology, 16(4). Kearns, M. (2017). Gender, visuality and violence: Visual securitization and the 2001 war in Afghanistan. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 19(4), 491–505. Khan, R. M. (2021). Race, coloniality and the post 9/11 counter-discourse: Critical Terrorism Studies and the reproduction of the Islam-Terrorism discourse. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14(4), 498–501.

102

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Leirner, P. C. (2020). Hybrid warfare in Brazil: The highest stage of the military insurgency. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 10(1), 41–49. Lisle, D. & Johnson, H. L. (2019). Lost in the aftermath. Security Dialogue, 50(1), 20–39. Loken, M. (2021). ‘Both needed and threatened’: Armed mothers in militant visuals. Security Dialogue, 52(1), 21–44. Machado, U. (2023, 15 January). Ataque golpista tem digitais da Lava Jato, diz pes­ quisador—15/01/2023—Poder—Folha. Folha de São Paulo. www1.folha.uol.com.br/p oder/2023/01/ataque-golpista-tem-digitais-da-lava-jato-diz-pesquisador.shtml. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 240–270. Marino, R. (2022). Usos da antropofagia: Canibalismo caleidoscópico. Revista Brasi­ leira de Ciências Sociais, 37. Martin, T. (2018). Identifying potential terrorists: Visuality, security and the Channel project. Security Dialogue, 49(4), 254–271. Mendonça, R. F. & Caetano, R. D. (2021). Populism as Parody: The Visual Self-Pre­ sentation of Jair Bolsonaro on Instagram. The International Journal of Press/Poli­ tics, 26(1), 210–235. Mignolo, W. (1995). The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Colonization and Territoriality. The University of Michigan Press. Mignolo, W. (2011). Epistemic disobedience and the decolonial option: A manifesto. Transmodernity, 1(2), 3–23. Netto, P. R. (2023, 1 February). Múcio diz que tem amigos em acampamento: É manifes­ tação democrática. UOL. https://noticias.uol.com.br/politica/ultimas-noticias/2023/01/ 02/mucio-diz-que-tinha-amigos-em-acampamento-e-manifestacao-democratica.htm. Nunes, B. (1972). A Metafísica Bárbara (prefácio). In O. de Andrade, Do Pau-Brasil à Antropofagia e às utopias: Vol. VI (pp.xxv–xxxv). Civilização Brasileira. O Globo. (2020, 7 October). Ministro da Justiça defende atos antidemocráticos como direito à liberdade de expressão—Jornal O Globo. https://oglobo.globo.com/politi ca/ministro-da-justica-defende-atos-antidemocraticos-como-direito-liberdade-de-exp ressao-1-24525603. Oando, S., & Achieng, S. (2021). An indigenous African framework for counter­ terrorism: Decolonising Kenya’s approach to countering “Al-Shabaab-ism”. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14(3), 354–377. Pfrimer, M. (2021). “Let it be remembered or forgotten”: A case of terrorism visuality in Brazil. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1–5. Poder360. (2023, 8 January). Antes de invasão, policial da PM chamou ato bolsonar­ ista de “democrático”. www.youtube.com/watch?v=esvRg4Qy2Yw. Queiroz, G. (2023, 1 October). Pesquisa indica que 38% acreditam que atos golpistas se justificam em algum nível. Terra. www.terra.com.br/noticias/brasil/politica/pesquisa -indica-que-38-acreditam-que-atos-golpistas-se-justificam-em-algum-nivel,ae6418dc40 e833fde4d4f1a64fe18a66q94xdwyo.html. Ryan, C. (2015). ‘We are not the terrorists!’: Using a reflexive postcolonial methodol­ ogy in the West Bank of the Palestinian Territories. In P. Dixit & J. L. Stump (Eds), Critical Methods in Terrorism Studies (pp. 123–133). Routledge. Sanborn, G. (1998). The sign of the cannibal: Melville and the making of a postcolonial reader. Duke University Press. Särmä, S. (2018). Collaging Iranian missiles: Digital security spectacles and visual online parodies. In R. S. Andersen & J. A. Vuori (Eds), Visual Security Studies: Sights and Spectacles of Insecurity and War Visual Security Studies (pp. 114–130). Routledge.

Cannibalising the Visual in Critical Terrorism Studies

103

Särmä, S. (2019). Collage as an empowering art-based feminist method for IR. In S. Choi, A. Selmeczi & E. Strausz (Eds), Critical Methods for the Study of World Politics: Creativity and Transformation (pp. 289–305). Routledge. Shepherd, L. J. (2022). White feminism and the governance of violent extremism. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(3), 727–749. Thobani, S. (2019). The visuality of terror: Gender, sex and desire in war. Social Identities, 25(4), 523–541. Toros, H. (2017). “9/11 is alive and well” or how critical terrorism studies has sustained the 9/11 narrative. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 10(2), 203–219. UOL. (2022, 11 July). André Mendonça defende manifestações pró-Bolsonaro se forem pacíficas. https://noticias.uol.com.br/politica/ultimas-noticias/2022/11/07/mendonca -defende-manifestacoes-pro-bolsonaro-desde-que-sejam-pacificas.htm. UOL. (2023, 9 January). Ataque em Brasília: Veja como bolsonaristas invadiram e van­ dalizaram STF, Congresso e Planalto. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTNXRtCgjhc. Veloso, C. (2012). Antropofagia. Editora Companhia das Letras. Veloso, N. (2023, 23 January). 2.090 foram presos por atos extremistas; 1.148 já estão soltos. Poder 360. www.poder360.com.br/justica/2-090-foram-presos-por-atos-ex tremistas-1-148-ja-estao-soltos. Vuori, J. A. (2010). A Timely Prophet? The Doomsday Clock as a Visualization of Secur­ itization Moves with a Global Referent Object. Security Dialogue, 41(3), 255–277. Widdowfield, R. (2000). The place of emotions in academic research. Area, 32(2), 199–208. Zehfuss, M. (2003). Forget September 11. Third World Quarterly, 24(3), 513–528.

6

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya Coloniality and Exclusion of African Women Samwel Oando

Introduction Actors implementing local programmes for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) in the Global South have always wanted to own their decisions, pro­ cesses, and the consequences thereof. The desire for “process ownership” has led, occasionally, to the call for inclusive mechanisms for CVE. These calls seek opportunities for sharing critical questions, experiences, and scenarios arising from the work of Indigenous1 communities. However, as this chapter demonstrates, attempts by international organisations to “include” Indigen­ ous voices can unwittingly lead to the denial of Indigenous and subaltern agency through epistemic exclusion from CVE practices. The exclusion has gendered implications as Indigenous women’s knowledge is disregarded as being “informal”. Through analysis of interviews carried out with local CVE practitioners in Kenya, this chapter raises questions about inclusivity and power relations embedded within CVE intervention methods that are designed and executed as “universal” systems of knowledge. I pose an obser­ vation that Indigenous women, unlike men, often find themselves trapped between traditional patriarchal structures and a subtle systemic bureaucracy within CVE intervention methods. This position helps to problematise how Indigenous women are unduly subjected, or tend to confine themselves, to imperial systems of knowledge to define who they are, what they do, and the level of expertise acceptable in CVE. These systems also define what con­ stitutes CVE problems in local contexts, and the solutions thereof, whether the solutions serve interests of local people or not. These dynamics emerge from the concerns that expertise about preventing and countering violent extremism, and the collective systems of knowledge which produces “and are produced by its governance” is a globalised phe­ nomenon (Shepherd, 2022). The chapter begins from the premise that CVE programmes are dominated by international agencies and are often oper­ ationalised through state and non-state agencies (Ahmed, Byrne, Karari & Skarlato, 2012), which in most cases are either insensitive to the local con­ cerns or totally ignore Indigenous knowledge systems. Shepherd (2022) for instance, shares a hypothesis demonstrating that governance of—and the DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963-9

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya

105

scholarship in—CVE has been primarily globalised as a field of practice dominated by liberalism. This viewpoint about liberalism is particularly per­ tinent where interventions are supported by UN agencies (Paris, 2018). This chapter therefore argues against any claims to a “universal” form of knowl­ edge in CVE research and practice – and by extension in the circles of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) – as ways of entrenching epistemic inequalities. Numerous studies in the Global South (Bassil, 2019; Ilyas, 2021; Karari et al., 2012; Oando & Achieng’, 2021) contest the �prevailing orthodoxy in CVE research and practice on the basis of being infused with coloniality. This group of scholars argues that ignoring Indigenous knowledge production while fully endorsing “foreign” ideology, constitutes the relics of colonialism and its resultant coloniality (Chirimambowa & Chimedza, 2019). However, while colonialism entails a continual onslaught on a people’s dignity or denial of the right of recognition which erodes the value in Indigenous knowledge, coloniality is the perpetuation of the resulting systemic imbalance traced to colonialism (Maloba, 2017). This argument implies that the prevailing sense of liberalism in CVE simply “prioritizes political reforms and economic development” (Cardozo & Maber, 2019, p. 20), at the expense of constituting local structures for peace. Jackson (2017, p. 6) points out, for instance, that liberal theory and practice has witnessed many failures as critical terrorism scholarship moves to articulate alternative forms of knowledge and govern­ ance structures to the dominant liberal paradigm. Consequently, I argue that context appropriate methodologies for CVE are lost in systemic dependency whereby African governments alongside the regional blocs like the Economic Community of West African States, the East African Community, and the Southern African Development Community and the continental body, the African Union, have neither their own design nor conceptualisation for understanding CVE. Instead, these systems of gov­ ernance in Africa cluelessly and wholly rely upon the designs of donor orga­ nisations on tackling violent extremism or terrorism. Many African countries continue also to rely upon Eurocentric models of counter terrorism and CVE, at the expense of defending the citizens sovereignty and interests based on the abundant subaltern knowledge. Many governments in Africa have subse­ quently failed in their cardinal duty to prevent violent extremism because of a perpetual negligence to initiate, design, or finance CVE programmes that are contextually sound. This situation is a result of donor dependency on CVE interventions. This chapter is based on empirical research, carried out with Indigenous communities in Kenya in 2020. The study was designed following a con­ structivist approach that uses Afro-feminism and phenomenology to under­ stand the experience of Kenyan women, therefore moving beyond the basic problem-solving to enable extraction of in-depth information. Interviews were conducted with 22 local practitioners working on CVE at national level. All participants were purposively sampled to have more (16) women than men (six) from different localities to provide better chances for enhancing the

106

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

voices of women. The data analysis process involved simultaneous techniques comprising synchronising primary data sets into broad themes and organising emerging themes in line with conceptual relationships. This involved stepwise data processing commencing by organising verbatim responses based on questions asked, while exploring the specific patterns that emerge in the data set. Drawing on empirical data, the study considered ethical and procedural safeguards for informed consent by having all participants signing the consent forms, observing confidentiality by anonymising names and organisations of participants, and ensuring safety of both the researcher and the research par­ ticipants through human ethic approval. Specifically, this chapter explores three aspects of exclusion that arise from imperialised CVE interventions. First, I engage with a contextual approach to the experiences of Kenyan women as a way of addressing the methodological dilemma through misrepresentation of women’s agency in CVE. Second, the notion of misrepresentation leads to an analysis of how CVE interventions, designed by local communities, are regarded as “informal” by donor agencies posing misrecognition of subaltern methodologies. The third step analyses how systemic exclusion emerges from western-centric interventions and ques­ tions the underlying coloniality within CVE methodologies. In all these sec­ tions, the centrality of different gender perspectives forms the basis from which to understand how Indigenous African women, using the case of Kenya, can claim their agency to participate in the practice and scholarship of CVE. In the subsequent sections, therefore, I provide some discussions about recognition of the gender space for African women as a right. This argument seeks to demonstrate that knowledge produced by African women is instrumental in reframing the understandings of CVE and security studies in local contexts of Africa. Consequently, by valuing this sort of knowledge, there are a broad range of pathways opened up to CTS work and the parti­ cipation of women in general. Just as for men and the transgender commu­ nity, in the spaces for CVE interventions acknowledging knowledge by Indigenous women is both a civil and political right.

[Mis]representation of women’s agency and a methodological dilemma in CVE Much literature reveals how women increasingly enable, support, counteract and take part in preventing violent extremism (Jakupi & Kelmendi, 2017). However, the literature on the non-Western contexts maintains a Eurocentric focus (Ilyas, 2021) while remaining silent on Indigenous approaches to CVE convergence about existing diversity in conceptualisations about terrorism, and by extension, CVE (Oando, 2022). It is on similar basis that Achieng’ and team decry that many case studies on terrorism conducted in African countries have been overwhelmingly designed through a Western lens at the expense of local peculiarities (Achieng’ et al., 2023). The same challenge cuts across the multiple spheres of CTS methods (Ilyas, 2022), that is shaped more

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya

107

by the language and approval of criticality in line with Eurocentric knowledge about terrorism and counter terrorism (Mazrui, 1967). It is, thus, important to distinguish between Western and Eurocentric methodologies and how both scenarios have suffocated indigenous perspectives on CVE differently. Akena (2012), for example, describes “Western” methodology as a product of the systems of education adopted by postcolonial states and territories, during “the European global expansion” (Akena, 2012, p. 600) through colonialism, based on the ideology and parameters of Western Europe. Hence, “Western knowledge [is] essentially European colonizers’ way of knowing” that is adopted to legitimatise what forms of “knowledge [are] objective and universal” (Akena, 2012, p. 600). While sharing a similar grounds and hypothesis, Eurocentrism is distinguished as the racialised “mode of thinking that privileges the European (and North American) experience above all others” (Kassimeris & Jackson, 2011, p. 19). As Khan shows in this volume, gender, too, is a product of colonialism that imposes a universal European gender order upon African states. It is notable that both paradigms share the same foundation in European colonialism, however, Eurocentrism reflects more of a perpetuation of coloniality in the donordesigned methodologies for CVE. It is because of coloniality that experiences and roles of African women are conveyed in literature as being relatively homogeneous rather than as subjective realities which are shaped by context, community norms and history. A failure to capture or to acknowledge contextual diversity complicates the initiatives that already seem to over-rely on the liberal blueprints for con­ ceptualising and researching CVE. In this sense, as women engage in “geo­ graphically and ideologically diverse manifestations of violent extremism throughout modern history”, owing to perceived opportunities, it only makes sense that they also need more dynamic intervention frameworks that capture such contextual diversity (Patel & Westermann, 2018, p. 56). Assumed homogeneity owing to inadequate attention to geographical diversity is likely to produce, and be reproduced in, an incomplete understanding “of pathways into and out of violent extremism”, as well as the “ways in which women develop resilience to resist radicalisation” (Patel & Westermann, 2018, p. 56). As a response to this theoretical quagmire when it comes to women’s experiences, the analysis by this chapter adopts phenomenology and Afrofeminism to provide an approach that is contextualised and is anchored on historical understanding of the experiences of women in Kenya. An analysis of the experiences of Indigenous African women in CVE considers the his­ torical implications of African values and culture, alongside the national security systems. The analysis also accounts for the scope of community interests in the CVE interventions. To achieve these contextual nuances, phe­ nomenology becomes most applicable as the research design that captures different phenomena in their natural settings (Fisher & Stenner, 2011). This design helps to capture lived experiences of participants, women for that matter, based on qualitative analysis and a constructivist approach. According

108

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

to Wilson and Washington (2007, p. 63), phenomenological design is critical when studying “human experiences” based on the voices “of those being stu­ died”, purposely as a description of human experiences as they are lived. Finally, Afro-Feminism, defined as the philosophy of black feminism, is applied purposely to underscore the unique norms and identities that influ­ ence the Kenyan women and their understanding of “violent extremism”. It is the norms and identities that determine how women in diverse geopolitical contexts choose to act in preventing and countering violent conflicts (Pearson et al., 2020). For instance, Pearson, Winterbotham and Brown (2020) argue that the involvement of women in countering violent extremism is often con­ nected to the underlying gender norms, as informed by the cultural and con­ textual factors. Studies in African contexts also demonstrate how women are increasingly taking active roles on the frontline of “violent extremism” (Gis­ card d’Estaing, 2017, p. 105; O’Gorman, 2014; Romaniuk & Durner, 2018). Women are shown, for instance, to be more engaged in recruiting fighters or serving as suicide bombers and as “leaders working on de-radicalisation or counter-messaging” (Giscard d’Estaing, 2017). Closer in the Global South, is the developing space taken by African women and those supporting the primacy of local agency, taking centre stage in the CVE approaches. Despite an increasing acknowledgement of women’s roles in conflict situations, it is notable that many “women are still largely invisible in peace processes except as victims” (Swaine et al., 2016, p. 18). It is in many of such cases that contributions of Indigenous women are treated as either informal or to be ad hoc, but these contributions are rarely taken as part of the official intervention processes. Theoretical perspectives on “Afri­ can feminism”, therefore, brings into focus the African feminists’ conscious­ ness (Gatwiri & McLaren, 2016, p. 264). Hence, a unique feature in the field of African feminism lies in the constructions about “experiences of women of African descent [both] on the continent, [and of those] women of the African diaspora worldwide” whose works dominate the feminist literature (Penn, 1995, p. 3). Afro-Feminism represents critical feminist perspectives of “multi­ generational processes” involving those women who identify as “Africans and their descendants” (Penn, 1995, pp. 3–4). Consequently, these ways of theorising through phenomenology and Afrofeminism, facilitate concrete analysis of different aspects and scopes of agency, that are nuanced in the African identity, and emphasised through active attempts of women scholars, some of whom are inspired towards recreating, displaying and observing their cultural practices, value structures, and belief systems within the global continuum of CVE (Amaefula, 2021; Penn, 1995). Afro-Feminism encapsulates the divergent “equalist efforts” to enhance conditions affecting African women in CVE interventions. Subse­ quently, Afro-feminism is used in this text to contest the Eurocentric meth­ odologies that [mis]represent African gender nuances related to CVE research. This also helps to purposely reconstruct “the colonial filters through which the world is viewed” (Tamale, 2020, p. ix). As an alternative approach

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya

109

for understanding diversities in terrorism and CVE research and practice, the chapter considers geopolitical peculiarities, and analyses of the contentions in methodological perspectives that confound CVE interventions through the primacy of agency exercised by women in different contexts. The next section examines not only how coloniality determines the infor­ malising of Indigenous knowledge but also explains how epistemic exclusion takes a centre stage with a gender dimension.

Coloniality, Informality, and Clashing Knowledge Systems To be formal in this sense means to conform to the script of coloniality. Hence, many stories within the intervention domains of CVE, by and about African women, “often drift, unacknowledged” (van Metre, 2016, p. 21). While challenging the western colonial dynamics in donor driven interven­ tions, I posit that it is not enough to have an extra woman at the formal negotiation table because this amounts to an “add and stir” approach which “does not necessarily guarantee” women’s claim of agency in the process peace process (Chang et al., 2015, p. 12). At the same time, it is possible that issues affecting women are hardly taken seriously irrespective of which and how many women are at the table (Chang et al., 2015; Ndung’u & Shadung, 2017; Salifu & Ndung’u, 2017). The scope of coloniality and informalised methodologies in local interventions for CVE is the subject of subsequent sections based on empirical findings. First, I discuss the circumstances under which Indigenous knowledge is mis-recognised as informal before engaging with clashing knowledge systems, owing to coloniality.

Coloniality and Informal Interventions In the course of settling for quick fix “Eurocentric solutions” for CVE by state and non-state agencies, contributions by Indigenous women often get relegated, as local actor find their roles diminished in the local intervention processes clustered in the realm of “informal” activities (Achieng’ et al., 2023). “Informality” is the state of subjugating Indigenous knowledge, which is produced, shared, and actualised through community structures, by crowding out such knowledge as being less important. It is the subjugation of Indigenous knowledge that substantially obscures the agency of African women from the mainstream of documented work on CVE. It is notable, therefore, that despite an explicit provision for gender equality in the legal systems in Kenya, even the initiatives for affirmative action towards gender equality have not worked out as a result of the “add-and-stir” approach, which reduces inclusion of women in CVE programmes to appear like a favour granted to women at the mercy of the male dominated systems of politics. Subsequently, international accounts of inclusion fail to highlight entrenched structural barriers experienced by Indigenous women by ignoring the contextual dynamics. It becomes a significant task for Indigenous African

110

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

women to thrive in spaces dominated by the voices of multinational actors (Appiah-Thompson, 2020) without intentional steps made to break the patriarchal and racial barriers to favourable gender considerations both at the local and international levels. Unless tackled, such barriers deny local actors the appropriate visibility in CVE and from acquiring appropriate attribution of benefits to the work which these local actors have led. Consequently, this study argues that the missing voices of women deserve to be accounted for in the pursuit of UNSCR 1325 commitments (UN Women, 2017), within the global sphere as well as in the state-led initiatives at national level (Oando, 2022). It is the failure to account for subjugated voices that some practitioners have identified as gaps in the campaigns on gender equality and on the contemporary agenda for inclu­ sion. This gap is highly associated with programmes steered by non-gov­ ernmental organisations (NGOs) and state agencies, based on Western design. As one participant argues, “our programming itself creates obstacles for women’s inclusion agenda” (interview 019, 2020). In her explanation, the local actor posits that: To be really gender inclusive our strategies must be inclusive of different voices. The framing of messages based on laws that are abstract to the local context has led to this failure of most gender equality campaigns, which create situations of us versus them. For instance, the two thirds gender rule is a constitutional provision [in Kenya], but it has created controversies where men feel unfairly targeted. It is purely because of the language used in the debates like, ‘give us these slots’. If the messages were framed in such a way that show communal gain, we would see no resistance. (Interview 019, 2020) This narrative does not just explain how the gaps in gender equality are manifested through the framing of interventions that create binary hege­ monies in complicity to coloniality, but it also provides evidence to the effect that local knowledge is seldom considered in the initiatives for gender equal­ ity in CVE. The voice of this participant also confirms an aspect of coloni­ ality through the implied failure to incorporate Indigenous understandings in the prevailing interventions. The argument is evidence enough that inclusion campaigns are based on superficial rights drummed up, for instance, without appreciating the role men would need to play in the process. As argued by Oloka-Onyango (2015), the language, structure and foundation of the legal instruments, for either preventing violent extremism or for gender inclusion, are not effective because they also ignore subaltern voices. The challenge lies in the fact that contents of many legislative and policy instruments have been imported directly from the colonial institutions and tradition. It is notable, as well, that by misrecognising Indigenous knowledge, donor funded intervention for CVE simply reinforce, or risk reinforcing, the same colonial structures on the communities, but which are very much likely to be

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya

111

misunderstood, rejected, and resisted in favour of an alternative (informal) justice systems (Nebe, 2012). Owing to nonrecognition or rather, misrecogni­ tion of collective identity, Indigenous women’s participation in CVE inter­ ventions is often missed (Mesok, 2022). Whenever these efforts are considered, they are recorded at the lowest point of conflict in communities, such that the decision-making structures consider the interventions as infor­ mal. It does not matter that some of these [Indigenous] contributions come at the early stages of the conflict, often before conflicts turn violent, but play a very important role in conflict prevention. Another female participant, who is a programme officer with a local Kenyan NGO, also traces the initial actions that are crucial for enhancing space for Indigenous women by noting that first, “having a gender inclusive programme is the way to go especially having our local women as equal or as leading participants at the negotiation table” (interview 007:2020). This pro­ vides a commitment that suggests a departure from the current practice so that inclusion can navigate the structural context related to both the geopoli­ tical and local institutional obstacles. To make the urgent case, the participant shares an example indicating that “in places where local women have taken lead in peace building, the results are different” (interview 007:2020). Demonstrating the complexity of possible outcomes in the formal versus informal interventions, Shepherd (2015) also provides some insight from Liberia. While examining how women participate in peace process through informal activities Shepherd cautions about a looming “danger of compla­ cency” associated with casual engagement (Shepherd, 2015, p. 59). Casual engagements connect to everyday peace processes that starts even before major signs of conflict emerge. The perceived complacency is proven to be “counterproductive to the long-term interests of women” (Shepherd, 2015, p. 59). Consequently, African women also risk losing an opportunity to voice their perspectives within the formal processes where permanent and lasting decisions are made by restricting informal processes (Shepherd, 2015). It becomes inevitable that developing adequate strategies for identi­ fying entry points to enhance the space for African women in contemporary interventions for CVE, is a reality whose time has come. Hence, integrated and holistic approaches including women’s voices need to underline the transformation of structural systems, and the political, and cultural factors to open-up the space for women’s inclusion in countering violence in Africa. Unless methodological trajectory changes both at local and national levels in CVE, subaltern voices of women and Indigenous African (women) actors share a common experience of subjugation both in systemic and contextual terms. Undoubtedly, some of the intervention frameworks designed or imple­ mented by Indigenous African women still struggle to find the space of recognition within the parameters of international CVE programming. Some leading lights of peacebuilding theory (Lidén et al. 2009) also raise pertinent questions about whether peace actors who may not identify with the ideas of liberal peace can be involved in, or excluded from, a more pragmatic process.

112

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

The discussions in the next sub-sections provide insight into how Indigenous African women, working at community levels in Kenya, have navigated the terrain of coloniality in tackling violent extremism. The examples discussed include a sample of interventions, not as alternatives to Western interventions, but as a demonstration that Indigenous strategies are possible but seldom recognised.

Coloniality and Clashing Knowledge Systems Exclusion often emerges when the significant voices are missed at decisionmaking levels. The sense of exclusion can thus be linked to government’s failure, for example in Kenya, to acknowledge subaltern voices, owing to the systemic dependency syndrome in CVE interventions and scholarship. This widening gap in the knowledge system between the African (informal) and Western (formal) settings has prompted some African scholars (Dersso, 2012; Maloba, 2017; Mazrui et al., 2018b; Mazrui, 1967; Zeleza, 2019) to con­ template African solutions to peace and security based on local experiences and socio-cultural perspectives. Systemic dependency here refers to a situa­ tion in which African governments including regional and continental bodies rely on external donor institutions to create and manage “African” CVE programmes. The resulting move towards African solutions in this case anticipates a potential transformation of the international order in the Afri­ can peace and security architecture. The arguments championed by these scholars raise prospects for an understanding of local problems through the lenses of local practices that also seek to increase chances for enhancing Indigenous solutions to the African situation of peace and security (Kwanya & Kiplang, 2016). An underlying challenge is demonstrated in an interview with a community leader from Northern Kenya who laments, for instance, about challenges facing local interventions in this regard. The voice of our local communities, which should be given preference is totally missing in the design of many interventions. Even the government has a problem in building the capacity of local peace committees and community-based groups. Hence, there is no consistency in the training programmes at the grassroots because every donor come with a different approach and a different set of concepts. I can acknowledge that the multiple efforts by different actors (donors) are very helpful but [since] they are poorly coordinated, communities often remain more confused than they were before such interventions. (Interview 003:2020) While recognising the great contribution made by the international community in filling the vacuum left by the national government and local organisations, it is the missing agency of local communities that repro­ duces the knowledge gap perpetuated by international interventions. Some

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya

113

interventions have failed to create an environment for sustainable peace owing to insufficient contextual analysis. A concern is then linked to the knowledge gap, which ordinarily, would be situated within the local com­ munity structures. Quite often, constraints emerge when local actors who win the grants follow an orthodox and dogmatic positions [of the donor] by choosing to embrace the given knowledge uncritically. While the orthodoxy is a conditioned process of coloniality, some international actors are simply ignorant about the local knowledge production system (Súilleabháin, 2015). The erasure of Indigenous knowledge production and the simultaneous endorsement of “foreign” ideology is the legacy of neo­ colonialism and its resultant coloniality perpetuated through CVE pro­ grammes (Chirimambowa & Chimedza, 2019). According to Maloba (2017), colonialism entails a continual onslaught on a people’s dignity or right of recognition that erodes the value in the indigenous knowledge, while coloniality perpetuates the systemic imbalance. Coloniality thus leads to the knowledge bias through which exclusion thrives as noted from my interviews: [T]here is a gap in implementing an African Indigenous approach that recognises traditional structures for inclusion both in the interventions and in the policy formulation frameworks informed by interventions. These interventions on CVE or peacebuilding are all dependent on Wes­ tern knowledge. Instead of merging the new ideas with local perspectives towards achieving peace, many actors disparage anything traditional as being irrational, which heightens chances for discrimination. Contrary to the expectations in many communities, the elderly and those who do not have higher levels of Western education are rarely recognised as “experts” in peacebuilding. (Interview 004:2020) Consequently, as Kundnani and Hayes (2018) argue, international organisa­ tions’ global agenda becomes part of the global political and imperial agenda, underpinning initiatives for CVE intervention. This manifestation arises from the fear that most programme ideas are designed largely in the systems of Western knowledge and applied with minimum inclusion of local ideas. The international structures, thus, despite making frantic attempts to appear as being community driven, still end up [re]presenting a collection of abstract idealism distinct from the daily peacebuilding practices at community levels. As a result, the pursuit of gender inclusion, as a human right, risks being taken casually by the target beneficiaries, not for being defective but simply because the local communities do not identify with the ideas. As noted by Tamale (2020, pp. 40–41), “human rights as articulated in contemporary dis­ course” remains unfamiliar to a majority of the African communities. This implies the obscurity that faces the interventions which do not consider the local voices and fails to address the people’s fears and commitments.

114

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

It is the same inconspicuousness that also faces the presentations made by the local civil society groups on interventions that are grounded in Western systems of a “formal” programme. The activities are mostly imbued with Wes­ tern ideology and narratives derived from the universal framework of interna­ tional order (Tamale, 2020). Eventually, many interventions face a double challenge. One is the abstractness of “universal” ideas, and the fact that the international order is built around the liberal state sovereignty. Indeed, it becomes evident that as interventions continue being enshrined in the uni­ versality of knowledge, they tend to pay minimal attention to the contextual reality, which ignores the fact that despite assumptions within “White” history of Africa, human rights were an integral part of the Indigenous social and political ethos of the African communities (Ibhawoh, 2008). Recognising human rights in African contexts has been the case long before the European Treaty of Westphalia 1648 or the United Nations Declaration of 1948 (Tamale, 2020). But the colonial historians like Henry Morton Stanley and some early Christian missionaries in Africa, suppressed the facts to oblivion.

Fears of Imperial Continuities in CVE Owing to the clashing knowledge systems discussed in the previous section, susceptibility to resistance in many intervention outcomes are reflected in the confusions and suspicions between the state security and the non-state actors. By failing to contextualise the competing interests on the international fund­ ing, Simoncini argues that “at the centre of attention” has become the fear that international donors are being used by their parent states to impose neo­ imperialism (Simoncini, 2020, p. 183). The suspicion, most likely, is that western allies (of African countries) are more interested in gaining control of the security sectors in non-Western countries, than they are in gaining peace­ ful outcomes. The growing tensions have been, for example, witnessed in Kenya when the government imposed horrendous sanctions on the NGO sector since 2013. This was a reaction after the newly elected President and deputy President were arraigned in the International Criminal Courts at the Hague. The suspected political leaders turned to accuse the local NGOs, especially those working on human rights, of colluding with some Western powers on political grounds. They framed local activists as surrogate spies and informers (Sakue-Collins, 2021), undermining the sovereignty of the government and the state. Hence, repulsive laws were quickly enacted by parliament to “tame” the (NGO) interventions. Sakue-Collins (2021) argues that because of such tensions linked to donor funding, many NGOs find themselves in an awkward position by virtue of uncritically subscribing to the Western ideologies. Becoming replicas through disproportionate financial support, also makes local NGOs to function more as ideological stooges in the African contexts. The fear of external control, whether real or perceived, is also embedded in the conflicting policies between the funding countries or their agencies and

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya

115

the hosting states. Some uncertainties are pegged, genuinely, on the competing interests to gain access to valuable or protected information as a way of keeping at bay the interests of the Global South. Following the cues and by using the same script from the Cold War period, Western allies like the US and UK have always switched focus between financing CVE and providing funds for security assistance as they compete to establish privileged relation­ ships (Simoncini, 2020; Tsui, 2020). This is an issue of contested methodology of CVE. The politics around international interventions have, therefore, gen­ erated multiple layers of exclusion. Participants demonstrate how suspicions about espionage are linked directly to local interventions and creating a sense of resistance. A participant who is a government official expresses these fears: Some interventions are just but schemes for foreign forces to spy on the local context while pretending to be financing local organisations and then they disappear after getting some protected information. Most of such interventions are not sustainable because they are guarded by the embassies and fully dependent on donor funding such that when the funding stops, the interventions also stop. Some of those interventions are very short, like you find donors giving funds for only one year or less. What meaningful change can you achieve in a community within one year or less? The intention is very suspect. (Interview 015:2020) In connection to such contentions raised by the interviewee, streamlining of gender equality under the assumption of homogeneity of African experiences have been problematised by feminists. For instance, Tamale (2020) argues that racial homogeneity generates suspicions and ignores the diversity in culture, value systems, and diversity in strategic gender needs. Nonetheless, many African scholars of human rights, and African feminists, share a consensus about the positive milestones achieved in setting the standards by the UN Declaration on Human Rights and its principles. However, they point at an exception that being grounded exclusively in Western norms, the indicators for achieving human rights might be misleading because they are set with minimum diversity of contexts (Ibhawoh, 2008). The problem, therefore, is coloniality in the interventions prevailing through universalistic and a scope of essentialising, normally exhibited when the rights are applied in the nonWestern contexts (Oloka-Onyango, 2015; Oloka-Onyango & Tamale, 1995). Arguably, a great paradox exists that in 1948 when the Universal Declara­ tion on Human Rights (UDHR) was made, all the African countries were still occupied by the European colonial authorities who reigned with terror. For example, UDHR considerably excluded non-Euro-American identities at that time (Tamale, 2020). At the same time, South Africa, which represented the African continent, was represented by prime minister General Jan Chris­ tian Smuts. Contrastingly, Jan Christian was the author of the preamble of the UN Charter in 1941, while he was as well the chief architect of apartheid

116

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

(Tamale, 2020; van der Vyver, 1979). It is, therefore, worth interrogating whether the rights declared in the UN charter of 1948 were, in essence, representative/inclusive of African interest. In subsequent years, apart from putting pressure on the African countries to ratify the charter on UDHR, minimal attention has been given to reviewing any of its provisions to incor­ porate the local/Indigenous voices of the countries/territories from the Global South, most of which never existed or were under the tyranny of colonialism when the charter came into force. Consequently, there is little doubt that CVE interventions face many obstacles while implementing the gender and women inclusion strategies, which are derived from the Eurocentric UDHR. Some African feminists have thus faulted the gender interventions for pro­ moting paradigms that are “founded on polarised dualism”, such as men versus women, female versus male, wife versus husband, or private versus public dichotomies (Tamale, 2020, p. 41). All these categories are adversarial classifications, which are adopted by many international agencies, including the UN Women, but still, they significantly ignore the spirit of ubuntu in the African context. The spirit of ubuntu, is the “cultural affinity that forms the basis of African communalism” (Akinola & Uzodike, 2018, p. 92). Hence, the interventions are often received sceptically by the target beneficiaries. The concerns raised also make it difficult to separate the interests of Western international funders of local interventions and their proclamations in sup­ port of human rights from the fear of hidden interests. Reception has there­ fore, been characterised by expressions of both panic and distrust about new gender concepts, incessant fear and transmittable perceptions caused on, or shown by, the target beneficiaries (Sakue-Collins, 2021). These sets of obsta­ cles emerging in the form of colonialism and coloniality [re]produce more vulnerability to exclusion than creating trust in the structures of interventions. It is not surprising, therefore, that similar challenges are manifested in Wes­ tern constructions about violent extremism that also problematises the success of interventions, as discussed in the next section.

Epistemic exclusion and the methodological challenge in CVE A sense of methodological quandary appears to cut across CVE interventions in different local contexts right from informality and clashing knowledge systems, to the fears of imperial continuities, as discussed above. Irrespective of divergent views among critical voices in CVE initiatives, a situation emerges of compro­ mised concerns about methodologies used to understand the unequal gender relations in pursuit of the peace and security agenda (Shepherd, 2022). Ilyas (2022, p. 426) relates the methodological dilemma to an issue of partial analy­ tical attention to Indigenous knowledge and the subsequent misrecognition of diversity in methodology for processing CVE epistemology. Methodological dilemma thus remains “problematic from a decolonial perspective”. Ascription to decolonisation seeks to deconstruct “how the global north episteme … dom­ inates” (Ilyas, 2022, p. 426), or perpetuates domination that transcends CVE

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya

117

research and practice. The connection between methodological underpinnings and colonisation, as a process of [re]producing discrimination and segregation, through gender exclusion, in research and practice of CVE is seldom explored. Gumede (2020, p. 2) links epistemic exclusion to a series of “historical events … under the auspices of colonisation [including Slavery and other forms of gross Human Rights violations] that cannot ever be over-simplified to merely racia­ lised discrimination based on the colour of one’s skin”. Gumede, therefore, associates the methodological challenge to “White-Hetero-Patriarchy”. This is a term described as an intersection of schemes of oppression comprising of “subordinations, privileges and biases based on the sole premise of race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, ability and/or socio-economic class” (Gumede, 2020, p. 3), all of which speak to unequal treatment or opportunities in the programme delivery for CVE. Evidence from this case study in Kenya demonstrates an explicit perpetuation of epistemic exclusion which further indicates how colonialism entails a con­ tinual onslaught on Indigenous people’s right of recognition. Methodology being a scientific way of doing both research and practice of CVE, therefore, erodes or simply relegates the value held in Indigenous knowledge, while coloniality perpetuates the systemic imbalance and systemic exclusion. Similarly, the resulting invisibility of the local expertise and the missing agency in the intervention frameworks is the clearest sign the voice of African women is likely to either be unrecognised or misrecognised in the CVE methodologies. Further evidence on epistemic exclusion, that specifically connects to the space and agency of African women, manifests in different forms of discrimination, as another interviewee laments below: Our programming, in some ways, creates impediments for inclusive par­ ticipation of Indigenous African women in the international platform. CVE work locally has been dominated by many women actors from the global West, in pretext of women empowerment in Africa. These are White “women experts” on secondment by the donor organisations mostly at the forefront of designing and approving implementation reports. We call them “project tourists”, because they are always moving to different countries or regions (of Africa) as the donor funding interests change over time. The concern is, they always take advantage to write about CVE in Africa (and only acknowledge us) from their vantage positions, even in studies conducted by local women. These privileges clearly show how international domination set the pace in both research and documentation about CVE practice. (Interview 018:2020) The claims of comparative advantage by actors from the donor countries elaborated in this case study corroborates the views that interventions, often made through international aid, turn out to be an axis for engaging with Africa. Drawing from theorising of historical events, Thompsell (2019)

118

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

connects these patterns used in some interventions to the agreements made during the scramble for Africa in the nineteenth century which defined the pathways for coloniality in Africa. It is imperative that covert liberalism observed in contemporary programmes for CVE have, most likely, taken cue from such twisted historical claims by authors of the colonial script “that European conquest and rule was a humanitarian effort” (Thompsell, 2019, p. 56). There is sufficient evidence to argue that some interventions are often used as instruments for imperialism, hence perpetuating exclusion in Africa (Walker, 2004). As a coping mechanism, a scenario arises where women align themselves with “foreign experts” as they find themselves “better off colluding with the gendered structures that sustain continued subordination, rather than seek­ ing approaches that will allow them to break the cycle of exclusion” (Sharp et al., 2003, p. 3). Sharp and their team argue that “such apparent collusion represents patriarchal bargains, which offer women greater advantages than they perceive can be achieved by challenging the prevailing order” (Sharp et al., 2003, p. 281). It is in such circumstances, as Kandiyoti (1998, p. 20) suggests, that African women find themselves in a fix of coloniality. Hence, they tend to (or are seen to) become “reluctant to engage in empowering activities that may challenge their gendered bargain” within varying con­ texts. Such circumstances, constituting a patriarchal fix of women, intro­ duces a complex perspective on the interventions that aim at “empowering women”, irrespective of self-desire or initiative to either challenge the status quo in patriarchy or to conspire with such very structures that appear to oppress them in a way. In a nutshell, the layers of methodological analysis by deconstructing informality and coloniality is a demonstration of how making the participation of women count would be “more important than merely counting (relying on) the number of women included in the peace processes” (Paffenholz et al., 2016, p. 5). Bringing such an argument into the context of Africa, it is noted on a popular blog post (Freedom House, 2014) that despite some acclaimed progress on the inclusion of women on the negotiation table at the global level, the situation in Africa remains to be a mirage. Hence, whenever women are involved previously, it has been largely “due to normative pressure applied by women’s groups and their supporters” (Paffenholz et al., 2016, p. 5). In this sense, consensus builds for “the need to involve women proactively because their contributions remain largely unnoticed by many international actors and policymakers’ (Hedstrom & Senarathna, 2015, p. 12).

Conclusion This study uses evidence from interviews with national actors in CVE, most of whom were women, to analyse methodological subtleties in CVE that perpetuate exclusion of the local voices. The differences in women’s experi­ ences resulting from unique conditions reinforces the understanding that

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya

119

women are not a uniform demographic group (Chang et al., 2015). Researchers must consider how social characteristics like cultural back­ grounds, religion, ethnicity, race, shape the identities of women in varied contexts alongside their viewpoints and lived experiences. While this argu­ ment builds on the feminist perspective about women’s involvement in efforts to prevent and resolve violent conflicts, it provides the basis for transforma­ tion of the system and structures for peace to be more gender inclusive. Such a transformation requires analysis that is not based on the experience of women in the West. Limited information about the experiences of women in Africa, in relation to international interventions, and as part of interaction with local communities, becomes important to explore the African “local as having agency in its own right” (Paffenholz, 2015, p. 858). Paffenholz points out that “the motivation behind analysing peace in context, should help in understanding the local as an entity, to enhance the chances for achieving sustainable interventions” (Paffenholz, 2015, p. 60). This viewpoint indicates the need to transform the established infrastructure and processes, represented by the methods for tackling violent extremism. This chapter underscores the need to rethink CVE all together whereby considerations about affirmative action in “local” interventions do not benefit just a few privileged women, already favoured by Western gender activism. This sort of transformation requires a reconstruction of frameworks in CVE methodologies for purposes of the inclusion of disadvantaged women who might not be deemed to be politically or epistemologically correct (Booth & Unsworth, 2014). Hence, the field of CVE research remains understudied (Fink et al., 2016), until the contemporary issues linked to coloniality are deconstructed and reconstructed. Subsequently, positioning Indigenous Afri­ can women in the critical realm of designing and in the implementation of programmes for CVE provides the much needed space to acknowledge the agency through “informalised” knowledge to address the “central challenge, which is the lack of evidence-based knowledge on the precise role and impact of women’s inclusion” (Paffenholz et al., 2016, p. 5) in both CVE research and practice.

Note 1 While the term ‘Indigenous’ may remain controversial given the diversity among the local groups in different subnational contexts, Tuso and Flaherty (2016) observe that it becomes more appropriate to describe the actors by their geo­ political space. For instance, African women can be described as Indigenous based on their lineages through which they identify with the local context. Likewise, African women ascribe their identity to Africanness as they live and work with communities (Ball, 2019). This chapter therefore uses the terms Indigenous and African to describe local women in Kenya to underscore forms of knowledge production that do not adhere to the exclusionary bordering practices of European colonialism.

120

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

References Achieng, S. G., Oando, S. O. & Jackson, R. (2023). Critical Terrorism Studies. In L. A. Frumkin, J. F. Morrison & A. Silke (Eds), A Research Agenda for Terrorism Studies (pp. 63–78). Edward Elgar Publishing. Ahmed, K., Byrne, S., Karari, P. & Skarlato, O. (2012). Civil Society Leaders’ Perceptions of Hopes and Fears for the Future: The Impact of The International Fund for Ireland and the European Union Peace III Fund in Northern ireland and the Border Counties. Humanity & Society, 37(1), 5–34. Akena, F. A. (2012). Critical Analysis of the Production of Western Knowledge and Its Implications for Indigenous Knowledge and Decolonization. Journal of Black Studies, 43(6), 599–619. Akinola, A. O. & Uzodike, U. O. (2018). Ubuntu and the Quest for Conflict Resolution in Africa. Journal of Black Studies, 49(2), 91–113. Amaefula, R. C. (2021). African Feminisms: Paradigms, Problems and Prospects. Feminismo/S, 37(January 2021), 289–305. Appiah-Thompson, C. (2020). The concept of peace, conflict and conflict transformation in African religious philosophy. Journal of Peace Education, 17(2), 161–185. Ball, J. (2019). Women, development and peacebuilding in Africa: Stories from Uganda. Palgrave Macmillan. Bassil, N. R. (2019). A critique of western representations of isis: Deconstructing contemporary orientalism. Global Change, Peace and Security, 31(1), 81–94. Booth, D., & Unsworth, S. (2014). Politically Smart Locally Led Development: Discussion Paper. Cardozo, M. T. A. L. & Maber, E. J. T. (Eds) (2019). Sustainable Peacebuilding and Social Justice in Times of Transition: Findings on the Role of Education in Myanmar. Springer Nature Switzerland. Chang, P., Alam, M., Warren, R., Bhatia, R. & Turkington, R. (2015). Women Leading Peace: A close examination of women’s political participation in peace processes in Northern Ireland, Guatemala, Kenya and the Philippines. Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. Chirimambowa, T. C. & Chimedza, T. L. (2019). The ‘Native Returns’: Assessing and Reimagining Indigenisation and Black Economic Empowerment as Development Projects in the ‘Postcolony’. In B. Mpofu & S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (Eds), Rethinking and Unthinking Development: Perspectives on Inequality and Poverty in South Africa and Zimbabwe (pp. 129–151). Berghahn Books. Dersso, S. (2012). The quest for Pax Africana: the case of the African Union’s peace and security regime. African Journal on Conflict Resolution, 12(2), 11–48. Fink, N. C., Zeiger, S. & Bhulai, R. (Eds). (2016). A Man’s World? Exploring the Roles of Women in Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism (April Issue). Hedayah and The Global Center on Cooperative Security. Fisher, W. & Stenner, J. (2011). Integrating qualitative and quantitative research approaches via the phenomenological method. International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches, 5(1), 89–103. Freedom House. (2014). The Exclusion of Women from Peace Negotiations. https:// freedomhouse.org/blog/exclusion-women-peace-negotiations. Gatwiri, G. & McLaren, H. J. (2016). Discovering my own African feminism: Embarking on a journey to explore Kenyan women’s oppression. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 17(4), 263–273.

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya

121

Giscard d’Estaing, S. (2017). Engaging women in countering violent extremism: avoiding instrumentalisation and furthering agency. Gender and Development, 25(1), 103–118. Gumede, T. (2020). A Statement on ‘How to Dismantle White-Hetero-Patriarchy’. 1–30). Ubuntu Studies, Online Academy. Hedstrom, J. & Senarathna, T. (2015). Women in Conflict and Peace. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. www.idea.int/sites/default/files/p ublications/women-in-conflict-and-peace.pdf. Ibhawoh, B. (2008). Imperialism and Human Rights: Colonial Discourses of Rights and Liberties in African History. SUNY Press. Ilyas, M. (2021). Decolonising Terrorism Journals. Societies, 11(1), 1–18. Ilyas, M. (2022). Decolonialisation and the Terrorism Industry. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(2), 417–440. Jackson, R. (2017). Post-liberal Peacebuilding and the Pacifist State. Peacebuilding, 6 (1), 1–16. Jakupi, R. & Kelmendi, V. (2017). Women in Violent Extremism: Lessons Learned from Kosovo. Kosovar Centre for Security Studies. https://qkss.org/images/uploads/ files/women-in-ve-eng_594236.pdf. Kandiyoti, D. (1998). Gender, Power and Contestation: ‘Rethinking bargaining with Patriarchy'.’ In C. Jackson & R. Pearson (Eds), Feminist visions of Development: Gender Analysis and Policy (pp. 135–151). Routledge. Karari, P., Byrne, S., Skarlato, O. & Ahmed, K. (2012). The Role of Foreign Aid in Nurturing an Atmosphere of Trust, Goodwill, and Human Security in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. Journal of Human Security, 8(2), 84–104. Kassimeris, G. & Jackson, L. (2011). The West, the rest, and the ‘war on terror’: representation of Muslims in neoconservative media discourse. Contemporary Poli­ tics, 17(1), 19−33. doi: 10.1080/13569775.2011.552684. Kundnani, A. & Hayes, B. (2018). The Globalisation of Countering Violent Extre­ mism Policies: Undermining human rights, instrumentalising civil society. SOURCE Societal Security Network of Excellence. www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/ the_globalisation_of_countering_violent_extremism_policies.pdf. Kwanya, T. & Kiplang, J. (2016). Indigenous knowledge research in Kenya: a biblio­ metric analysis. Paper Presented at the 11th International Knowledge Management in Organizations Conference, Hagen Germany, pp. 1–7. Lidén, K., Mac Ginty, R. & Richmond, O. P. (2009). Introduction: Beyond Northern Epistemologies of Peace: Peacebuilding Reconstructed? International Peacekeeping, 16(5), 587–598. Maloba, W. O. (2017). The anatomy of neo-colonialism in Kenya: British imperialism and Kenyatta, 1963–1978. Palgrave Macmillan. Mazrui, A. A. (1967). Towards a Pax Africana: A study of ideology and ambition. University of Chicago Press. Mazrui, A., Njogu, K. & Goldsmith, P. (2018). Introduction: Global and Local Con­ texts of Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Kenya. In A. Mazrui, K. Njogu & P. Goldsmith (Eds), Countering Violent Extremism in Kenya: Between The Rule of Law and Quest for Security (pp. 13–39). Twaweza Communications. Mesok, E. (2022). Beyond instrumentalisation: gender and agency in the prevention of extreme violence in Kenya. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(3), 610–631. van Metre, L. (2016). Community Resilience to Violent Extremism in Kenya. Peaceworks (Issue 122). www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PW122-Community-Resilience-to-ViolentExtremism-in-Kenya.pdf.

122

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Ndung’u, I. & Shadung, M. (2017). Can a gendered approach improve responses to violent extremism? Africa in the World Report, 5(September), 1–20. https://issafrica. s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/aitwr-5.pdf. Nebe, J. M. (2012). Civil Conflict Management of the Post-Election Violence 2007/2008 in Kenya: Lessons Learnt and the Way Forward, pp. 1–303. Noma, E., Aker, D. & Freeman, J. (2012). Heeding Women’s Voices: Breaking Cycles of Conflict and Deepening the Concept of Peacebuilding. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 7(1), 7–32. O’Gorman, E. (2014). Independent Thematic Review on Gender for the UN Peacebuilding Office (March Issue). Oando, S. & Achieng, S. (2021). An indigenous African framework for counterterrorism: decolonising Kenya’s approach to countering ‘Al-Shabaab-ism'. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14(3), 354–377. Oando, S. O. (2022). Space For African Women In Tackling Violent Extremism: Engendering Conflict Transformation In Kenya. University of Otago. Oloka-Onyango, J. (2015). Battling over Human Rights: Twenty Essays on Law, Poli­ tics and Governance. Langaa RPCIG. Oloka-Onyango, J., & Tamale, S. (1995). ‘The Personal is Political,’ or Why Women’s Rights are Indeed Human Rights: An African Perspective on International Femin­ ism. Human Rights Quarterly, 17(4), 691–731. Paffenholz, T. (2015). Unpacking the local turn in peacebuilding: a critical assessment towards an agenda for future research. Third World Quarterly, 36(5), 857–874. Paffenholz, T., Ross, N., Dixon, S., Schluchter, A. & True, J. (2016). Making Women Count-Not Just Counting Women: Assessing Women’s Inclusion and Influence on Peace Negotiations. Inclusive Peace and Transition Initiative (The Graduate Institute of Inter­ national and Development Studies) and UN Women. www.peacewomen.org/sites/defa ult/files/Making%20Women%20Count%20Not%20Just%20Counting%20Women.pdf. Paris, R. (2018). Peacebuilding. In T. G. Weiss & S. Daws (Eds), The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations. (pp. 479–504). Oxford University Press. Patel, S. & Westermann, J. (2018). Women and Islamic-State Terrorism: An Assessment of How Gender Perspectives Are Integrated in Countering Violent Extremism Policy and Practices. Security Challenges, 14(2), 53–81. Pearson, E., Winterbotham, E., & Brown, K. (2020). Countering Violent Extremism: Making Gender Matter. Palgrave Macmillan. Penn, R. T. (1995). Through an African feminist theoretical lens: Viewing Caribbean women’s history cross-culturally. In V. Shepherd, B. Brereton & B. Bailey (Eds), Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective. (pp. 3–19). Palgrave Macmillan. Romaniuk, P. & Durner, T. (2018). The politics of preventing violent extremism: the case of Uganda. Conflict, Security and Development, 18(2), 159–179. Sakue-Collins, Y. (2021). (Un)doing development: a postcolonial enquiry of the agenda and agency of NGOs in Africa. Third World Quarterly, 42(5), 976–995. Salifu, U. & Ndung’u, I. (2017). Preventing violent extremism in Kenya: Why women’s needs matter. Institute for Security Studies, East Africa Report 13. https://issa frica.org/research/east-africa-report/preventing-violent-extremism-in-kenya-why-wome ns-needs-matter. Sharp, J., Briggs, J., Yacoub, H. & Hamed, N., (2003). Doing Gender and Develop­ ment: Understanding Empowerment and Local Gender Relations. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 28(3), 281–295.

Indigenous Voice in Tackling Violent Extremism in Kenya

123

Shepherd, C. K. (2015). The Role of Women in International Conflict Resolution. Hamline University's School of Law's Journal of Public Law and Policy, 36(2), 54 −67, Article 1. http://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/jplp/vol36/iss2/1. Shepherd, L. J. (2022). White feminism and the governance of violent extremism. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(3), 727−749. Simoncini, G. (2020). International PVE and Tunisia: A Local Critique of Interna­ tional Donors Discourse. In A. Martini, K. Ford & R. Jackson (Eds), Encountering Extremism: Theoretical Issues and Local Challenges (pp. 180–199). Manchester University Press. Sjoberg, L. & Gentry, C. E. (Eds) (2011). Women, Gender and Terrorism. The University of Georgia Press. Súilleabháin, A. Ó. (2015). Leveraging Local Knowledge for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding in Africa. International Peace Institute. www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2015/03/IPI-Rpt-Leveraging-Local-Knowledge-rev.pdf. Swaine, A., Spearing, M., Murphy, M. & Contreras, M. (2016). Intersections of vio­ lence against women and girls with state-building and peace-building: Lessons from Nepal, Sierra Leone and South Sudan. The Global Women’s Institute, The George Washington University. www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/2019-12/p784ircwhatworks reportlr.pdf. Tamale, S. (2020). Decolonisation and Afro-Feminism. Daraja Press. Thompsell, A. (2019). The work of Peace: History, Imperialism, and Peacekeeping. Insight Turkey, 21(1), 53–76. Tsui, C.-K. (2020). Interrogating the concept of (violent) extremism: a genealogical study of terrorism and counter-terrorism discourses. In A. Martini, K. Ford & R. Jackson (Eds), Encountering Extremism: Theoretical Issues and Local Challenges (pp. 21–39). Manchester University Press. Tuso, H. & Flaherty, M. P. (2016). Creating the third force: indigenous processes of peacemaking. Lexington Books. UN Women. (2017). Indigenous Women & the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/Library/ Publications/2017/WPS-and-Indigenous-Women-EN.pdf. van der Vyver, J. D. (1979). The Concept of Human Rights: Its History, Content, and Meaning. Acta Juridica, 10(1979), 10–32. Walker, P. O. (2004). Decolonizing Conflict Resolution: Addressing the Ontological Violence of Westernization. The American Indian Quarterly, 28(3), 527–549. Wangui, E. E. (2003). Links Between Gendered Division of Labour and Land Use in Kajiado District, Kenya, LUCID Working Paper no. 23 ILRI. https://hdl.handle.net/ 10568/1897. Wilson, D. W. & Washington, G. (2007). Retooling Phenomenology: Relevant Meth­ ods for Conducting Research with African American Women. Journal of Theory Construction & Testing, 11(2), 63–66. Zeleza, P. T. (2019). Africa’s persistent struggles for development and democracy in a multipolar world. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 53(1), 155–170.

Section III

Bridging Disciplinary and Methodological Gaps in Critical Terrorism Studies

7

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies Studying Counterterrorism as Contestation across Political Parties Ugo Gaudino

Introduction Critical Studies on Terrorism (CTS) have long argued that security threats are constructed by social and political narratives. Yet, both critical and traditional approaches frequently privilege national executives and security agencies (mili­ tary, intelligence, etc.) as the main units of analysis (Neal, 2012a, p. 110). This perspective is heavily reliant on the assumption that whoever sits in top-cabinet spaces agrees upon the identification of security threats, independently from their ideological leaning. There is little research on how representatives of dif­ ferent political parties contribute to the conversation on terrorism and provide multiple understandings of who extremist subjects are, and how they should be tackled. These interpretations very often sit uncomfortably alongside one another: the “radicals” identified by one political party represent the “fighters for legitimate rights” for another party (Ganor, 2002). This discussion should be taken seriously by CTS scholars, especially considering the increasing polarisation in many Western countries between right-wing and left-wing par­ ties and the mainstreaming of racist narratives coming from the far right. This chapter argues that the discourse on terrorism and on the policies to fight it (e.g., counterterrorism, counterextremism) changes across political parties. By discourse, I mean a “structure of signification which constructs social realities”, particularly by “defining subjects and establishing their rela­ tional positions within a broader social system of signification” (Jackson, 2016, p. 80). Different discourses result from the ideological distance across different parties on the Right−Left spectrum. The aims of the chapter are twofold: first, reflecting on the articulation of the discourse on terrorism beyond the methodological centrality given to the executive power and second, reflecting on case studies that show the politicisation of terrorism by political parties. The chapter adopts a mixed approach that combines theo­ retical insights with empirical analysis. Although the case studies are selected from right-wing and left-wing Western politics, the methodology (focus on parties rather than states) is generalisable on a wider scale. The chapter is organised into two main sections. The first section claims that the executive-centric methodology used in established research in DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963-11

128

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Terrorism Studies is problematic because it downplays the role of other poli­ tical agents that contribute to the definition of terrorism. In doing so it engages with scholars who consider terrorism and other security issues as part of ordinary political debates and argues to incorporate other political agents like parliaments and parties as relevant units of analysis. The second section explains that the political ideology of parties and party leaders matters in the designation of terrorist groups and the formulation of counterterrorism stra­ tegies that change across the Right and Left. This is particularly evident in polities characterised by intense politicisation and party polarisation. This section defines politicisation as contestation and utilises the concept to inves­ tigate how political parties discuss national security issues and counter­ terrorism policies. It provides illustrations about Western right-wing leaders and parties who have politicised debates on terrorism by further securitising ethnic minorities and threatening to proscribe anti-fascist organisations and climate activists as “extremist” subjects. Second, it stresses that Western par­ ties on the centre-left have also justified harsh counterterrorism measures in name of ideological references that differ from conservative ones. It illustrates this point by engaging with the elaboration of the counterterrorism program Prevent by the Labour party. The chapter concludes by suggesting that a methodological framework that takes political parties seriously can yield insights for CTS. I do not consider “methodology” only as a neutral or technical toolbox of “methods” to gather data, but as the structural concerns that accompany the development of my enquiry (Aradau et al., 2015; Sartori, 1970, p. 1033 in Jackson, 2011, p. 25). The language and ideas of political parties deserve more analytical room because they are relevant lenses to read the debate on terrorism. An analysis sensitive to the contestation of the debate on terrorism reveals many nuances across and inside parties. Such differences are not only rhetorical but have concrete repercussions on the identification of security threats. Studying poli­ tical parties and ideologies is thus a methodological option that unpacks possibilities to fight hegemonic counterterrorism knowledge and practices. These possibilities can be found among politicians, particularly on the Left, who share a similar emancipatory mission to the one advanced by scholars within CTS. This chapter aligns with the goals of this volume by seeking to investigate how reframing methodological inquiry can expose new spaces of potential emancipation (such as points of resistance within certain political parties). Hence, the chapter aligns with the methodological and normative commitments of the book despite being focused on a “traditional” field such as political science.

The Methodological State-Centrism of Terrorism Studies Research on how political parties conceptualise counterterrorism is currently underdeveloped in both mainstream and critical Terrorism Studies. Among the few existing publications that seriously engage with party politics,

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies

129

Weinberg and Lee Eubank (1990) explored how some terrorist groups have their roots in political parties (e.g., far-right, far-left and separatist groups). In a successive article (1992), the same authors argued that changes in party systems and fluctuating electoral performances are factors that impact upon the number of terrorist groups present in one country. Another important contribution comes from Alonso (2013), who examined the polarising effect that the Al Qaeda bombings in Madrid (11 March 2004) and the negotiations with the Basque separatist group ETA had on Spanish party politics. Other authors have written about the Irish party Sinn Féin and its links with the armed group Provisional Irish Republican Army (Whiting, 2016) on the Basque party Batasuna and its links with ETA (Bourne, 2015). Yet, to my knowledge, detailed research on how parties of distinct ideologies (e.g., con­ servatives, liberals, social-democratic) interpret terrorism is marginal, at least regarding the US and Europe, on which this chapter is focused, whereas if we go beyond the West, there are several studies on political parties and terror­ ism, such as the publications on Hezbollah (Berti, 2011) and Hamas (Bhasin & Hallward, 2013). This section suggests giving more analytical purchase to political parties by building on recent literature that argues in favour of a fruitful dialogue between Terrorism Studies and Political Science (Neal, 2012a, 2012b, 2019; Hagmann et al., 2018; Hegemann & Kahl, 2018; Lister, 2019). This invitation stems from the awareness that critical approaches, just like traditional ones, privilege a methodological emphasis on the executive power, chosen as the main unit of analysis. The existing literature on security and terrorism most often focuses on one type of political actor, the state and one branch of power, the executive (Neal, 2012a; Raunio & Wagner, 2017). More specifically, the Government and the Ministries who have the task to fight terrorism (Home Office, Foreign Affairs, Defence, etc.) and the agencies that depend on them (the intelligence services, the police, the military, etc.). According to Neal (2012a, p. 110), the unba­ lanced emphasis on the executive power has been a feature of mainstream and Critical Security Studies and of International Relations Theory, who aban­ doned research on professional politicians to the discipline of Political Science (which, in turn, relegated the study of security to IR). Similarly, Williams has argued that the role of political ideologies is not sufficiently explored in Secur­ ity Studies because of “the idea that in matters of life, death and violence, objective knowledge can displace ideological visions and values” (Salter et.al., 2019, p.18). Hence, scholars have tended to narrow down the focus on the national executives and their security agencies (military, intelligence, police, etc.). What is problematic is that other relevant political actors (e.g., parlia­ ments, courts, political parties) have been studied much less. One line of criticism against this methodological focus is that the state is constituted by many other articulations. This argument has already been made by scholars within the Paris School of Security Studies (Lister, 2019, p. 420). According to the Paris School, considering security as the realm of exceptional measures, as done by the Copenhagen school of Security Studies

130

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

(Buzan et al., 1998), shifts the analytical focus away from the administrative and routinised practices of exclusion inherent in counterterrorism policies (Eroukhmanoff, 2015, p. 247). Among the literature generally associated with this strand, many studies have scrutinised the role of national security bureaucracies in the fabrication of debates and solutions about radicalisation, terrorism and immigration. In doing so, scholars following this approach show that the state is constituted by multiple articulations, such as the intel­ ligence and the military (Bigo & Tsoukala, 2008), border and coast guard agencies (Bigo, 2014), the police (Eroukhmanoff, 2015) and expert commis­ sions, like the “Stasi commission” on secularism in France (Mavelli, 2013). By adopting this perspective, what is refused is the idea that power is cen­ tralised in the hands of visible “sovereigns” (Presidents, Prime Ministers, etc.) who “decide on the state of exception”, to paraphrase Carl Schmitt (1985). Instead of the Schmittian centralistic decisionism, such scholars accept Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality in considering power as a set of dispersed and heterogeneous practices carried out by a network of bureau­ crats and professionals (Bigo, 2008, pp. 11–12; Neal, 2010, p. 145). Other scholars (De Goede, 2008; Heath-Kelly, 2012) used the figure of “petty sovereigns” described by Judith Butler (2004). In the realm of security and counterterrorism, petty sovereigns (e.g., immigration officers, prison guards, counterterrorism practitioners) are part of a dispersed bureaucracy that is entitled to take unilateral and unaccountable decisions (Butler, 2004, p. 56). Thus, petty sovereigns represent an evolution of sovereignty in the era of governmentality (Heath-Kelly, 2012, p. 79). Yet, scholars inspired by the Paris School ended up reproducing the idea that security and terrorism are a pre­ rogative of the executive. Accordingly, the units of their analysis represent different ramifications of the central sovereign power. Owing to their expertise and everyday practice, these bodies close the possibility for democratic dis­ cussions on security issues. This also happens because terrorist attacks fre­ quently shift the epicentre of political decision-making from the legislature to the executive because of the need for urgent responses. In doing so, the Paris School depoliticises security as much as the Copenhagen school does. States and their national security agencies are the main characters of Cri­ tical Security and Terrorism Studies’ research, but they are usually studied without attention to the ideology of political parties; however, there is wide scholarly agreement that the definition of terrorism is a very politicised matter that eschews unanimous consensus (Schmid, 2011, p. 40). Well-established literature exists on some topics like non-state terrorist actors of religious inspiration, e.g., Al Qaeda and the constellation of jihadist groups (Byman, 2015); non-state terrorist groups and right/left-wing political ideologies (Malkki, 2020; Michael, 2020); secessionist and independentist terrorist groups (Alonso, 2013; Bourne, 2015; Whiting, 2016); state terrorism (Blake­ ley, 2007; Jackson et al., 2010). However, there are no specific studies on, say, how governments of different political colours conceptualise terrorism and violent extremism. Among the most influential handbooks published in the

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies

131

last decades in the field of Terrorism Studies, there are no chapters dedicated to the link between terrorism and politics as an activity undertaken by profes­ sional politicians and by political parties (Dixit & Stump, 2016; Jackson et al., 2009; Jackson, 2018; Schmid, 2011; Silke, 2020). The literature often engages with political factors such as the construction of national identity in the fight against terrorism and the reflections on how national security culture influences counterterrorism policy (D’Amato, 2019; Kirchner & Sperling, 2010; Neal, 2012b, p. 358). However, the methodological framework of these studies is based on the executive as units of analysis and predicated on the assumption that there is a continuity between parties when it comes to fighting terrorism (Guittet, 2008; Morgan & de Londras, 2018). This assumption is partly mis­ leading because terrorism might also further the divisions across parties. Alonso (2013) showed that the Spanish party system was deeply polarised after the Madrid bombings committed by Al Qaeda on 11 March 2004 and during the negotiations that the Cabinet led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero started with the Basque separatist group ETA. More engagement is needed with poli­ tics intended as an institutional activity carried out by parties, who discuss and contest narratives on terrorism. In giving more analytical depth to political parties, CTS could follow what has been already done by other IR sub-dis­ ciplines such as Foreign Policy Analysis, where studies on political parties and politicisation of military operations and security issues have proliferated (Kaarbo, 1996; Ostermann & Stahl, 2022, p. 3; Wagner et al., 2018). Hence, many scholars advocate studying security and terrorism as part of normal political debates. This would allow filling a partial gap in the sub-field, that has paid “little attention to the role of legislatures” because it is mostly focused on “government policy, the nature of security threats, or the letter and function of the law” (Neal, 2012b, pp. 357–358). Besides the sphere of executive power, other institutions, such as parliaments and courts, grew into important arenas that shape the discourse on terrorism. In his research on parliaments, Neal has illustrated that although counterterrorism laws are framed as emer­ gency solutions when first proposed, they tend to become normalised and per­ manent instruments (2012b, pp. 359–360). While Neal considers lawmakers as security “actors”, other scholars (Jarvis & Legrand, 2017) emphasise the role of legislatures as “audiences” of security policies. In their study on the power to proscribe terrorist organisations in the UK (where proscription is an executive power exerted with the Parliament’s assent), Jarvis and Legrand (2017) demon­ strate that parliamentary debates are not meant to simply decide if a Cabinet decision should be approved or rejected. In fact, MPs produce a series of ques­ tions and comments that show the deliberative nature and the room for political contestation around terrorism (Jarvis & Legrand, 2017, pp. 151–152). This situation changes across countries because in some national contexts party members lack autonomy of choice and thus follow the votes decided by the central leadership. However, some studies contest the argument that parliaments are only rubber-stamp institutions, even during exceptional circumstances like the war on terror (Owens & Pelizzo, 2009; Scott & Carter, 2014)1.

132

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Aside from the formal power of state institutions, recent research also highlights the increasing centrality of non-state actors. For instance, Hag­ mann et al. (2018, p. 4) explain that NGOs, civil society groups and media have been increasingly involved in the discursive elaboration of security issues. The participation of these non-state actors shows that security has become more inclusive and transparent since the 1990s in Europe (Hagmann et al., 2018, p. 18). Hence, loud public mobilisation and participation can be raised by hot security topics such as the abolition of the armed forces, such as in Switzerland, and military operations abroad, such as public hesitation about Britain’s intervention in Iraq (Hayes, 2016). I aim to integrate this literature by focusing on political parties because they provide multiple and varying understandings of what radicalisation and terrorism are and how they should be tackled. These understandings very often sit uncomfortably alongside one another and deserve to be particularly discussed in a period of extreme poli­ tical polarisation, the crisis of mainstream parties and the rise of right- and left-wing populism. Acknowledging that politics is significant means giving importance to the political ideas and practices that governing parties carry with them once they sit in the executive. Despite not taking into account political parties, it is important to remember the merits of CTS in deconstructing the political construction of “terrorism”. In this regard, one important example is the deconstruction of the discursive link between Islam and radicalisation and/or terrorism. One crucial argument sustained by CTS is that terrorism is not an inherent component of religion, but a tactic chosen to meet the political needs of a group (Gunning & Jackson, 2011). Indeed, religion is a discursive phenom­ enon lacking a precise essence (Khan, 2021). Words such as “Islamism” (Jackson, 2007; Badran, 2013) and “jihadism” (Cook, 2005) have multiple meanings that change according to local contexts and are embedded in Western colonial past in Muslim majority countries. Such signifiers are engaged by other scholars with reference to the ideological background that allegedly “radicalises” Muslims into violent political action. Not only is this controversial process of “radicalisation” conceptually weak, but as CTS scholars show, it is weaponised by ruling elites to impose discriminatory practices on Muslims (Baker-Beall et al., 2015; Yebra López, 2023). The analysis of terrorist acts carried out in the name of Islam requires the exploration of the structural and political roots of terrorist acts, which are never objective instantiation of fundamentalist beliefs inherent to Islam. Muslims and Islamists are not necessarily more prone to fall into terrorism than any other groups or institutions, including the state. There is no such a thing as a homogeneous Muslim world, let alone any rigorous boundaries between extremists and moderate Muslims. Terrorists make use of Islam as a referent category that contains doctrinal, practical and cultural aspects to protect, similarly to how non-religious terrorist groups have treated secular values (e.g., nationalism, communism, capitalism) as sacred and non-nego­ tiable (Francis, 2016).

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies

133

Thus, the boundary between “terrorist subject” and “securitised value” is ultimately decided by the political authorities who are granted enough power and cultural capital to define the ideological sources of the terrorist threat, which other parties may want to consider, instead, as a justified political cause to fight for (Ganor, 2002). Despite the widespread agreement on ter­ rorism as a politicised phenomenon, there is a paucity of studies about the different understandings that politicians of opposite parties advance regarding contested concepts like terrorism and radicalisation.

Politicisation as Contestation Discourses on terrorism take diverse shapes according to the vision that political parties or leaders have of the polity and its security. This means that the bound­ aries between terrorist and non-terrorist are dependent on factors like history, national security culture, urgent decision-making in emergencies and competi­ tion among a field of security bureaucrats who work for the executive power (Bigo, 2014). Parties are not indifferently involved in counterterrorism. In fact, each party has in mind a distinct idea of who the threat is. Counterterrorism policies are discursively formulated according to the legacy of political ideas and languages that different parties put forward. This emerges especially within deradicalisation and Counter Violent Extremism programmes that attempt to ideologically convert individuals who have allegedly embraced extremist beliefs (Martini et al., 2020). Overall, in Western politics, conservative and nationalist ideas are more frequent in right-wing and centre-right parties. For their part, centre-left parties subscribe to social-liberalism and social-democracy, while farleft parties follow socialist or communist programs. The political scenario has been further enriched by the rise of populist and environmentalist parties. Hence, adopting only the vantage point of state official representatives and bureau­ cracies leaves a vacuum regarding how competing political parties attempt to “politicise” security policies and agencies. It is important to define politicisation and explain why it deserves more attention in Terrorism Studies. Generally, politicisation means making some­ thing worthy of political debate and conflict across a wide range of actors involved in collective decisions. Politicisation is thus a process that increases the salience of an issue (e.g., terrorism) into the political sphere, eases the circulation of the issue-specific conflicts beyond executive actors and potentially breeds the polarisation of political elites on the issue-specific debate (De Wilde & Zürn, 2012, p. 4). A recent line of research argues that the concept of politicisation is useful to grasp how different actors “advance their potentially conflicting argu­ ments and interact in various arenas” related to the management of security policies (Hagmann et al., 2018, p.11). The de-politicised analysis of security affairs and counterterrorism cannot properly address the conceptual ambiguities and political conflicts behind the definition of some problems. This happens in the management of the most seemingly technical issues, like a pandemic, and even more when very contentious and value-driven notions like radicalisation

134

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

(on which there is no consensual knowledge), terrorism and religion are at stake (Hegemann & Kahl, 2018, pp. 559–560). A more assertive politicisation of the debate on terrorism has followed the intense polarisation between right-wing and left-wing parties in the West. In Europe, an instance of this phenomenon is the electoral rise of radical parties that have been described as populist, both on the Right and the Left (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013). In the US, Republican and Democratic supporters have reached worrying levels of polarisation in the last decades and especially during the Trump years (CSIS, 2022). A deeper polarisation means that par­ ties on the Right and Left work to further distinguish their political offerings from their competitors. This also implies giving a more divergent ideological interpretation of what national security is and who is included and excluded within the national borders, contrary to the above-mentioned literature which argues that national security is depoliticised. For instance, parties increasingly use the word “terrorist” to label certain groups because they subscribe to the opposite political agendas, rather than based on more objective facts like the number of violent acts committed. Against the analytical primacy given to national security experts and national executives in the production of terror­ ism discourse, I suggest that political parties’ ideologies are used to set the priorities and give meaning to contested concepts (like radicalisation and terrorism) that cannot be de-politicised, because they are inherently connected to the beliefs and norms of political agents. Using a methodology that takes politicisation seriously allows us to inter­ pret parties’ distinct ideas of security. The literature has identified different dimensions along which politicisation can be operationalised. One way of scrutinising politicisation is to focus on three aspects: the controversy raised by the politicised topic; the mobilisation prompted; and the arena-shifting of the discourse on security from technical management to deliberative settings (Hagmann et al., 2018, pp. 12–14). Alternatively, Hegemann and Schenecker (2019, p. 142) argue that parties can politicise issues by raising awareness, mobilising audiences and contesting existent policies. Building on this scho­ larship, I explore one dimension of politicisation, contestation, in the diver­ gent views that political parties’ advance on national security and counterterrorism. Contestation is highly ideological. Following the definition coined by Leader Maynard (2014, p. 824), I consider ideology as: a distinctive system of normative, semantic, and/or reputedly factual ideas, typically shared by members of groups or societies, which under­ pins their understandings of their political world and shapes their poli­ tical behaviour. A focus on ideology has analytical and empirical value because ideology influences how parties give meaning to social issues around them, including terrorism and security affairs. For the sake of this chapter, I suggest taking seriously two political party practices emerging from recent contestation on

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies

135

counterterrorism. First, efforts to shift public attention to some security threats and calling the security agencies to work harder to tackle them. This tactic is used by all parties, independently of their effective resources to con­ dition the activity of the civil servants. Yet, each party uses it according to its ideological legacy (conservative, liberal, etc.). Second, steering the activities of national security agencies by setting their priorities and appointing loyal bureaucrats to execute them. This is what happens particularly in the US, where each President appoints 4000 civil servants, but tends to occur also in other countries with presidential and semi-presidential systems (Bauer & Becker, 2020; Cribb, 2020). Thus, right-wing and left-wing parties in the West have politicised the debate on terrorism by contesting who should be con­ sidered a threat to national security. In the rest of the chapter, I illustrate my argument through a case study from the Right (the Republican Party in the US) and a case study from the Left (the British Labour party).

The US Republican Party In the last decade, the leaders and parties who have been very vocal in the politicisation of security affairs often subscribe to radical right ideas. Following Mudde (2007, p. 23), the three core pillars of radical right parties are nativism, authoritarianism and populism. Right-wing populists do not believe that national security should be independent from partisan clues and act in the name of a depoliticised idea of sovereignty. Instead, they claim that security agencies should act in the name of the “people”, intended as ethnic and cultu­ rally homogeneous nation. In this Manichean vision, security professionals, unelected bureaucrats and experts are all part of a malevolent elite that harms the best interests of the “people” by protecting, instead, other categories like immigrants, ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals (Kurylo, 2020, p. 8). Therefore, right-wing populists aim to confiscate the discourse on insecurity from the hands of bureaucrats (Drolet & Williams, 2018, p. 306). Recent research shows that several populist parties, especially on the Right, have tried to influence the pattern of security bureaucracies and appoint loyal civil ser­ vants, albeit the results have been inconsistent (Peters & Pierre, 2019; Rockman, 2019). This aspect should not be underestimated in studying the discourse and policies on counterterrorism because parties try to impose their specific vision of who the threats are and how they should be tackled. The Republican Party under Trump is an appropriate case study of politi­ cisation of security and terrorism from right-wing parties. Although Trump’s xenophobic and polarising positions are not shared unanimously in the Republican Party, initial evidence suggests that they spilled over the party in the last years (Jacobson, 2018). Trump achieved an unparalleled dominance in the Republican Party (Galvin, 2020), facilitated by the popularity that his nationalist and conservative opinions gained in the party since the years of Reagan (Lucks, 2020). The politicisation emerged especially in two pillars of Trump’s agenda: reducing immigration and fighting the “deep state” by

136

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

appointing trustful civil servants in the federal government (Peters & Pierre, 2019, p. 1530). Trump considered immigration from Mexico and Muslimmajority countries as a security threat and pushed security agencies to tackle it. The Republican President steered domestic security policies in a xeno­ phobic guise by ordering more deportations. According to Pew Research Center (2020), data on three key measures – border apprehensions, interior arrests and deportations – gathered by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) show that apprehensions at the US-Mexico bor­ ders spiked in fiscal 2019 to their highest annual level in twelve years. While the number of interior arrests and deportations is lower compared to Obama’s first term, the executive order on Border Security and Immigration Enforce­ ment Improvements has expanded the authority of ICE to detain a wider range of undocumented migrants. Trump also signed the Executive Order 13767, that authorised the US Government to begin wall construction on the US-Mexican border. After being elected, Trump also enacted Executive Order 13769, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States”, which placed restrictions on immigration and refugees and banned travel from seven Muslim-majority countries (Baker & Bader, 2021). This is a racialising and Islamophobic measure that arbitrarily punishes foreigners associated with terrorism because of their ethnic and religious background. Trump also steered the activities of US national security agencies by setting their priorities and appointing loyal bureaucrats to execute them. In 2017, the Republican President appointed Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, whose links with far-right pundits and Islamophobic activists are well-known to the public (Seidman, 2017). In April 2019, Trump pulled back the nominee of Ronald Vitiello for Director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and fired his Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Kirjsten Nielson, judged as too soft to pursue the government crackdown on illegal migration (Rockman, 2019, p. 1564). Such decisions to side-line previous bureaucrats for loyal ones reflect a centralistic vision of security that aligns with authoritarian practices and populist mistrust towards the elites. Trump’s infamous “Muslim Ban” was introduced without internal checks from Justice Department and State Department lawyers. Eventually, the “Muslim ban” failed to pass legal scrutiny and had to be revised. However, it instantiates Trump’s aim to poli­ ticise counterterrorism in a rather conservative direction, as well as the fact that the bureaucrats who drafted the policies were quite receptive to the political desires of the Republican administration (Moynihan, 2020, p. 12). One risk of the politicisation of security from right-wing populists is to witness further securitisation of categories that do not belong to their idea of the “people”, such as ethnic minorities, as well as of LGBTQ+ folks, envir­ onmentalists and left-wing activists. Potentially, some of these groups might be framed as violent extremists and proscribed as terrorist (Schmid 2011, pp.40–41). It falls beyond my scope to review the rich literature about the proscription of terrorism (e.g., Jarvis & Legrand, 2017). What matters for this

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies

137

chapter’s argument is that this practice can be politicised along ideological lines, depending on how the ideas of the supposed terrorist group match with the agenda of ruling political elites. Every party is affected by this political bias, but the most striking demonstrations have come from the Right, espe­ cially by the Republican administration led by Trump. During the protests that followed the tragic death of George Floyd, Trump threatened to include Antifa (an umbrella name to design a large array of decentralised anti-fascist, anarchist and far-left groups) among the terrorist organisations. This decision was backed by the national security adviser Robert O’Brien and the Attorney General William Barr (NBC, 2020), both close to Republican positions. This move shows the politicisation of high-ranking civil servants and the ideologi­ cal direction that the debate on terrorism has taken. Looking at facts and not at the rhetoric shows that this plethora of groups has indeed engaged in some violent activities (e.g., throwing projectiles and water bottles). However, data from 2010 reveal that left-wing violence has resulted in far fewer victims (21) than far right and white supremacist violence (117) (CSIS, 2022). Hence, Antifa threat is “blown out of proportion” compared to other groups that would deserve deeper surveillance like the pro-Trump Patriot Prayers and Proud Boys (Byman, 2020). The allegations against Antifa have raised much controversy among scholars. Aside from the claim that Antifa cannot be labelled terrorists because the US has only a list of Foreign Terrorist Organi­ sation (Williams, 2020), the move would be normatively problematic, as much of left-wing violence is aroused in response to white supremacism (Bray, 2017; Husayn, 2020). Considering the number of terrorist attacks executed by farright and white supremacist groups, the double standards in designing Antifa as terrorists are evident, let alone the allegations against Black Lives Matter, whose activities and protests have been mostly peaceful (ACLED, 2020). The case study of the Republican Party under Trump is not unique. Despite its specific features, a similar contestation of the debate on terrorism comes from some Western European radical right parties that have tried to politicise bureaucracies to fight against illegal immigration. Several examples illustrate this trend. For instance, in Italy, the North League’s leader Matteo Salvini announced the closure of Italian ports for NGOs welcoming immigrants when he was Minister of Interior (2018–19). In so doing, he tried to hamper the Search and Rescue activities in the Mediterranean performed by the Ita­ lian Coast Guard. In Salvini’s vision, the Coast Guard did not defend national security as it implicitly acted as a “pull-factors” for illegal immigra­ tion and human smuggling (Il Fatto Quotidiano, 2018). Likewise, the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis − President of the right-wing party New Democracy − moved the National Intelligence Service under the PM’s pur­ view so as to ease the monitoring of journalists and activists who write about the governments’ treatment of refugees. Other instances of politicisation of bureaucracies come from the former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbàn and the leader of the Swiss People’s Party Christoph Blocher (Bauer & Becker, 2020).

138

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Another relevant example comes from the UK, where the Conservatives have promoted the view that radical climate activists of Extinction Rebellion (XR) represent a security threat. The Conservative Cabinet led by Boris Johnson has supported an argument first popularised by the right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange, which argues that XR is an extremist organisation that pursues the “breakdown of rule of law” and thus needs to be tackled by “Ministers and politicians, the Commission for Countering Extremism, police and the general public” (Wilson & Walton, 2019, p. 5). This call for the securitisation of the group found a receptive audience in the Home Office. The report pledged to urgently reform the legislation related to public protest “in order to strengthen the ability of police to place restrictions on planned protest and deal more effectively with mass law-breaking tactics” (2019, p. 7). The reputation of XR has been further damaged by the decision (then reneged) of the Southeast Counter-terrorist Unit to list the group among “extremist ideologies that should be signalled to the authorities running the counter-radicalisation programme Prevent” alongside neo-Nazi and Islamist groups (The Guardian, 2020). According to Open Democracy (2022), the recommendations of the report inspired sections of the Police, Crime, Sen­ tencing and Courts Act 2022, that empowers the police to place more restrictions on static protests or repress them if they are considered disruptive for the public order. The bill was enthusiastically supported by the then Home Secretary Priti Patel, who never condemned the inclusion of XR among extremist ideologies (Independent, 2020). After examining the political contestation of terrorism by some Western right-wing parties, it is time to see how the phenomenon takes shape on the Left.

The British Labour Party In this historical moment when the populist Right attempts to politicise security to target ethnic minorities and left-wing activists, it is timely to interrogate what the response of parties located on the Left-to-centre spec­ trum is. It is maybe too early to judge how the Democratic administration of Joe Biden is trying to frame the debate on terrorism after the Trump years. Suffice it to say that, overall, Western left-wing parties have historically been less authoritarian and xenophobic than right-wing ones regarding the balance between the respect of civil liberties and the protection from insecurity. Security and law-and-order policies such as counterterrorism are traditionally an electoral turf of the Right. The analytical option in Terrorism Studies to study executive actors in a de-politicised manner left less room for specific studies on left-wing parties. Like the Right, left-wing parties can politicise insecurity by linking it to groups and reasons that differ from those of the Right. This is an important aspect because parties like Labour in the UK (Croft, 2012), the Socialist Party in France (Bogain, 2017, see also Chapter 8 in this volume) and the Democratic Party in Italy have been significant agents of counterterrorism policies in the last decades. The fact that these parties

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies

139

have increased the saliency of “security” in their electoral programs and joined the call to securitise Muslims, especially after 9/11, should bring us to ask what the ideological reasons to interpret such move are and whether this interpretation of security is shared by other parties or politicians situated further on the left. Left-wing parties who endorsed racialised counterterrorism policies against Muslims justified these through their ideological references. This different imagination matters because it can be used to justify Islamophobia (a theme usually belonging to the Right) in the name of political ideals that sound more familiar with their electors. Put differently, they translate it in their vocabulary to underline that they differ from the Right, and they are better positioned to fight terrorism. Thus, left-wing parties might consider Islam as a threat because of the challenge to secular and liberal values (the protection of women’s emancipation, LGBTQ+ rights, freedom of expression, etc.), or because Muslims are also considered as a security threat as they could com­ pete on the job market with the native working-class. This conceptual work cannot be fully appreciated without an approach more sensitive to political dynamics such as party politics and ideologies. The engagement with politi­ cisation helps to unpack how Western centre-left parties agree with the rightwing securitisation of Muslims and whether some more progressive alter­ natives to this political option are still possible. To investigate the politicisation of counterterrorism on the Left, this section selects the British Labour Party as a case study. Owing to the British electoral and party system, Labour is the major party on the Left, albeit it comprises many political sensibilities, from “third-way” supporters of neoliberal econ­ omy to socialists. Labour has not endorsed the right-wing criminalisation of antifa and environmentalist groups. However, I select Labour because it represents one of the first cases of a left-leaning party securitising Muslims and adopting racialised counterterrorism policies. This apparent contradiction with Labour’s progressive agenda on minority rights brought the party leftwing faction (led by Jeremy Corbyn) to contest the choices of the leadership of Tony Blair (1997–2007) and Gordon Brown (2007–10), who in turn have recurred to liberal and progressive ideas to justify the securitisation in front of left-wing electors. Many scholars have illustrated that British Muslims have been targeted by a securitising discourse, particularly after the 7/7 Al Qaeda attacks in London (Brown, 2008; Croft, 2012; Saeed, 2016). A topic that has raised much aca­ demic interest is Prevent, namely one of the four pillars of the British coun­ terterrorism strategy (CONTEST). Meant as a strategy to safeguard people from becoming or supporting terrorism, its implementation prompted criti­ cism, even within Labour, for its harmful consequences on British Muslims. Among the discriminatory outcomes, Bentley (2015, p. 107) recalls that Muslims have been subjected to an increased surveillance in their public and private spaces, with the purpose to neutralise dangerous ideas. Despite recognising that “only a tiny minority of radicalised individuals become

140

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

terrorists” (HM Government, 2006, p. 10), Prevent placed emphasis on the need to counter “extremist ideas” that contrast with British values and might drive to “non-violent radicalisation”, namely a very inchoate and muddy concept (Martini et al., 2020, p. 2). In so doing, Prevent discursively linked the legitimate sense of grievance and injustice perceived by many Western Muslims − expressed for instance in their anti-imperialist rhetoric (HM Government, 2006, p. 10) as a vehicle to embrace fundamentalist attitudes. Thus, Labour’s counterterrorism program securitised part of British Muslims as potentially threatening others. The increasing discrimination of Muslims raises some puzzles because it contrasts with the progressive values and respect of human rights promoted by Blair. However, this puzzle cannot be explained by referring to terrorism scho­ larship, which is praiseworthy but comes with the analytical cost of ignoring parties. This literature shows that Labour took active part in the securitisation process and that its counterterrorism agenda did not resemble an exceptional security response, but a set of routinised discriminatory measures that dis­ proportionately affect Muslims’ daily lives (Baker-Beall et al., 2015; Croft, 2012). Yet, it does not interrogate the origins of Labour’s Islamophobia. Nei­ ther do they ask why part of Labour started to use a language that normalised right-wing tropes, while the internal left-wing factions contested such choice. Instead, a report published by the Transnational Institute (2019) resonates with these questions. By contesting the Islamophobic outcomes of the counter­ terrorism agenda implemented under Blair and Brown, the report seems to highlight that Prevent is a failure of the Left, which needs instead a more pro­ gressive rationale. Among the most controversial aspects, the report recalled that Labour’s legislative agenda expanded the use of surveillance as well as propaganda, legitimised military force and extra-judicial killings as counter­ terrorist methods and normalised complicity with torturers. Moreover, security threats were not equated to individual acts of violence but framed into a clash of culture, ideology and values between Britain and Islamism (Blakeley et al., 2019, p. 3). These elements seem to indicate that Prevent is the product of Labour’s appropriation of language and ideas expected more from the Right, such as the conservative emphasis on security as “law-and-order” and the sup­ port to the “war on terror” promoted by George W. Bush. In using right-wing tropes, Labour tried to adjust them into left-leaning vocabulary. Blair first started this translation in reference to economic and fiscal policies, imagining a “new” Labour that would find a “third way” between capitalism and socialism. Buckler and Dolowitz (2009, pp. 17–18) argue that the ideological renewal of Labour in the nineties was possible because the rhetoric of a “new” Labour, substantially more liberal and open to free-market than the “old” one, matched with some key historical refer­ ences of the party, such as Ethical Socialism and New Liberalism. What is less investigated is how this process of appropriation for the Right manifested in security management. Some affinities with the discourse of Margaret Thatcher emerged in the normalisation of stricter policies to cope with high

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies

141

crime rates and infringement of public order. The policies of crime contain­ ment set the ground for the surveillance of Muslims. These were justified because of the alleged threat that violent and radical Islamism posed to the safety of the British community. The concept of “community” flagged by Blair’s “new” Labour was distant from the traditional socialist connotation and more aligned with Blair’s purpose to overcome intermediaries in the relationship between state and individuals (Freeden, 1999, p. 161). Although it apparently contested Thatcher’s political vision, Labour stressed values like individual responsibility, moral regulation of communities and reciprocal duties to fight crime, already present in 1992 conservative manifesto (Dale, 2000, p. 339) and partially resonating with communitarian political philoso­ phy (Turner, 2016). Blair followed Thatcher’s idea that communities are central sites for a solution to many contemporary crime problems (Reiner & Cross, 1991). In doing so, he outweighed other meanings of community less congruent with his reformist agenda, such as the commitment to community socio-economic emancipation promoted by Labour local administration in the eighties. As Labour lawmakers coupled the centrality of “community” with security concerns, it translated former right-wing concepts into counterterrorism efforts to eradicate Islamism, a significant factor of community cultural disruption. In this respect, David Goodhart, a left-wing pundit close to Blair’s “new” Labour, warned that the xenophobic sentiments against asylum-seekers was not a new form of racism, but a normal reaction raised by their cultural differences (Kundnani, 2007, p. 28). These concerns signalled a trade-off between the recognition of cultural diversity and admission of too many immigrants, on one side and preserving community solidarity and safety. The reference to the partisan ideological heritage is a sign of politicisation because it served to persuade internal party audiences that “new” Labour’s vision was a coherent reformulation of “old” Labour’s ideals. However, instead of arranging fair co-operation with Muslim minorities, Prevent created a hostile climate based on disproportionate surveillance and attempts to co-opt the “moderate” Muslims into providers of useful intelligence to law-enforcement agencies. By engaging with the concept of community, a counterterrorism policy might focus on the actual needs of the community (in this case, Muslims) and create partnerships between the community and the state. Such a “community­ focussed” approach would benefit Muslims, enabling the establishment of trust towards security practitioners, as Spalek argues (2012, p. 37). However, Spalek contends that Prevent is predicated on a “community-targeted” vision that nur­ tures the suspicion and patronisation of Muslims, damaging mutual trust and ignoring the ethnic, religious, economic and cultural complexities of British Islam (2012, p. 37). Thus, Spalek (2012, p. 38) concludes that: community-targeted approaches can therefore potentially play into the hands of extreme right-wing groups like the British National Party, in whose interests it is to deem Muslim communities as communities of extremists.

142

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

For such reasons, some scholars have contested this agenda and vocalised the necessity to reform Prevent. A 2019 Transnational Institute report (Blakeley et al., 2019) advocated for a more progressive security agenda upheld by the respect of human rights and racial and religious equality, similarly to what was argued by the Labour Left. Accordingly, the report praises Labour’s manifesto for 2017 parliamentary elections, redacted under Corbyn’s leader­ ship, because it shares the authors’ call to overhaul British counterterrorism and seek a fairer balance between civil liberties and security needs (Blakeley et al. 2019, p. 4). On different occasions, Corbyn has expressed his contrariety to British war on terrorism and military operations abroad, by claiming in 2017 that this approach had “manifestly failed” (Labour Party, 2019). This aligns with the position of Diane Abbott (Labour MP close to Corbyn) who stated that Prevent should be reviewed otherwise it could risk being counter­ productive among the same communities it aims to help, considering that 95 percent of deradicalisation programmes are not effective (House of Com­ mons, 2018). The Transnational Institute report mentioned above is relevant because it points to the same research agenda that this chapter wants to defend. It reflects on how national security issues are inherently connected to the political projects pursued by governing parties. Depending on the ideolo­ gical inclination of the leadership, a party might be prone to adopt an authoritarian and Islamophobic discourse. What we can gather from this report is that Labour bought into narratives and operational modes that restricted liberties and clashed with British human rights obligations. In so doing, the major British left-wing party adjusted ideas that resonated with nationalist jargon and contrasted with the progressive and emancipatory reading of British Muslims’ integration advanced by progressive Labour MPs such as Corbyn, who proposed an alternative and inclusive narrative that contested many clichés surrounding Muslims.

Conclusion This chapter has proposed an innovative research agenda in Terrorism Studies by arguing that the discourse on counterterrorism is affected by what political parties make of it. This occurs because parties of distinct political families interpret the concept of terrorism through their own ideological legacies and traditions. In line with the aims of this volume, I suggested an alternative methodology that goes beyond the analytical centrality given to the executive power, frequently adopted as the main unit of analysis by mainstream and critical scholarship on terrorism. In this respect, the chapter has not con­ sidered methodology only as a technical toolbox of “methods” to collect evi­ dence, but as the structural concerns that accompany the logical development of the research. My concern is that an executive-centred approach is proble­ matic because it marginalises how parties frame terrorism and silences possi­ ble alternatives to the hegemonic discourse, based on Islamophobic and racist rationales.

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies

143

I have argued that adopting only the perspective of the executive (poli­ ticians who occupy positions in national cabinets, Ministries, national security agencies subject to limited oversight etc.) is not sufficient to explore how parties attempt to politicise security policies and bureau­ cracies. I have engaged with the notion of politicisation and explored one of its dimensions, contestation, by analysing how political parties advance different views on national security issues and counterterrorism policies. The politicisation has become even more intense in times of ideological polarisation between the Right and Left, observable both in the US and in Western Europe. The chapter briefly examined some case studies of radical right parties who tried to impose their nativist and authoritarian frame to decide who is and who is not a terrorist. Further, it invited to extend the debate to left-wing parties, as they also participate in contestation by using ideological references to interpret terrorism. This occurs especially when they justify racialised counterterrorism policies that we would not expect from liberal-progressive and social-democratic parties. Despite the chapter being focused on Western case studies, politicisation as ideological con­ testation can be productively generalised also to non-Western case studies where populist leaders have politicised foreign and security policies, as showed by Erdog˘ an in Turkey and Modi in India (Destradi et al., 2022). This action deserves further enquiry because it might have consequences on the production of security knowledge and terrorist threats. As explained by McDonald (2009, p.118) in a debate on state terrorism in CTS, finding paths to emancipation requires not only to deconstruct the “tensions and inconsistencies” of governments’ approaches, but also to study: the range of ways in which different actors contest dominant accounts of ‘terrorism’ and ‘counterterrorism’, articulate more inclusive and cos­ mopolitan visions of community, and suggest alternatives to violence. Non-governmental organisations and minor political parties regularly articulate such alternatives. Therefore, it would be beneficial for CTS to develop a stronger engagement with political actors to unpack why some centre-left parties (such as Labour, the French Socialist Party and the Italian Democratic Party) imitated rightwing Islamophobic tropes and whether some possibilities for emancipation of Muslims are still advanced across the political spectrum, for instance by radical left personalities like Corbyn in the UK, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in the US and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France.

Note 1 As mentioned in Raunio and Wagner (2017, p. 4).

144

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

References ACLED. (2020, 3 September). Demonstrations and Political Violence in America: New Data for Summer 2020. https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-poli tical-violence-in-america-new-data-for-summer-2020. Alonso, R. (2013). The Madrid bombings and negotiations with ETA: A case study of the impact of terrorism on Spanish politics. Terrorism and Political Violence, 25(1), 113–136. Aradau, C., Huysmans, J., Neal, A. & Voelkner, N. (Eds). (2015). Critical Security Methods: New Frameworks for Analysis. Routledge. Badran, M. (2013). Political Islam and gender. In J. Esposito J. & E. El-Din Shahin (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics (pp. 112–123). Oxford University Press. Baker, J. O. & Bader, C. D. (2022). Xenophobia, partisanship, and support for Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Race Soc Probl, 14, 69–83. Baker-Beall C., Heath-Kelly, C. & Jarvis, L. (Eds). (2015). Counter-radicalisation: Critical Perspectives. Routledge. Bauer, M. W. & Becker, S. (2020). Democratic backsliding, populism, and public administration. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, 3, 19–31. Bentley, M. (2015). Recognition masking response: Preventing far-right extremism and radicalisation. In C. Baker-Beall, C. Heath-Kelly & L. Jarvis (Eds), Counter-Radi­ calisation: Critical Perspectives (pp. 106–122). Routledge. Berti, B. (2011). Armed groups as political parties and their role in electoral politics: The case of Hizballah. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 34(12), 942–962. Bhasin, T. & Hallward, M. C. (2013). Hamas as a political party: Democratization in the Palestinian territories. Terrorism and Political Violence, 25(1), 75–93. Bigo, D. (2008). Globalized (in)security: The field and the ban-opticon. In D. Bigo & A. Tsoukala (Eds), Terror, Insecurity and Liberty. Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes after 9/11 (pp. 10–48). Routledge. Bigo, D. (2014). The (in)securitisation practices of the three universes of EU border control: Military/Navy – border guards/police – database analysts. Security Dialo­ gue, 45(3), 209–225. Bigo, D. & Tsoukala, A. (Eds). (2008). Terror, Insecurity and Liberty. Illiberal Prac­ tices of Liberal Regimes after 9/11. Routledge. Blakeley, R. (2007). Bringing the State back into Terrorism Studies. European Political Science, 6(3), 228–253. Blakeley, R. (2019, July). Leaving the War on Terror. A Progressive Alternative to Counterterrorism Policy. www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/leaving_the_war_ on_terror_online.pdf. Bogain, A. (2017). Security in the name of human rights: the discursive legitimation strategies of the war on terror in France. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 10(3), 476–500. Bourne, A. (2015). Why ban Batasuna? Terrorism, political parties and democracy. Comparative European Politics, 13(3), 325–344. Bray, M. (2017). Antifa: The anti-fascist handbook. Melville House Publishing. Brown, K. (2008). The Promise and perils of women’s participation in UK mosques: The impact of securitisation agendas on identity. Gender and Community, 10(3), 472–491. Buckler, S. & Dolowitz, D. (2009). Ideology, party identity and renewal. Journal of Political Ideologies, 14(1), 11–30. Butler, J. (2004). Precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. Verso.

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies

145

Buzan, B., Waever, O. & de Wilde, J. (1998). Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Byman, D. (2015). Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement. What Everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press. Byman, D. (2020, 22 September). Who is a terrorist, actually? Vox. www.vox.com/ identities/21449415/antifa-terrorists-violence-patriot-prayer-black-lives-matter-p rotests-portland-kenosha. Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2022, 17 May). Pushed to Extremes. Domestic Terrorism Amid Polarisation and Protest. CSIS Briefs. www.csis.org/ana lysis/pushed-extremes-domestic-terrorism-amid-polarization-and-protest. Cook, D. (2005). Understanding Jihad. University of California Press. Cribb, T. (2020, 2 November). Politicizing the Civil Service: How a New Executive Order Destabilizes the US Government. www.justsecurity.org/73213/politicizing-th e-civil-service-how-a-new-executive-order-destabilizes-the-u-s-government/. Croft, S. (2012). Securitising Islam: Identity and the Search for Security. Cambridge University Press. d’Amato, S. (2019). Cultures of Counter-Terorrism. French and Italian Reponses to Terrorism after 9/11. Routledge. Dale, I. (2000). Labour Party General Election Manifestos 1900–1997. Routledge. de Goede, M. (2008). The politics of preemption and the war on terror in Europe. European Journal of International Relations 14(1), 161–185. de Wilde, P. & Zürn, M. (2012). Can politicisation of European integration be reversed? Journal of Common Market Studies, 50(1), 137–153. Destradi, S., Plagemann, J. & Tas, H. (2022). Populism and the politicisation of foreign policy. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 24(3), 475–492. Dixit, P. & Stump, J. L. (Ed.). (2016). Critical Methods in Terrorism Studies. Routledge. Drolet, J. F. & Williams, M. (2018). Radical conservatism and global order: Interna­ tional theory and the new right. International Theory, 10(3), 285–313. Eroukhmanoff, C. (2015). The remote securitisation of Islam in the US post-9/11: Euphemisation, metaphors and the “logic of expected consequences” in counter­ radicalisation discourse. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 8(2), 246–265. Francis, M. (2016). Why the “sacred” is a better resource than “religion” for understanding terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 28(5), 912–927. Freeden, M. (1999). True blood or false genealogy: New labour and British social democratic thought. The Political Quarterly, 70, 151–165. Galvin, D. J. (2020). Party domination and base mobilization: Donald Trump and Republican Party building in a polarized era. The Forum, 18(2), 135–168. Ganor, B. (2002). Defining terrorism: Is one man’s terrorist another man’s freedom fighter? Police Practice and Research, 3(4), 287–304. Guittet, E. (2008). Is consensus a genuine democratic value? The case of Spain’s poli­ tical pacts against terrorism. Alternatives, 33, 267–291. Gunning, J. & Jackson, R. (2011). What’s so “religious” about “religious terrorism”? Critical Studies on Terrorism, 4(3), 369–388. Hagmann, J., Hegemann, H. & Neal, A. (2018). The politicisation of security: con­ troversy, mobilisation, arena shifting. European Review of International Studies, 5 (3), 3–29. Hayes, J. (2016). Identity, authority, and the British war in Iraq. Foreign Policy Ana­ lysis, 12, 334–353.

146

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Heath-Kelly, C. (2012). Reinventing prevention or exposing the gap? False positives in UK terrorism governance and the quest for pre-emption. Critical Studies on Ter­ rorism, 5(1), 69–87. Hegemann, H. & Kahl, M. (2018). Security governance and the limits of depoliticisa­ tion: EU policies to protect critical infrastructures and prevent radicalisation. Jour­ nal of International Relations and Development, 21(3), 552–579. HM Government. (2006, 10 July). Countering International Terrorism: The United Kingdom’s Strategy. London: The Stationery Office. https://assets.publishing.service. gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/272320/6888.pdf. House of Commons. (2018, June). Counterterrorism and Border Security Bill, Vol. 642, Col. 640. https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-06-11/debates/4DB2 9D1C-094F-4AC1-B2B6-4F13351A25A0/details. Husayn, A. (2020, 11 June). Terror and Abolition. The Boston Review. https://bos tonreview.net/articles/atiya-husain-terror-and-abolition. Il Fatto Quotidiano. (2018, 18 August). Migranti, la battaglia navale tra Salvini e Guar­ dia Costiera. www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/in-edicola/articoli/2018/08/18/migranti-la-batta glia-navale-tra-salvini-e-guardia-costiera/4566119. Independent. (2022, 13 January) “Indefensible”: Priti Patel condemned for backing police over decision to put Extinction Rebellion on terror list. www.independent.co. uk/news/uk/politics/priti-patel-extinction-rebellion-police-extremism-list-counter-ter ror-prevent-a9281731.html. Jackson, P. T. (2011). The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations. Routledge. Jackson, R. (2007). Constructing enemies: “Islamic terrorism” in political and aca­ demic discourse. Government and Opposition, 42(3), 394–426. Jackson, R., Breen-Smyth, M. & Gunning, J. (2009). Critical Terrorism Studies. A New Research Agenda. Routledge. Jackson, R., Murphy, E. & Poynting, S. (2010). Contemporary State Terrorism. Theory and Practice. Routledge. Jackson, R. (2016). Critical Discourse Analysis. In P. Dixit and J. L. Stump (Eds), Critical Methods in Terrorism Studies (pp. 77–90). Routledge. Jackson, R. (Ed.). (2018). Routledge Handbook of Critical Terrorism Studies. Routledge. Jacobson, G. C. (2018). The effects of the early Trump presidency on public attitudes toward the Republican Party. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 48, 404–435. Jarvis, L. & Legrand, T. (2017). “I am somewhat puzzled”: Questions, audiences and securitisation in the proscription of terrorist organisations. Security Dialogue, 48(2), 149–167. Kaarbo, J. (1996). Power and influence in foreign policy decision making: The role of junior coalition partners in German and Israeli foreign policy. International Studies Quarterly, 40(4), 501–530. Khan, R. M. (2021). Speaking “religion” through a gender code: The discursive power and gendered-racial implications of the religious label. Critical Research on Reli­ gion, 10(2), 153–169. Kirchner, E. & Sperling, J. (2010). National Security Cultures. Patterns of Global Governance. Routledge. Kundnani, A. (2007). Integrationism: The politics of anti-muslim racism. Race & Class, 48(4), 24–44. Kurylo, B. (2020). The discourse and aesthetics of populism as securitisation style. International Relations, 36(1), 127–147.

Going Beyond the State-Centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies

147

Labour Party. (2019, December). Full text of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech in York. https:// labour.org.uk/press/full-text-of-jeremy-corbyns-speech-in-york. Leader Maynard, J. (2014). Rethinking the role of ideology in mass atrocities. Terrorism and Political Violence, 26(5), 821–841. Lister, M. (2019). Explaining counter terrorism in the UK: Normal politics, securitised politics or performativity of the neo-liberal state? Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12(3), 416–439. Lucks, D. S. (2020). Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump. Beacon. Malkki, L. (2020). Left-wing terrorism. In A. Silke (Ed.). Routledge Handbook of Terrorism and Counterterrorism (pp. 87–97). Routledge. Martini, A., Ford K. & Jackson, R. (Eds). (2020). Encountering extremism. Theore­ tical issues and local challenges. Manchester University Press. Mavelli, L. (2013). Between normalisation and exception: The securitisation of Islam and the construction of the secular subject. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 41(2), 159–181. McDonald, M. (2009). Emancipation and Critical Terrorism Studies. In R. Jackson, M. Breen-Smyth & J. Gunning (Eds), Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda (pp. 109–123). Routledge. Michael, G. (2020). Right-wing terrorism. In A. Silke (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Terrorism and Counterterrorism (pp. 98–108). Routledge. Morgan, L. and de Londras, F. (2018). Is there a “conservative” counter-terrorism? King’s Law Journal, 29(2), 187–215. Moynihan, D. (2020, 21 May). Populism and the Deep State. The Attack on Public State under Trump. SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3607309. Mudde, C. (2007). Populist radical right parties in Europe. Cambridge University Press. Mudde, C. & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2013). Exclusionary vs. inclusionary populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America. Government and Opposition, 48(2), 147–174. NBC News. (2020, 31 May). Trump says he will designate antifa a terrorist organisa­ tion as GOP points fingers at extremists. www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/ trump-says-he-will-designate-antifa-terrorist-organisation-gop-points-n1220321. Neal, A. (2010). Exceptionalism and the Politics of Counterterrorism: Liberty, Security and the War on Terror. London and New York: Routledge. Neal, A. (2012a). “Events dear boy, events”: Terrorism and security from the per­ spective of politics. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 5(1), 107–120. Neal, A. (2012b). Terrorism, lawmaking, and democratic politics: legislators as secur­ ity actors. Terrorism and Political Violence, 24(3), 357–374. Neal, A. (2019). Security as Politics. University of Edinburgh Press. Open Democracy. (2022, 15 July). Revealed: Policing bill was dreamed up by secretive oil-funded think tank. www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/poli cing-bill-policy-exchange-exxonmobil-lobbying. Ostermann, F. & Stahl, B. (2022). Theorizing populist radical-right foreign policy: Ideol­ ogy and party positioning in France and Germany. Foreign Policy Analysis, 18(3). Owens, J. E. & Pelizzo, R. (2009). The impact of the post-9/11 “War on Terror” on executive-legislative relations: A Global Perspective. Journal of Legislative Studies, 15, 2–3. Peters, B. G. & Pierre, J. (2019). Populism and public administration: Confronting the administrative state. Administration & Society 51(10), 1521–1545.

148

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Pew Research Center. (2020, 2 March). How border apprehensions, ICE arrests and deportations have changed under Trump. www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/02/ how-border-apprehensions-ice-arrests-and-deportations-have-changed-under-trump/. Raunio, T. & Wagner, W. (2017). Towards parliamentarisation of foreign and security policy? West European Politics, 40(1), 1–19. Reiner, R. & Cross, M. (Eds). (1991). Beyond Law and Order: Criminal Justice Policy and Politics into the 1990s. Macmillan. Rockman, B. A. (2019). Bureaucracy between populism and technocracy. Administra­ tion & Society, 51(10), 1546–1575. Saeed, T. (2016). Islamophobia and Securitisation. Religion, Ethnicity and the Female Voice. Palgrave Macmillan. Salter, M. et al. (2019). Horizon Scan: Critical Security Studies for next 50 Years. Security Dialogue, 50(4_suppl), 9–37. Schmid, A. (2011). Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research. Routledge. Schmitt, C. (1985). Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. MIT Press. (original work published 1922). Scott, J. M. & Carter, R. (2014). The not-so-silent partner: Patterns of legislativeexecutive interaction in the War on Terror, 2001–2009. International Studies Per­ spectives, 15(2), 186–208. Seidman D. (2017, 2 August) Jeff Sessions and the Islamophobia Industry. The Jaco­ bin. https://jacobin.com/2017/02/jeff-sessions-attorney-general-trump-islamophobia -breitbart-horowitz. Silke, A. (2020). Routledge Handbook of Terrorism and Counterterrorism. Routledge. Spalek, B. (Ed.). (2012). Counterterrorism: Community-Based Approaches to Preventing Terror Crime. Palgrave Macmillan. The Guardian. (2020, 10 January). Terrorism police list Extinction Rebellion as extre­ mist ideology. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinction-rebellion-lis ted-extremist-ideology-police-prevent-scheme-guidance. Turner, I. (2016). A communitarian justification for measures to Prevent Terrorism in the UK. Perspectives on Terrorism, 10(5), 68–82. Wagner, W., Herranz-Surrallés, A., Kaarbo, J. & Ostermann, F. (2018). Party politics at the water’s edge: Contestation of military operations in Europe. European Poli­ tical Science Review, 10(4), 537–563. Weinberg, L. & Eubank, W. L. (1990). Political parties and the formation of terrorist groups. Terrorism and Political Violence, 2(2), 125–144. Weinberg, L. & Eubank, W. L. (1992). Terrorism and changes in political party sys­ tems. Terrorism and Political Violence, 4(2), 125–139. Whiting, S. (2016). Mainstream revolutionaries: Sinn Féin as a “normal” political party? Terrorism and Political Violence, 28(3), 541–560. Williams, H. (2020, 22 June). The Dangers of Designating Antifa as a Terrorist Organisation Now. RANDblog. www.rand.org/blog/2020/06/the-dangers-of-designa ting-antifa-as-a-terrorist-organisation.html. Wilson, T. & Walton, R. (2019, July). Extremism Rebellion. A Review of Ideology and Tactics. Policy Exchange. https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/ 07/Extremism-Rebellion.pdf. Yebra López, C. (2023). Islamophobia, orientalism and “jihadist radicalization” in the TV series El Príncipe (2014–6). In E. Drayson (Ed.), Europe’s Islamic Legacy: 1900 to the Present (pp. 48–68). Brill.

8

Bringing in New Voices Non-English Linguistic Corpora and Critical Terrorism Studies Ariane Bogain

The Importance of Discourse Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) understands that terrorism is not a self-evi­ dent fact but a social and political construction reflecting the socio-cultural context within which it emerges (Toros & Gunning, 2019). Physical violence does exist, but it is a “brute fact” (Jackson, 2011, p.10) to which different meanings can be attached, such as an act of war, a criminal act, a terrorist act, an act of resistance, an act of madness. Terrorism is therefore not an objective fact out there but an empty signifier whose meaning has been dis­ cursively constituted (Zulaika & Douglass, 1996). It does not have a stable conceptual status because its meaning differs depending on actors, times, and places. As a result, it is inherently contested and political. CTS does not deny that events like 9/11, the 2005 London bombings or the 2015 Paris attacks happened. Instead, it asks how they were constructed as terrorism and inscribed with meaning. CTS therefore investigates how specific actors, whe­ ther it is state authorities, the media, public opinion or groups defined as terrorists, have come to imagine it. It seeks to illuminate the constitution of terrorism, uncovering how the concept has been produced, how its meanings have been constructed, how they change depending on the political, cultural and social context in which they are constituted, and how they are used to inform specific policies. Indicative of a post-positivist turn in International Relations, CTS rests firstly on an understanding of knowledge as a social process constructed through language, discourse and inter-subjective practices. It rejects the idea of knowledge as objective, seeing it instead as a social process always con­ nected to power. It is imparted “always for someone and for some purpose” (Cox, 1981, p. 128) and underpinned by power structures. It directs attention to the interests that underlie knowledge claims. For example, who does labelling someone a “terrorist” serve? What is the purpose of this representa­ tion? What uses and abuses can it lead to? What are its inbuilt assumptions? What ideology underpins it? By exploring how terrorism has been constituted, CTS therefore aims to reveal the politics, ideology and hierarchies behind seemingly neutral knowledge. Saying, for example, as the former French DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963-12

150

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

President François Hollande did, that the 2015 Paris attacks were an attack against “the Republic” is very different from saying that it was against “France”, because the phrase “the Republic” has emotional connotations, refers to a set of specific values, and conveys a particular ideology. Why does it matter that Hollande specifically mentioned “the Republic” rather than the “country”? After all, the theme is the same: France is targeted. It matters greatly because the underlying message, the ideology attached to it, and the production of knowledge (in this case, what is France) is not the same, and the consequences in terms of counter-measures are therefore different. With such a perspective, analysing discourses becomes key to under­ standing how terrorism is constructed and how the meanings attached to it are produced. As it is a critical approach, it adheres to the constructivist and post-structural view that discourses are not a neutral way of describing the world but instead constitute it. Following Michel Foucault’s (1974, p. 49) seminal definition of discourses as “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak”, they do not passively represent social facts but construct them “by bringing phenomena into being through the way in which they categorise and make sense of them” (Hardy & Thomas, 2015, p. 681), thereby attributing and fixing their meanings (Chia, 2000). By “signifying the world, constituting and constructing the world in meaning” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 64), discourses also possess a clear ideological character. Discourses do not just give sense to the material world but shape reality in a way that privileges a specific perspective, constructing one truth designed to be seen as “the truth”. As a result, they possess a productive power to establish a bind­ ing order of knowledge that determines what is possible and not possible to say about a certain subject, what counts as “normal”, and what is accepted or not as legitimate knowledge. This conception of discourse explains why, methodologically speaking, CTS draws on Discourse Analysis in general, and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in particular. Thus, all the examples in this chapter come from CDA-oriented research. This approach seeks to deconstruct the systems of meaning contained in a discourse. It stresses that discourses are both socially conditioned, by drawing upon the context in which they are situated, and socially constitutive, by constructing and orga­ nising social conditions (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; See also Chapter 4 of this volume for a postcolonial discussion on the spatiality of terrorism dis­ course). CDA therefore seeks to uncover how they work to produce a certain reality and to reveal both what kinds of social relations of power are present, explicitly or implicitly (Van Dijk, 2006), and how they normalise relations of domination (Fairclough, 1992). By analysing the topics, discursive strategies and linguistic means of a discourse, it is possible to uncover how they shape the way the world is to be experienced, construct a specific knowledge about it, convey ideologies and power hierarchies, and open up possibilities of actions while restricting others. For example, when it comes to women and terrorism, scholarship has shown how the media focuses on different themes compared to when they

Bringing in New Voices

151

report on men. For cases of women, joining a terrorist organisation out of love or for personal reasons is more prevalent in the reporting. This shapes a particular knowledge about gender, in this case removing agency from women (Gentry, 2009; Sjoberg, 2018), that maintains gender hierarchies, such as “emotional women” versus “rational” and “political men”. Beyond the themes, language is key in this construction. Beyond the themes, language is key in this construction. For example, the French press routinely refers to any female jihadists as a “jihadist woman” or “French jihadist women”. Doing so serves to overemphasise their gender, not just because the equivalent does not occur for men, but, even more importantly, because French feminine deter­ miners or adjectival endings would amply suffice to mark them as female. This type of asymmetrical gender-marking directs readers to see female jiha­ dists as women first, thereby sensationalising them as intruders in a world of men. Similarly, lexical choices directs readers to a specific positioning of male and female jihadists. For example, when love is mentioned as a reason to join for men, the lexis tends to be neutral and factual, for example “he joined a lover” whereas for women it is grandiloquent, like finding a “bearded prince charming” (Verduzier, 2014) or “she wanted to live a big love” (Quillet, 2015). This type of contrast shapes a particular understanding of gender, in this case women as sentimental fools, that reproduces hegemonic discourses. Analysing how something is said is therefore crucial to uncover and understand what is really being said, i.e., the reality that is carved, the interpretation of events being pushed, the specific knowledge being produced, the ideology and power hierarchies it contains and the purposes it serves. Being focused on the ways in which “language unfurls, slips on itself and determines choices”, to quote Foucault (2007, p. 163), is therefore crucial to understand how discourses work to produce certain social realities. Discourse analysis enables researchers to a) deconstruct the system of meanings con­ tained in a discourse; b) expose its ideological underpinnings; c) uncover the production and reproduction of hegemonic ideologies; and d) reveal the rela­ tionship between power and the construction of knowledge. Exploring how power, culture, and linguistics work together to constitute concepts and create a specific reality enables researchers to answer four key questions. Each might be illustrated by CDA-oriented research on the discursive construction of terrorism by state authorities and the media in either France or Western states, but they apply to any setting, as any discourse, including those from terrorist organisations, constructs a specific reality.

How is X conceptualised and positioned? It is through language and discursive structures that actors are positioned, specific identities constructed and unequal power relations maintained (Fair­ clough, 2015; Stump and Dixit, 2013). For example, calling a female terrorist “a mother” but her male counterpart an “assassin” ascribes very different identities and directs readers to distinct understandings underpinned by a

152

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

specific patriarchal ideology. For example, in a media corpus on French men and women who joined Islamic State the word “woman” was systematically collocated to the word “jihadi”, even though a feminine article or adjective would have sufficed to indicate gender. Adding “woman” but not “man” indicates that it is a deliberate strategy to exceptionalise their presence. By conveying the idea that they should not be there, the media reproduced a certain gender order that reserves violence for men. The same can be said about the construction of terrorist threats and anti­ terrorism policies. As Jackson (2006, p. 172) has argued, “defining the threats facing a society is never an objective process but is rather a highly charged and politicized process of ‘reality’ construction through the deployment of language”. For example, State authorities attempt to offer their specific “sys­ tems of narration” (Laclau, 2005, p. 106) in order to make the world intelli­ gible again after a terrorist attack and reassert their authority. Analysing how they work discursively and linguistically reveals what reality is being con­ structed. Thus, a comprehensive body of research has uncovered, among others, the use of binary oppositions between “us” and “them”, most sig­ nificantly the relational pairs between “good” and “evil”, “moral” and “immoral”, “civilisation” and “barbarism” (Leudar et al., 2004) to redefine the national in-group in opposition to the terrorist other (Lazar & Lazar 2004, p. 236); call-to-arms speeches (Graham et al., 2004; Nabers, 2009) to unite their citizens around their definitions of the threats faced by the nation; the use of state-power metaphors (Charteris-Black, 2005; Lakoff, 2001) to re­ assert themselves as a protector defending their citizens (Lazar & Lazar, 2004); and the construction of specific narratives like the War on Terror. Hutcheson et al. (2004, p. 27), for example, showed how US political leaders “publicly emphasize the strength, values, and vision of America as a nation and Americans as people” in order to unite the country around the State in its War on Terror. These systems of narration are not neutral but rest on carving a specific reality imbued with power hierarchies. An example from the French context will illustrate this point. Hollande reasserted state authority after the Paris attacks by discursively re-constructing a national identity in opposition to the terrorist other based on uniting the French around the foundational myth of the Republic (Bogain, 2019). However, he carved a specific version of French identity that mythi­ cised the Republic by ignoring the multiple issues facing this model, as well as the social and economic dominance it has produced. Its various failures in terms of racism, discriminations, poverty, and inequalities had been repeat­ edly denounced, which led to the Republican model being questioned and sometimes rejected (Chabal, 2015; Fassin, 2002; Murray, 2006). Considering the multiple issues facing this model, Hollande imposed a particular version of national identity, constraining other possible interpretations and privile­ ging a specific perspective that limited what being French meant. By con­ structing an exclusionary discourse of sameness, he reproduced existing social hierarchies and excluded dissenting voices from the national in-group.

Bringing in New Voices

153

How is an Issue Framed? Framing is, at its core, a strategy of selection and salience, designed to direct attention to a desired comprehension (Entman, 2007; Van Gorp, 2005). By selecting and highlighting some features of reality and obscuring others, it promotes “a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral eva­ luation, and/or treatment recommendation” for the issue under scrutiny (Entman, 1993, p. 52). By promoting a particular interpretation, they carve a specific reality. Through discourse analysis, frames can be deconstructed, their meaning formulations interpreted and the ideology underpinning them revealed. Thus, a vast amount of scholarship has shown how media framings have been key to maintaining gender hierarchies by reproducing stereotypical narratives of masculinity and femininity (Gauntlett, 2002; Gill, 2007; Richard­ son and Wearing, 2014). This is particularly true when it comes to terrorist violence (Auer et al., 2019; Jackson, 2019; Martini, 2018; Sjoberg, 2018). This research has shown how the deeply entrenched societal assumptions of women as “beautiful souls” (Elshtain, 1987) has meant that women “are not supposed to be violent” (Sjoberg & Gentry, 2007, p. 2). Rather than accepting the reality of female violence, the media has framed them as an anomaly in a world of men, as manipulated, lured, or coerced through threats or sexual violence (Auer et al., 2019), as being drawn into violence for personal reasons, such as love or revenge for the loss of their loved ones (Gardner, 2007; Mar­ tini, 2018), or as deviant (Marway, 2011; Sjoberg & Gentry, 2007). As a result of these frames, the media has maintained the hierarchies of the gender order by condemning violent women for acting outside traditional gender-based assumptions and by keeping full agency in violence as the preserve of men. Demonising them, in turn, allows “the rest of the ‘good’ women to represent the universal non/aggressive feminine collectivity” (Krulišová, 2016, p. 39).

What is Omitted? What is excluded from a discourse can be as politically significant as what is included (Fairclough, 2003, p. 149) because omitting information leads to imparting biased and incomplete knowledge (Van Dijk, 2006), thereby car­ ving a specific reality. Thus, in his construction of national sameness, Hol­ lande constructed a unanimistic vision of a homogeneous French in-group rising as one to defend the Republic (Bogain, 2019). However, he omitted to mention that, for example, the spontaneous gatherings he reported did not take place in “every village and every town” as he stated (Hollande, 2015) and that not everybody rallied around the Republic, with many criticisms directed at the Republican model after the 2015 attacks, based on the feelings of exclusion and alienation from it felt by large sections of the population (Fassin, 2015). His discourse of sameness was therefore based on a discursive manipulation of reality that enabled the production of a particular inter­ pretation of national identity that idealised the Republic. The idyllic vision of

154

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

the Republic uniting all the French against terrorism stood in stark contrast with the bitter debates that have torn France over the realisation of Repub­ lican values. By omitting some aspects of the Republic, he reified the tradi­ tional Republican model as an unsurpassable horizon, thereby excluding from the in-group anyone already alienated from the Republic, in particular mino­ rities, or challenging the way it had been implemented.

How is X Legitimated or Delegitimated? Legitimation involves the construction of a sense of positive, beneficial, ethi­ cal, or necessary action in a specific setting (Van Dijk, 1998; Van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999). It goes hand in hand with delegitimisation, which establishes a sense of negative, morally reprehensible or otherwise unacceptable action (Martín-Rojo & Van Dijk, 1997; Van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999). (De)legit­ imisation serves several functions, such as re-asserting values, norms and boundaries (Steffeck, 2003), reinforcing intergroup boundaries, experiencing a sense of moral superiority, or maintaining in-group uniformity. Analysing (de)legitimisation strategies is all the more important because they open up possibility for actions while closing down other avenues. For example, as demonstrated by Jackson (2005), the practice of the “War on Terror” by the United States would not have been possible without a very carefully con­ structed discourse specifically designed to make the war seem “good” and any alternative “bad”. The term “Islamic terrorism” in particular has been extre­ mely effective in legitimating the WoT, by constructing the US as the “good guys” defending the civilised West against a non-Western backward, illiberal, and violent terrorist Other. Legitimacy depends on the discursive construction of threatening others. The demonised figure of an alien blood-thirsty Muslim Other therefore has provided a negative counter-image through which liberal states have been able to legitimise their exceptional measures: the threat is so grave that they will be secured only if they use whatever means necessary. Thus, Jackson (2019) showed how the demonisation of Sally Jones, a British Islamic State-affiliated jihadi, opened up a discursive space that led to her assassination by drones. Similarly, Hollande’s discursive construction of the evil terrorist Other, through emotional and inflated language, coupled with a lexis of exceptional danger facing the nation, legitimated his counter-terrorist measures. Explanation rationalisation (the attackers are evil) led to effect rationalisation (if they are not stopped, the country will be destroyed) and goal-oriented rationalisation (exceptional measures need to be put in place to put an end to the threat). The rational response had to be to increase security by all means necessary and any alternatives became nonsensical. Analysing the language and discursive strategies of legitimacy and illegi­ timacy therefore enables researchers to uncover how states write themselves as defenders of just causes, all the while carving a specific reality. Thus, the practice of the War on Terror would not have been possible without the dis­ cursive construction of terrorism as the most salient and terrible global threat.

Bringing in New Voices

155

This politically constructed understanding of the events normalised the US response because if it was an “act of war”, a “war on terrorism” appeared reasonable and logical (Croft, 2006; Jackson, 2007) and any alternative dis­ courses became treasonous. Similarly, Hollande’s demonisation of the terror­ ist Other dehumanised, therefore depoliticised them, because their status as inhuman evildoer “automatically excludes the question of why these actors perpetrate these acts of terrorism as the answer is inherent in their evilness” (Spencer, 2012, p. 406). This, in turn, oversimplified reality, serving to “obscure the complex historical relations between those so construed and those who seek to ‘eradicate’ them” (Bartolucci, 2012, p. 568). Any responsi­ bility France’s conduct in its international relations might have played in being targeted, such as colonialism and its ensuing wars or neo-colonial interventions around the world, can be conveniently ignored. The same goes with terrorism discourses locating its source in Islamic extremism. Suppres­ sing alternative origins such as colonial legacies, imperialism, or Western involvement in the Middle East serve to shape a certain reality, opening up spaces for specific actions. If discourse analysis enables researchers to uncover how meaning is con­ stituted, which knowledge is created, which alternatives are silenced, the power hierarchies embedded, and the avenues of actions created, one of the main criticisms aimed at it is a perceived lack of attention to materiality (Reed, 2000). However, material objects and discourses should not be seen as separate entities but intertwined. Thus, Foucault’s theorisation of discourse emphasises that although objects acquire their identity through discourses that attribute and fix their meanings, discourses are realised “in the regulating principles and actions of institutions, in forms of everyday practice, in actual material arrangements” (Hook, 2007, p. 126). They, in turn, feed back into “a particular discursive ordering” (Hardy, 2011). CTS recognises this, because its minimal foundationalism conceptualises discourse and materiality “as shap­ ing each other in a dialectical, never-ceasing dynamic (rather than the one being solely constituted by the other)” (Jackson, 2011, p. 3). By looking at both “the discursive effects of the material, and the material effects of the discursive” (Hook, 2007, p. 126) researchers can therefore avoid accusations of “deterministic discoursism” (Conrad, 2004, p. 428).

The Importance of non-English Corpora Discourses are not only for someone and some purpose but also come from somewhere. Terrorism discourses are localised “within specific historical, geographical and socio-political contexts as well as within social relations of power” (Talbot, 2008, p. 4). The meanings attached to terrorism are con­ tingent upon particular interpretations that reflect the context within which they emerge. Suicide bombings, for example, might be regarded as an act of terrorist madness in some places but as a rational political tool in others. What is being said and how it might be received cannot be understood

156

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

without the specific context in which it arises. Thus, invoking the French Republic as the best defence against terrorism, as Hollande did after the 2015 attacks, can only be understood within a specifically French historical and political context. The contextual origin of terrorism knowledge must be analysed, otherwise it would not be possible to understand the specific construc­ tions of terrorism it produces. To avoid universalising meanings and practices it is therefore essential to scrutinise the “social, cultural, legal, and political processes of interpretation, categorisation, and labelling” (Jackson, 2009, p. 4). If terrorism is dependent on a particular interpretation arising from a specific context, then including non-English linguistic corpora is essential to widen our understanding of how it is constructed. At the same time, whatever is said within a specific context has to be translated in a way that makes sense for people not familiar with it, and this requires extra work because some frames or concepts can be difficult to translate without adding many extra details. One has to be constantly on the look-out to make sure that everything that is context-dependent has been explained. It is very easy to take one’s culture for granted and universally applicable, when it is not. Four examples from the French context will illustrate this point.

The Republic The Republic in France is not just a type of political regime but it is linked to a specific historical context (the long struggle against the Monarchy sup­ ported by the Church), and carries with it a specific set of values, such as secularism, democracy, equality of chances, free and public education, being a citizen irrespective of one’s differences, and universalism. If one just writes that Hollande wanted to “defend the Republic” a non-French audience would lose the specific connotations, emotional appeal and conception of the French nation implicit in this word. One could use a translation technique like cul­ tural substitution, i.e. replacing a cultural element of the source language with an equivalent cultural element of the target language, for example “defending the nation” or “defending the country”. However, that would not work because these substitutions would miss the point that it is a particular con­ ception that is being put forward, with a specific ideology attached to it. It does relate to a typical frame seen elsewhere, the notion of a country in danger, but the context is important because saying “the Republic” rather than “the nation” leads to a different emotional response from the intended audience as well as to counter-measures not necessarily seen in other states, such as reinforcing secularism. Not explaining what “the Republic” means in a French context would also miss the power relationships embedded in this word. Although the Repub­ lican values listed above may appear non-controversial and even worthy, the consequences of their actual realisation have been challenged, in particular for hiding discriminations (Lefebvre, 2010). This is because the Republican conception of citizenship rests on an abstract citizen devoid of all

Bringing in New Voices

157

particularities. As Schor (2001, p.62) explained, “in order to become a rightsbearing abstract individual the citizen is unsexed, un-gendered, un-raced, un­ classed”. French Republicanism sees abstract citizenship as progressive because disregarding the attributes that distinguish people ensures equality between citizens. However, the drawback is that inequalities owing to gender, class or ethnicity tend to be ignored. This is why many French citizens have considered themselves citizens in name only (Jennings, 2011). This is particu­ larly true of ethnic minorities, who have been suffering from discrimination, notably in terms of employment and housing (Adida et al., 2012; Simon, 2015), and have been made to feel excluded from mainstream society, as the abstract conception of citizenship has prevented recognition of their specifi­ cities. As Schnapper (1994, pp. 121–122) showed, “transcendence through citizenship appears as purely formal, having only the function of consecrating the dominance of the other”. By making the Republic the key tenet of French national identity in the wake of the Paris attack, Hollande therefore entren­ ched social and economic dominance, implicitly excluding from the in-group anyone not happy with the reality of Republican values, as opposed to their ideals. Simply mentioning the Republic without explaining the specific French context in which this word is used would be misleading and would miss the implications of its use in a discourse.

Laïcité This term, usually translated as secularism in English, has created a lot of hostility outside of France and has tended to be equated with an anti-Islam stance, as illustrated by the many recent scathing articles in the non-French press about it, which led President Macron to publicly complain about Eng­ lish-language media not understanding the concept and being biased against France (The Guardian, 2020). Translating “laïcité” is difficult because it is a slippery term, whose meanings have evolved over the years and depend on who uses it and which interpretations they attach to it. It is not enough, for example, to say that the French response to terrorism has been to strengthen laïcité both because it carries with it a specific set of values, dependent on which conception someone has of it, and because it is likely to be read in a very different way by a non-French audience. Extra information therefore needs to be provided to explain what it is supposed to be and how its mean­ ing has been altered. It requires explaining that historically it was “devised as a means to ensure the free exercise of religion by all citizens” (Hunter-Henin, 2012, p. 6). Far from being hostile to religious freedom, the 1905 law that separated the State from the Catholic Church “mandated the privatisation of religion precisely in order to guarantee its free exercise” (Giry, 2006, p. 89). As a result, legally, it is restricted to the state sphere, meaning that the state and anyone associated with it, such as public services, are required to observe religious neutrality.

158

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

However, the concept has shifted since the late 1980s, and morphed into a cultural marker (Baubérot & Milot, 2011), as illustrated by President Jac­ ques Chirac in a 2003 speech when he stated that it “designates not a spe­ cific set of rules regarding religious expression, but rather a protected, privileged, multifunctional social space within which Republican principles could survive and prosper” (Bowen, 2007, p. 29). With Islam and multi­ culturalism progressively positioned as a threat to French republican values (Moran, 2017), and a subversive force (Bertossi, 2020), laïcité began to “mutate into a frame for an ethnicised debate on the place of Islam in French society” (Almeida 2018, p. 28) across the political spectrum, and interpreted as a defence against radical Islamism, equated in many quarters to Islam as such. This led to the emergence of an exclusionary reading of secularism and its expansion to the public space as opposed to the state sphere, as seen in the 2011 ban on wearing the burqa in public. This implies giving the state the authority to define norms of appropriate religious behaviour, and to exclude practices in the name of laïcité, as opposed to legally accepted considerations related to public safety, public order or to protect the rights and freedoms of others, as set out in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Council of Europe, 2021), thereby breaking the neutrality of the State. Legally, this new conception of laïcité does not stand up to scrutiny, with legal scholars repeatedly pointing out that the principle of religious neutrality cannot be applied to individuals in their capacity as citizens outside of state spaces. However, the force of this identity-based discourse has meant that more and more calls have been made to ban Muslim practices in the name of secularism. At the same time, this version of laïcité has been contested, with calls for an open version of the concept (Lassalle, 2011) that recognises religious specificities, or at least a return to its historical and legal meaning which allows for the public visibility of religion (Amireaux & Koussens, 2013). Anxiety over identity politics has meant that a combative and aggressive form of secularism has dominated the debates but alternatives have not dis­ appeared, with Baubérot (2015) listing seven different versions of the con­ cept, and, to complicate matters further, nuances existing within each. As a result, who uses this word, in which sense, and for which purpose has to be made clear to a non-French audience. Similarly, omissions and lack of details have to be mentioned because they contain important consequences. For example, when Hollande cited reinforcing secularism as a way to combat terrorism, but omitted to mention how this concept has led to fos­ tering feelings of alienation from the Republic (Jansen, 2014; Leane, 2011), he re-established dominant hegemonies by imposing a particular version of national identity. In addition, despite all his assertions that Islam should not be targeted, by making laïcité a counter-terrorist tool without defining it, he, consciously or not, allowed the audience to make the link between Islam and terrorism, based on the dominant discursive environment of the concept as a cultural marker.

Bringing in New Voices

159

Banlieues The term “banlieues” holds particular meanings in French society. The straight translation into English might be “suburbs” but whereas suburbia is constructed as a middle-class quiet neighbourhood in the British and Amer­ ican context, in the French context it is synonymous with areas of high immigration or ethnic minorities, marred by severe social and economic pro­ blems and prone to civil unrest and high level of crime (Moran, 2017). Explaining the differences is not enough, however, because the word “ban­ lieues” contains specific connotations and hierarchies of power. Both media and dominant political discourses have reframed it as “a synonym of alterity, deviance, and disadvantage” (Hargreaves, 1996, p. 607), with its inhabitants cast as a dangerous out-group. The over-representation of ethnic minorities has meant that the suburbs have concentrated national fears regarding immi­ gration, integration and social cohesion, and are seen as violent no-go areas existing outside French society, as illustrated by the commonly used phrase to describe them, “the lost territories of the Republic”. Thus, Costelloe (2014, p. 334) showed how the media, following the 2005 riots in the banlieues, con­ structed them as “un-French”, with “a particular interpretation of French national identity […] which implicitly excludes minority groups, in particular, post-colonial migrants living in the banlieues”. When it comes to terrorism, this background has led to a specific chain of association: people in the suburbs are immigrants −> Most immigrants are Muslim −> Muslims are terrorists −> the suburbs are hotbeds of terrorism −> they are a threat. Counterterrorism measures put forward by politicians and public opinion such as “sorting out” the banlieues, “tidying them up” or “sending the army” to them cannot be understood if one does not explain the whole chain of association and the othering of the suburbs constructed as a place apart inhabited by ethnic minorities who refuse to integrate into main­ stream French society (Moran, 2017). Extra information is therefore needed to explain what references to the suburbs really mean, i.e. the enemy within. It is not a different frame from the anti-Muslim and anti-migrant frames seen in other countries, but it does require extra unpacking to make explicit what is taken for granted in French and to highlight the hierarchies in power involved in using this word in the context of terrorism.

Communautarisme This concept is particularly hard to translate because the word community has a positive meaning in English, but a negative one in the French context. It refers to any form of community-based group identification. The rejection of communautarisme is linked, once again, to a specific conception of what the Republic is. Because individuals as abstract citizens devoid of any particula­ rities are at its core, any community is viewed with suspicion, as a threat to the allegiance to the Republic. The traditional idea that loyalty towards it

160

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

must not be rivalled by other allegiances was reactivated in the mid-1980s in the context of immigration becoming weaponised by the far-right, fuelling the political and media debate on the dangers of multiculturalism (Bertossi, 2020). Focusing on ethnic, racial, cultural or religious specificities became seen as an intolerable import from the Anglo-Saxon world and an antithesis to the tenets of Republican abstract citizens. This led to manifestations of cultural differences being perceived first as identity-based isolationism, then separatism, therefore as a refusal to integrate into French society. What Chabal (2015) has called “Neo-Republicanism” is based on reactivating abstract citizenship, thereby refusing to recognise identity-based specificities. This is epitomised by the 1993 nationality and immigration laws, justified by the High Council for Integration on the premise that “the French model of integration is founded on the undifferentiability of human beings, that the value of each individual is independent of the community to which he/she belongs” (1995, p. 19). However, not all migrant groups have been treated the same, with accusations of communautarisme made against some groups but not others. People originating from Africa and the Middle East have been specifically targeted, so much so that communautarisme has increasingly become associated with Islam in particular. Extra details therefore need to be given to explain what it is, what counterterrorism measures such as fighting communautarisme really means, what specific conception of the French nation it refers to, the ideology beneath it, and how, depending on who uses it, it is a dog-whistle strategy against Islam. These four examples demonstrate that a large part of one’s task when one works on non-English corpora is to become a translator, not just of the lan­ guage but of the context, to make sure what is being said is fully understood. This is particularly the case for allusions. As Wodak and de Cillia (1988, p. 10) explain, they are a device that suggests negative associations without “being held responsible for them. Ultimately, the associations are only hinted at; the listeners/viewers/readers must make them explicit in the act of recep­ tion”. The audience is able to understand what is hinted at because they “depend on shared knowledge, mutual manifestness, common sense knowledge, and so forth” (Wodak, 2007, p. 212). The meaning of allusions has to be made explicit for non-French readers because they are a key discursive strat­ egy that contain important implications. For example, focusing on the nonFrench origin of an alleged terrorist born and raised in France, in a country where citizens are supposed to be French irrespective of their particular attributes, guides readers to see them as outside the in-group. The case of Christine Rivière, a French woman sentenced to ten years in prison for being an Islamic State supporter, is a good illustration of using origin as allusion, with journalists consistently mentioning that she came from a traveller community, without expanding on it. At first glance, this could be seen as a neutral piece of information, just like when she is said to be from the Champagne region. However, this reference acts as an allusion because it carries with it a range of negative stereotypes such as being

Bringing in New Voices

161

untrustworthy, not fully integrated in French society, transient and therefore dangerous. Similarly, references to popular culture to delegitimise an actor have to be explained to understand the allusions they contain. For example, in the case of Rivière, calling her “Ma Dalton” is enough for a French audi­ ence to understand that she belongs to the lowest social class, with all the stereotypical negative traits and attributes attached to it, such as low IQ, inbreeding or thieving. That it is a reference to a character in a famous comic book in France, Lucky Luke, representing a stupid, uneducated hillbilly, has to be made clear. The same goes for when politicians or the public talk about sending suspected terrorists to Cayenne. One has to either find a cultural equivalent such as Guantánamo or explain that it was a famous prison in Guyana where the most hardened criminal prisoners or political dissidents were sent, and that the conditions were brutal. Otherwise, the implications in terms of counterterrorism policy when making this reference would be lost. Translating non-English corpora also means being attuned to the specifi­ cities of the context. Just because a particular debate is raging in one’s coun­ try does not mean that everyone is aware of it elsewhere or that they would know its ins and outs. For example, in France, terrorism discussions in the media have tended to be a debate between Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel, one explaining attacks against France by the Islamicisation of radicalism, the other the radicalisation of Islam. Referring to the debate without explana­ tions is fine in the French context but it needs explaining for a non-French audience. Similarly, what might be taken for granted also needs explaining. For example, writing about Hollande without specifying that he is a Socialist is common practice within a French context because the audience knows and has a good understanding of what the Socialist Party stands for. Not doing it in English and not explaining that defending human rights has become a strong marker of the Socialist Party’s discourse ever since its programme of overcoming capitalism was abandoned in 1983 (Knapp, 2004) would miss the point that Hollande’s response to terrorism had to be legitimated in a specific way in order to dismiss accusations of betraying the values of the Left. His constant references to France being a defender of human rights and his efforts to frame his counterterrorism measures within the rule of law cannot be fully understood otherwise. Additional knowledge is gained by the inclusion of non-English linguistic corpora because a) they widen our understanding of the terrorist discourse; b) they can bring in new frames or a different articulation of existing frames, which enable researchers to c) stress how context-dependency is crucial in the production and reproduction of the terrorism discourse. For example, Hol­ lande’s discursive nation-affirming strategies after the Paris attack are gen­ eralisable (self-glorification, exceptionalisation of the nation, use of history, heroisation, omission), but the triggers on which they were based, and there­ fore the public’s reaction to it, can only be understood within a French con­ text, i.e. a conception of Republicanism specific to the political, cultural and historical context of France. Non-English corpora, once the pitfalls of

162

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

ensuring that everything has been translated in a way that makes sense for a non-native audience are explained fully, therefore demonstrates that scruti­ nising where the terrorism discourse comes from is key to understanding the meanings attached to it. They bring nuances and push back against the hegemony of English, i.e. the domination of a specific context, by highlighting its blindspots.

Non-English Corpora and Positionality Writing in English on non-English corpora raises questions about the position­ ality of a researcher, i.e., the position one has in relation to a research task (Bourke, 2014; Savin-Baden & Major, 2013). It requires researchers to acknowl­ edge and locate their views, values, and beliefs in relation to the research process because “people make meaning from various aspects of their identity” (Kezar 2002, p. 96). Interest in positionality arose from a critique against the positivist idea of the neutral researcher observing social reality in an objective and unbiased way, without being influenced and influencing the social life studied. When it comes to CTS, Jackson (2011, pp. 118–119) has highlighted how researchers need to remain “sensitive to the ways in which their own values and ideologies – their subjectivity – impact upon the research process”. Positionality is defined by a range of factors such as the researcher’s beliefs, political stance, values, gender, race, class, and socioeconomic and educational background, which influences him/her in the research process, shaping the methodological and analytical decisions he or she makes (Berger, 2015). Reflexivity informs positionality because by identifying their own biases, researchers can understand how their views and position might have influenced the research design, the research process, and interpretation of research findings. The importance of positionality has led to debates on the insider-versus-out­ sider status of the researcher, especially in cross-cultural and sensitive research (Ergun & Erdemir, 2010; Milligan, 2016). Researchers are said to have insider status if they have a native or bicultural status. They have commonality with the researched topic or participants as they share the same culture, language, and norms. Outsiders refer to researchers who are foreign to the area they study. For Bonner and Tolhurst (2002), being an insider brings three advantages: a superior understanding of the culture of the researched topic; being able to interact natu­ rally with participants; a greater intimacy with the country. As a result, their knowledge of the culture can provide better insights (Tillman, 2002). However, greater familiarity can lead to an “illusion of sameness” (Pitman, 2002, p. 285), influencing the researcher in the collection and the interpretation of the data (Delyser, 2001). A “stranger” might have certain advantages that the insiders do not have: they can encourage participants to make explicit and explain what might be taken for granted within the group (Carling et al., 2014); they have a better understanding of what would be difficult to understand in their own culture, therefore they are more inclined to explain what is taken for granted by insiders; they can see issues that an insider, too immersed in his/her culture, would ignore.

Bringing in New Voices

163

Early discussions about insider/outsider status assumed that researchers were either one or the other, with their specific advantages and disadvantages. More recent debates have unveiled a more complex picture and the acknowl­ edgement that the boundaries between the two positions cannot be clearly delineated, with researchers neither fully inside nor outside. The position of the researcher is better conceptualised as being on a continuum (Hellawell, 2006; McNess et al., 2013), instead of as an either/or dichotomy. Hellawell (2006, p. 486) suggests that researchers have different gradients of outsiderness or insiderness, neither completely on the outside nor on the inside, and “it can sometimes become quickly apparent that they can slide along the insideroutsider continuum, and in both directions, during the research process”. Researchers may also take on different positioning depending on the situation that they may be in, the people they are interacting with and their familiarity with the linguistic and socio-cultural norms of the area they study. The notion of in-betweener (Milligan, 2016) has been put forward to recognise that the researcher can also make active attempts to place themselves in between, thereby bringing agency to the concept of a continuum. Researchers studying their own country while living and having been shaped by the culture of a different country should be seen as suspended “in a betwixt-and-between position” (Ergun & Erdemir, 2010, p. 16) because they are both an insider and an outsider of both cultures at the same time. This feeling of othering is best captured by the idea of hybridity. Being a hybrid has its advantages but also its pitfalls, which will be illustrated from my own experience. Sharing the same cultural and linguistic background as the subjects I study (French politicians, the media, and public opinion) positions me as an insider. I understand the implicit meanings in what is being said, what is alluded to, the context in which it is being said, and where it comes from. However, I have spent 25 years of my adult life in the United Kingdom and have been shaped, consciously or not, by its culture. This means that intimacy with my own country has been eroded, without being replaced by a full affinity with British culture, owing to French socialisation until adulthood. In terms of advantages, being a hybrid has meant that I am aware of what does not translate literally in a British context, what will not be understood without extra explanations, or without making explicit what a French audience would understand implicitly, in particular allusions. Being a hybrid means being able to decode what a particular speech from a French politician really means but also being aware that what is said needs to be explained to a non-French audience, as illustrated in section two. However, the pitfall, if not recognised and acknowledged, is that one might be too influenced either by one’s own culture or by the culture one lives in. This is because the multi-layered cul­ tural identities hybrid researchers have might “render them outsiders in cer­ tain respects and insiders in others” (Bridges, 2017, p. 341). In the first case, in-built assumptions might impact interpretations and explanations because insider knowledge is intimately tied to experience and socialisation. Secularism is a case in point. I agree with its traditional

164

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

definition and see it, at heart, as a liberal concept designed to protect freedom of religion. I am aware of the shift in its definition but my own understanding and desire to defend it is bound to affect how I present it to the world. Simi­ larly, most of my research is carried out from a position of anger at the ter­ rorism discourse in France and I would not have that level of anger if I did not feel deeply the disconnect between emergency laws and the foundational myth of France as the land of human rights I was socialised into. I would highlight the hypocrisy, but I would not be angered by it, which affects my research designs and methodologies. As an insider, I also possess tacit knowledge and a shared understanding, which might cause me to take some aspects for granted when they are not outside of France, such as failing to explain political nuances in the positions taken by different actors because they are obvious to me. Similarly, I might ignore what might be seen as issues by outsiders because my proximity to the culture blinds me. In the second case, I am aware that my reaction to some issues or my focus on specific issues would be different if I had not been exposed to a different culture. For example, the impact of counterterrorism on ethnic minorities would not have necessarily been a focus without the influence of the British and its stress on identity characteristics as opposed to the French Republican model, which does not. Similarly, although I am part of the culture under study, I might not fully understand all the references to popular culture, as this is an aspect that one only truly gets, consciously or not, through direct exposure. For example, one way to gauge how public opinion constructs ter­ rorism is through analysing tweets or online comments below a news article. This has proven difficult at times, with references for example to films, books, or celebrities unknown to me. Finding what or who they are is easy, but understanding why they are used, i.e., the shared and implicit knowledge they contain, along with the imaginary attached to them, not so much. Researching and writing is never innocent. As Rose (1985, p. 77) sug­ gested, “there is no neutrality. There is only greater or less awareness of one’s biases. And if you do not appreciate the force of what you’re leaving out [or including], you are not fully in command of what you’re doing”. This is even more the case for the hybrid researchers constantly on a tight­ rope. They must constantly consider their elusive and unpredictable posi­ tioning and how it affects their work. However, by reflecting on “the condition under which we, as individuals, exist and what causes us to exist in the way that we do” (Foucault, as cited in Mills, 2003, p. 25), one can identify and understand one’s position within the research process. By accepting that knowledge is a social process, that the way we see the world is not objective or neutral but “tied up with the interests and perspectives of their creators” (Jackson, 2011, p. 119), one can locate one’s views, values, beliefs, biases, and limitations. In doing so, the hybrid researcher in parti­ cular can find their different statuses in the research process and acknowl­ edge the “shared space between the researcher and the researched that affects the research process” (Badurdeen, 2018, p. 120).

Bringing in New Voices

165

References Adida, C., Laitin, D. & Valfort, M. A. (2012). Identifying barriers to Muslim inte­ gration in France. PNAS, 107(52), 22384–22390. Almeida, D. (2018). Marianne at the Beach: The French Burkini Controversy and the Shifting Meanings of Republican Secularism. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 39(1), 20–34. Amireaux, V. & Koussens, D. (2013). From Law to Narratives Unveiling Con­ temporary French Secularism. In F. Colom Gonzalez & G. d’Amato (Eds), Multireligious Society (pp. 127–142) Routledge. Auer, M., Sutcliffe, J. & Martha, L. (2019). Framing the ‘White Widow’: Using inter­ sectionality to uncover complex representations of female terrorism in news media. Media, War & Conflict, 12(3), 281–298. Badurdeen, F. A. (2018). Insider-outsider reflections on terrorism research in the coastal region of Kenya. In A. M. Rivas & B. C. Browne (Eds), Experiences in researching conflict and violence (pp. 119–134). Bristol University Press. Bartolucci, V. (2012). Terrorism rhetoric under the Bush Administration. Journal of Language and Politics, 11(4), 562–582. Baubérot, J. (2015). Les 7 laïcités françaises. Le modèle français de laïcité n’existe pas. Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme. Baubérot, J. & Milot, M. (2011). Laïcités sans frontières. Seuil. Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don’t: researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 15(2), 219–234. Bertossi, C. 2020. How the French understands immigrant integration and citizenship. Études de l’IFRI. Retrieved from www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/bertossi_ immigrant_integration_2020.pdf. Bogain, A. (2019). Terrorism and the discursive construction of national identity in France. National Identity, 21(3), 241–265. Bonner, A. & Tolhurst, G. (2002). Insider-outsider perspectives of participant obser­ vation. Nurse Researcher, 9(4), 7–19. Bourke, B. (2014). Positionality: reflecting on the research process. The Qualitative Report, 19(33), 1–9. Bowen, J. R. (2007). Why the French Don’t like Headscarves. Princeton University Press. Bridges, D. (2017). Philosophy in Educational Research. Springer. Carling, J., Erdal, M. B. & Ezzati, M. (2014). Beyond the insider–outsider divide in migration research. Migration Studies, 2(1), 36–54. Chabal, E. (2015). A Divided Republic: Nation, State and Citizenship in Contemporary France. Cambridge University Press. Charteris-Black, J. (2005). Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Meta­ phor. Palgrave. Chia, R. (2000). Discourse analysis as organizational analysis. Organization, 7(3), 513–518. Conrad, C. (2004). Organizational discourse analysis: avoiding the determinism­ voluntarism trap. Organization, 11(3), 427–439. Costelloe, L. (2014). Discourses of sameness: Expressions of nationalism in newspaper discourse on French urban violence in 2005. Discourse and Society, 25 (3), 315–340. Council of Europe. 2021. European Convention on Human Rights. Council of Europe. https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf. Cox, R. (1981). Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Rela­ tions Theory. Milliennium Journal of International Studies, 10(2), 126–154.

166

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Croft, S. (2006). Culture, Crisis and America’s War on Terror. Cambridge University Press. Delyser, D. (2001). ‘Do you really live here?’ Thoughts on insider research. The Geographical Review, 91(1–2), 441–453. Elshtain, J. (1987). Women and Wars. University of Chicago Press. Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Jour­ nal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. Entman, R. M. (2007). Framing bias: Media in the Distribution of Power. Journal of Communication, 5 (1), 163–173. Ergun A. & Erdemir, A. (2010). Negotiating insider and outsider identities in the field: ‘Insider’ in a foreign land; ‘outsider’ in one’s own land. Field Methods, 22(1), 16–38. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Polity Press. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2015). Language and Power (3rd ed). Routledge. Fairclough, N. & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. Van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (pp. 258–284). Sage Publications. Fassin, D. (2002). L’invention française de la discrimination. Revue française de sci­ ence politique, 52, 403–423. Fassin, D. (2015). In the name of the Republic: Untimely meditations on the after­ math of the Charlie Hebdo attack. Anthropology Today, 31(2), 3–7. Foucault, M. (1974). The Archaeology of Knowledge. Tavistock. Foucault, M. (2007). Truth and power. In P. Rabinow (Ed.) The Foucault Reader (pp. 51–75). Penguin. Gardner, E. (2007). Is there a method to the madness? Worldwide press coverage of female terrorists and journalistic attempts to rationalize their involvement. Journal­ ism Studies, 8(6), 909–929. Gauntlett, D. (2002). Media, Gender, and Identity: An Introduction. Routledge. Gentry, C. (2009). Twisted Maternalism. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 11 (2), 235–252. Gill, R. (2007). Gender and the Media. Polity Press. Giry, S. (2006). France and its Muslims. Foreign Affairs, 85(5), 87–104. Graham, P., Keenan, T. & Dowd, A. M. (2004). A call to arms at the end of history: a discourse-historical analysis of George W. Bush’s declaration of war on terror. Dis­ course and Society, 15(2–3), 199–221. Hardy, N. (2011). Foucault, genealogy, emergence: re-examining the extra-discursive. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 41(1), 68–91. Hardy, C. & Thomas, T. (2015). Discourse in a Material World. Journal of Manage­ ment Studies, 52(5), 680–696. Hargreaves, A. G. (1996). A deviant construction: The French media and the banlieues. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 22(4), 607–618. Hellawell, D. (2006). Inside-out: Analysis of the Insider-outsider Concept as a Heur­ istic Device to Develop Reflexivity in Students Doing Qualitative Research. Teach­ ing in Higher Education, 11(4), 483–494. Haut Conseil à l’Intégration. (1995). Liens culturels et intégration.Rapport au Premier ministre. Paris: La Documentation française. Hollande, F. 2015. Discours lors de la présentation des vœux aux Corréziens Tulle 17 janvier 2015. Vie Publique, www.vie-publique.fr/discours/193564-declaration-de-m -francois-hollande-president-de-la-republique-sur-la.

Bringing in New Voices

167

Hook, D. (2007). Foucault, Psychology and the Analytics of Power. Palgrave Macmillan. Hutcheson, J., Domke, D., Billeaudeaux, A. & Garland, P. (2004). U.S. National Identity, Political Elites, and a Patriotic Press Following September 11. Political Communication, 21(1), 27–50. Hunter-Henin, M. (2012). Why the French Don’t Like the Burqa: Laïcité, National Identity and Religious Freedom. International & Comparative Law Quarterly, 61(3), 613–639. Jackson, L. B. (2019). Framing British ‘Jihadi Brides’: Metaphor and the Social Con­ struction of I.S. Women. Terrorism and Political Violence, 33(8), 1–19. Jackson, R. (2011). In defence of ‘terrorism’: finding a way through a forest of mis­ conceptions. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 3(2), 116–130. Jackson, R. (2009, September). Critical Terrorism Studies: An Explanation, a Defence and a Way Forward [Paper presentation]. Third Annual CICA-STR International Conference, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. Jackson, R. (2007). Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Aca­ demic Discourse. Government and Opposition, 42(3), 394–426. Jackson, R. (2006). Genealogy, ideology, and Counter-Terrorism: Writing wars on terrorism from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush Jr. Studies in language and capitalism, 1(1), 163–193. Jackson, R. (2005). Security, Democracy, and the Rhetoric of Counter-Terrorism. Democracy and Security, 1(2), 147–171. Jansen, Y. (2014). Secularism, Assimilation and the Crisis of Multiculturalism: French Modernist Legacies. Amsterdam University Press. Jennings, J. (2011). Revolution and the Republic A History of Political Thought in France since the Eighteenth-Century. Oxford University Press. Kezar, A. (2002). Reconstructing static images of leadership: An application of posi­ tionality theory. Journal of Leadership Studies, 8(3), 94–109. Knapp, A. (2004). Parties and the Party System in France A Disconnected Democracy? Palgrave Macmillan. Krulišová, K. (2016). The ‘Black Widow’ Media Discourse: ‘Desperation, Irrationality and Vendetta’ in Dagestan. Central European Journal of International and Security Studies, 10(1), 30–60. Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. London: Verso. Lakoff, G. (2001). Metaphors of Terror. In G. Lakoff (Ed.), Don’t think of an elephant (pp. 52–68). University of Chicago Press. Lassalle, D. (2011). French Laïcité and British Multiculturalism: A Convergence in Progress? Journal of Intercultural Studies 32(3), 229–243. Lazar, A. & Lazar, M. (2004). The Discourse of the New Order: ‘Out-casting’ the Double Face of Threat. Discourse Society, 15(2–3), 223–242. Leane, G. (2011). Rights of Ethnic Minorities in Liberal Democracies: Has France Gone Too Far in Banning Muslim Women from Wearing the Burka? Human Rights Quarterly, 33, 1032–1061. Lefebvre, E. (2010). Republicanism and Universalism: Factors of Inclusion or Exclu­ sion in the French Concept of Citizenship. Citizenship Studies, 7(1), 15–36. Leudar, L., Marsland, V & Nekvapil, J. (2004). On membership categorisation: ‘us’, ‘Them’ and ‘Doing violence’ in political discourse. Discourse & Society, 15(2–3), 243–266.

168

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Martín-Rojo, L. & Van Dijk, T. A. (1997). ‘There was a problem, and it was solved!’: Legitimating the expulsion of ‘illegal’ migrants in Spanish parliamentary discourse. Discourse & Society, 8(4), 523–566. Martini, A. (2018). Making women terrorists into ’Jihadi brides’: an analysis of media narratives on women joining ISIS. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 11(3), 458–477. Marway, H. (2011). Scandalous subwomen and sublime superwomen: exploring por­ trayals of female suicide bombers’ agency. Journal of Global Ethics, 7(3), 221–240. McNess, E., Arthur, L. & Crossley, M. (2013). ‘Ethnographic Dazzle’ and the Con­ struction of the ‘Other’: Revisiting Dimensions of Insider and Outsider Research for International and Comparative Education. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 45(2), 95–316. Milligan, L. (2016). Insider-outsider-inbetweener? Researcher positioning, participative methods and cross-cultural educational research. Compare: A Journal of Compara­ tive and International Education, 46(2), 235–250. Mills, S. (2003). Michel Foucault. Routledge. Moran, M. (2017). Terrorism and the banlieues: The Charlie Hebdo attacks in con­ text. Modern and Contemporary France, 25(3), 315–332. Murray, G. (2006). France: the riots and the Republic. Race & Class, 47(4), 26–45. Nabers, D. (2009). Filling the void of meaning: Identity construction in U.S. Foreign Policy after September 11, 2001. Foreign Policy Analysis, 5(2), 191–214. Pitman, G. E. (2002). Outsider/insider: The politics of shifting identities in the research process. Feminism and Psychology, 12(2), 282–288. Quillet, J. (2015, 8 December). Pourquoi les jeunes filles rejoignent les rangs de l’État islamique. Le Figaro. https://madame.lefigaro.fr/societe/femmes-rejoignent-eta t-islamique-daesh-terrorisme-djihad-081215-109902. Reed, M. (2000). The limits of discourse analysis in organizational analysis. Organi­ zation, 7(3),524–530. Richardson, N. & Wearing, S. (2014). Gender in the Media. Palgrave Macmillan. Rose, P. (1985). Writing on women: Essays in a renaissance. Wesleyan University Press. Savin-Baden, M. & Major, C. H. (2013). Qualitative research: the essential guide to theory and practice. Abingdon: Routledge. Schnapper, D. (1994). La Communauté des citoyens: sur l’idée moderne de nation. Paris: Gallimard. Schor, N. (2001). The Crisis of French Universalism. Yale French Studies, 100, 43–64. Simon, P. (2015). The choice of ignorance: the debate on ethnic and racial statistics in France. In P. Simon, V. Piché & A. Gagnon (Eds), Statistics and Ethnic Diversity (pp. 65–87) Springer International Publishing. Sjoberg, L. (2018). Jihadi brides and female volunteers: Reading the Islamic State’s war to see gender and agency in conflict dynamics. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 35(3), 296–311. Sjoberg, L. & Gentry, C. (2007). Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics. Zed Books. Spencer, A. (2012). The social construction of terrorism: Media, metaphors and policy implications. Journal of International Relations and Development, 15, 393–419. Steffeck, J. (2003). The Legitimation of International Governance: A Discourse Approach. European Journal of International Relations, 9(2), 249–275. Stump, J. L. & Dixit, P. (2013). Critical Terrorism Studies. An Introduction to Research Methods. Routledge.

Bringing in New Voices

169

Talbot, S. (2008). ‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Terrorism, Conflict and (O)ther Discursive For­ mations. Sociological Research Online, 13(1), 1–16. The Guardian. (2020, 16 November). Macron accuses English-language media of ‘legitimising’ violence in France. www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/16/macron­ france-foreign-media-new-york-times. Tillman, L. C. (2002). Culturally sensitive research approaches: an African-American perspective. Education Research, 31(9), 3–12. Toros, H. & Gunning, J. (2009). Exploring a critical theory approach to studying ter­ rorism. In R. Jackson, M. Breen Smyth & J. Gunning (Eds), Critical terrorism stu­ dies: a new research agenda (pp. 87–108). Routledge. Van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Discourse and manipulation. Discourse & Society, 17(3), 359–383. Van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Ideology: A multidisciplinary approach. Sage Publications. Van Gorp, B. (2005). Where is the Frame? Victims and Intruders in the Belgian Press Coverage of the Asylum Issue. European Journal of Communication, 20(4), 484–507. Van Leeuwen, T. & Wodak, R. (1999). Legitimizing Immigration Control: A Dis­ course-Historical Analysis. Discourse studies, 1(1), 83–118. Verduzier, P. (2014, 14 November). Comment les islamistes radicaux endoctrinent les ados françaises. Le Figaro. https://madame.lefigaro.fr/actu/ces-jeunes-endoctrines-pa r-les-islamistes-les-filles-appellent-leur-niqab-mon-doudou-021114. Wodak, R. (2007). Pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis. A cross- disciplinary inquiry. Pragmatics and Cognition, 15(1), 203–225. Wodak, R. & de Cillia, R. (1988). Sprache und Antisemitismus. Institut für Wis­ senschaft und Kunst Mitteilungen 4. Zulaika, J. & Douglass, W. A. (1996). Terror and Taboo: The Follies, Fables, and Faces of Terrorism. Routledge.

9

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies A Mixed-Method Randomised Control Trial Study on Community Reintegration of Former Boko Haram Members in Nigeria Tarela Juliet Ike1

Introduction Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) developed in response to the mushrooming field of Terrorism Studies (TS) that, as Jackson, Breen Smyth and Gunning (2009) note, posed major shortcomings in terms of its simplistic and objec­ tive framing of “terrorism”. Since then, CTS blossomed as a subfield, pro­ ducing new insights on the discursive construction of the “terrorist” (Bogain, 2017) and exposing way in which Terrorism Studies is underpinned by violence (Ejiofor, 2022; Kertcher, 2021). However, the overemphasis on qualitative methods is one of CTS’ shortcomings, as constructivist approa­ ches are rarely taken seriously by State policy makers. Indeed, critical approaches to states’ counterterrorism agendas even risk being framed as “extremist” themselves in nature (Bogain, 2017). Terrorism Studies (TS), on the other hand, tends to use scientific methods in order to define “terrorism” and “extremism” that make arguments on the importance of various char­ acteristics including ideology, religion and political motivation. Despite cri­ tiques of the racist and Islamophobic underpinnings of these scientific theories, (Gilkes, 2020; Jarvis, 2019), TS research is continuously relied upon to inform counterterrorism law and policy worldwide, partly because of the methods it uses. This chapter examines the use of mixed methods and experimental design within CTS by focusing on the case study of reinte­ grating former proscribed groups into local communities in Nigeria. In so doing, I put forward the argument that CTS can, and must, learn from the methodological rigour of TS and other sub disciplines, such as the fusion of law and psychology, if it is to strive towards “real-world” effects. I further argue that, when mixed methods are adopted in ways that place emphasis on local perspectives, they are more rigorous and reflective than what exists in most TS work. The data resulting from these methods are consequently more likely to be taken seriously by policymakers, and in such a way, a CTS agenda that seeks to create community and strives towards social justice can be mainstreamed. DOI: 10.4324/9781003383963-13

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

171

The adoption of qualitative methodologies such as discourse analysis as often used in CTS can risk limiting the replication and generalisability of results, thus restricting how far CTS can inform state policy on counter­ terrorism. Schuurman’s (2020) review highlights such concern of a wholly qualitative dominated approach as a significant criticism of terrorism research’s inability to overcome enduring methodological issues. For Schuur­ man (2020, p. 1011), some of the problems include “an overreliance on sec­ ondary sources and the associated literature review methodology, a scarcity of statistical analyses, a tendency for authors to work alone rather than colla­ borate with colleagues, and a large number of one-time contributors to the field”. Drawing on a review of 2,552 articles between 2007 and 2016, Schuurman (2020) found that qualitative studies dominated research on ter­ rorism, and most authors tend to be one-time contributors, while most scho­ lars continue to work alone. The review also found that 78.1 percent of the articles studied did not include any statistical analysis, and just two studies, which amounted to 0.08 percent, adopted methodologies aimed at clinical assessment (Schuurman, 2020). I demonstrated similar findings on the pre­ dominance of qualitative methods in studies on terrorism in my own co­ authored systematic review (Ike et al., 2022). The implication of the over­ reliance on qualitative methods in CTS studies as opposed to quantitative experimental research is that it risks being taken for granted by governments and policymakers since there appears to be little or no basis within which issues such as effectiveness can be assessed. However, this is not to say that TS approaches should be relied upon without question, as the original critiques of Jackson et al. (2009), including the ques­ tionable nature of some TS methodologies, still stand. Sageman (2014) makes the point that even though there appears to be a proliferation of post-9/11 state funding for TS, we seem to be no nearer to answering the question, “what leads a person to turn to political violence?”. Sageman (2014) argues that academic researchers might not be blamed solely: that governments could also be seen as part of the problem. For Sageman (2014), this is due to governmental reservation and reluctance to share primary data with the academic community. This has led, according to Morrison (2022, p. 2), “to ‘an explosion of speculation’ where self-titled terrorism experts unversed in methodological rigor are able to dom­ inate airwaves and public life, pushing their own political agenda”. The preced­ ing argument no doubt highlights some of the risks associated with TS including the reluctance of the government to share information (Felbab-Brown, 2018) which might impact such studies. I demonstrate that adopting a mixed-methods, experimental design that reflectively centres local community perspective is advantageous in shaping policy improvement. As I show, the combination of quantitative and qualita­ tive methods has strong potential to produce results that are more likely to be taken more seriously in understanding reintegration. As previous studies within the Nigerian context have shown, community input in the design and implementation of reintegration programme for proscribed groups appears

172

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

sorely lacking and, as such, undermine confidence and trust in the effective­ ness of such programmes (Felbab Browne, 2018; Owonikoko, 2022). My use of a mixed-methods approach therefore, adds a valuable contribution both to CTS and state policymaking in Nigeria in that it incorporates community members’ experiences and views in the design of the study. The original research question I sought to address in the study was: What is the feasibility of the legal education plus trauma-informed therapy compared to media orientation in improving communities’ attitudes towards the positive reinte­ gration of former Boko Haram members and their families? Local community members were involved in the design of the Legal informed Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (LETIT) reintegration intervention which provided them with knowledge of their legal rights. A second control group was exposed to governmental media sources (Media Orientation group). Both interventions were then tested by way of their feasibility and the appropriateness of the intervention in improving community attitudes towards the reintegration of Boko Haram members. As I demonstrate, when commu­ nity members were involved in the design of the LETIT study, they were more likely to have positive and open attitudes towards the reintegration of former Boko Haram members than those in the control group. The example and intervention being used stem from previous systematic reviews (Ike et al., 2022, 2021) and empirical data (Hassan & Routley, 2022; Ike et al., 2022) that suggest a gap concerning community resistance towards the reintegration of former Boko Haram members, owing to perceived lack of transitional justice and trauma suffered from terrorism. I drew on an inter­ disciplinary collection of literature including from Law and Psychology to inform the LETIT intervention. These studies coupled with community input informed the present study design of the LETIT to address the problem. The intervention was tested for its feasibility and acceptability in aiding the rein­ tegration of former proscribed group members into society. The quantitative element of this study provides a suggestion of the potential for replication in other contexts sharing similar characteristics as the present study. The following chapter commences with an engagement with the literature on Boko Haram and its implication on community attitudes towards reinte­ gration and reintegration programmes in Nigeria. This is followed by a report on the methodology adopted in the study. Finally, I examine the study’s results and findings, including a discussion in light of the literature, followed by a conclusion and recommendations.

Boko Haram and Community Reintegration in Nigeria The reintegration of members of proscribed groups and their families into society is a complex and contentious process from the perspective of various actors. Local communities on the African continent where political violence has had significant effects (such as the kidnapping of the Chibok girls in Nigeria) often feel a sense of resentment and fear at the prospect of the

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

173

reintegration of members of proscribed terrorist groups (Ike et al., 2021). Community cohesion and acceptance of ex-offenders is central to the suc­ cessful reintegration of former Boko Haram members and their families into society. The advent of Boko Haram in Nigeria, whose official name, Jama’at Ahl us-Sunnah li’d-Da’wah wa’l-Jihad, translates to the Group of the People of Sunnah for Preaching and Struggle, constitutes a significant challenge to Nigeria (Ike, 2018; Ike et al., 2021). The group emergence has led to the sig­ nificant loss of lives and properties as exemplified in 2019 alone where 2,040 lives were lost, owing to Boko Haram terrorism (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2020). Several explanations have been adduced to explain the rise of the group. This spans from deplorable economic conditions (Onuoha, 2014; Varin, 2016) to poor governance and corruption (Thurston, 2018). For example, Ayegba (2015) contends that the exploitation of the commonwealth by a few at the expense of the masses resulted in Boko Haram’s emergence. By this, Ayegba (2015) refers to the poor governance and corruption asso­ ciated with the Nigerian government and how such exploitation breeds public resentment, which later gave rise to the emergence of groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria’s north-east region. Such an argument also alludes to frustration-aggression theory as proffered by Ted Robert Gurr (2015) and Dollard, et al., (1939) who stressed that the relative disadvantage of a group in relation to others, which may manifest in income inequality or class, could result in frustration which culminates in grievance and aggression. Others have contended that beyond socio-economic reasons, issues such as Boko Haram’s complex Salafist-jihadist ideology, which allegedly sought to return Islam to those practised by the pious predecessors of Prophet Mohammed, explain its emergence (Thurston, 2018). However, another strand of literature points to political exploitation as one of the driving motivations of Boko Haram, coupled with poor governance and corruption (Iyekekpolo, 2016; Varin, 2018). Iyekekpolo (2016, p. 11) argues that Boko Haram leadership exploited the political opportunity to oust a government that was not sympathetic to their cause by allegedly teaming up with Ali­ modu Sheriff to frustrate Mala Kachalla who was the then governor of Borno state’s second term political ambition to aid Sheriff to become the next gov­ ernor in the 2003 election. While the emergence of Boko Haram is beyond the scope of this article, of central importance are the group activities, the Nigerian government’s responses and their influence on community acceptance of the reintegration of the group’s former members, including their families. In 2019 alone, Boko Haram was responsible for 2,040 deaths amounting to 9 percent of the total deaths from terrorism globally (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2019). According to Human Rights Watch (2022), violence linked to Boko Haram also caused the displacement of 2.2 million people in Nigeria’s Northeast, of which 1.8 million emanated from Borno State. Boko Haram have displaced over 280,000 refugees from the Northeast into Niger, Chad and Cameroon. In addition to displacement issues is the spate of incessant kidnapping and

174

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

bombing accrued to the group. In terms of bombing, the group engaged in several high-profile bombings, including the bombing of the Nigeria Police Force headquarter and the UN building in 2014. Boko Haram is responsible for the kidnap of 276 Chibok girls in 2014, 102 Dapchi school girls in 2018 and other incidents of kidnapping in 2021 and 2022. The preceding atrocities by the group have led to diverse counterterrorism approaches, including extensive military campaigns to address the group (Omeni, 2017). These include a military campaign that resulted in the assassi­ nation of Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau in May 2021. Violence per­ sists within the region, however, and the Institute for Economics and Peace (2022) report suggests that attacks by the group increased by 49 percent between 2020 and 2021. This is due partly to the subsequent defection of Boko Haram’s followers in favour of groups such as the Islamic State of West Africa. The awareness of the limitations of the extensive reliance on military campaigns has led successive Nigerian governments to also engage in other non-military approaches, such as the deradicalisation and reintegration of former Boko Haram. One such programme is the rehabilitation and reintegration programme estab­ lished by the Nigerian Office for the National Security Advisor under the admin­ istration of President Goodluck Jonathan. Fatima Akilu, a psychologist, headed the programme which was later disbanded and replaced with Operation Safe Corridor (OSC) following the emergence of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari (Varin, 2016). The aim of the OSC was to target repentant Boko Haram members and defectors for deradicalisation, basic education, reli­ gious re-education, vocational training for reintegration into the society (Anjide & Momoh, 2022). Defectors are streamlined into “high-risk” and “low-risk” defec­ tors. The high-risk defectors are prosecuted while the low-risk defectors are pro­ cessed for subsequent rehabilitation and reintegration exercises. However, several criticisms have been associated with these programmes. Work that I have done previously (Ike et al. 2022) demonstrated that community members resented the reintegration programme because of their perceived non­ involvement in the design of the reintegration programme. Other criticism relates to the monetisation and provision of incentives to former Boko Haram members (Felbab-Brown, 2018), and the lack of trust in the institutions that carry out the reintegration (Ike et al., 2021). A notable concern is the poor sense of transi­ tional justice (Hassan & Routley, 2022), including available support, coupled with the trauma the community suffered from Boko Haram terrorism (Ike et al., 2021). A study comprising 30 participants recruited from Borno, Adamawa and Kaduna finds that trauma posed a significant limitation to community members’ willingness to accept the reintegration of former Boko Haram members (Ike et al., 2022). The implication of not addressing these significant issues is that it risks undermining the social context that promotes successful reintegration and discourages reoffending. It also projects a negative social identity where the community sees former Boko Haram members as outgroups not belonging to the same in-group as them. As Tajfel et al. (1979) social identity theory posits, the group that people belong to forms an important part of their self-esteem and

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

175

accounts for the categorisation of groups into in-group vs outgroup as well as us vs them. The implication of negative social identity is that it leads to negative stereotypes that, in the case of the present study, reinforce the community’s stig­ matising attitude towards deradicalised former Boko Haram members, including their families, thereby posing a major barrier to reintegration. Against the preceding backdrop, the present study adopts a randomised control trial to test the feasibility and cultural appropriateness of a Legal Education plus Trauma-informed Therapy (LETIT) intervention programme to improve the community reintegration of former Boko Haram members.

Methodology Study design The study adopted a mixed-method randomised control trial design. A mixedmethod approach involves a combination of qualitative and quantitative meth­ ods (Bryman, 2016). In essence, the quantitative ambit was underpinned by the positivist epistemology that allows for using a standardised set of survey instru­ ments to objectively assess participants’ attitudes towards the reintegration of former Boko Haram members. Such an approach allows for replication, trian­ gulation of findings and validation of the results. The qualitative methodological ambit was used to examine participants’ subjective experiences of Legal Educa­ tion plus Trauma Informed Therapy (LETIT) compared to the Nigerian gov­ ernment’s Media Orientation programme. The qualitative ambit was underpinned by the interpretivist epistemology that allows for the subjective and multiple views of participants on how they perceived the intervention pro­ gramme and its usefulness in encouraging reintegration. The combined use of quantitative and qualitative methods is that it allows for robust evidence-based data by highlighting whether any positive change occurred as a result of the LETIT intervention using the quantitative approach, and if such change did occur, why that is the case using the qualitative, subjective views from the parti­ cipants. This way, policymakers could use the findings to inform their policy design on what works when reintegrating former proscribed groups into local communities. The trial was duly registered with clinical trials.gov, and the Jos University Teaching Hospital Nigeria granted ethical approval. It is also perti­ nent to add that the study forms part of a larger multicentred study across sev­ eral states in Nigeria addressing issues of reintegration and only data related to this specific location are reported. In essence, there are other data across other locations not included in the present article. Sampling, Participants and Intervention Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to recruit participants from Adamawa (Yola) in Nigeria. The inclusion criteria encompass commu­ nity members with previous experience of trauma, score five and above for

176

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

the culturally adapted Trauma Screening Questionnaire (Brewinn et al., 2002) who were aged 18 years and over and based in Adamawa. In addition, par­ ticipants were also required to speak English and be available for baseline, including end of intervention follow-up. Participants with any psychiatric condition with severity to prevent participation in the study were excluded. In total, 50 participants met the study’s inclusion criteria and were randomly assigned to the Legal Education plus Trauma-Informed Therapy (LETIT) or the Media Orientation group. Experimental Group: Legal Education plus Trauma-Informed Therapy The Legal Education and Trauma-informed Therapy comprises two parts co­ developed with affected community participants. The first part (legal educa­ tion) provides participants with the knowledge of their legal rights while drawing on relevant statutes (e.g., the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria). This component also addresses access to legal aid sup­ port and issues relating to transitional justice. The second component, cov­ ered aspects of trauma, including understanding problem management and stress, managing problems and strengthening social support. Initial interviews were conducted with the affected community participants who indicated their area of needs (e.g., trauma and limited awareness of legal support). The identified needs were thereafter incorporated into the LETIT manual. The LETIT manual was then presented to the affected community participants who read and suggested areas of improvement before it was utilised. Control Group: Media Orientation For the control group, information from the Nigerian National Orientation Agencies involving the government approach to reintegration, awareness of substance use and abuses, including sense of togetherness and working as a community was administered to the participants. The intervention for both groups lasted approximately 60 minutes each, and a session was delivered each week for 12 weeks. Method of Analysis The Wilcoxon sign rank test was adopted for the quantitative analyses given the ordinal nature of the survey-instrument the study adopted. The survey-instru­ ment used are: Trauma Screening Questionnaire (Brewinn et al., 2002), The Legal Education Awareness Scale (LEAS), and The Attitude Towards Deradi­ calised Terrorist and their Reintegration scale. Based on the scores assigned to each survey instrument, the following ranking was allocated. For the TSQ with a total score of 20, a ranking of 1–4 indicates extremely traumatised, 5–8 (trau­ matised), 9–12 (moderately traumatised), 13–16 slightly traumatised and 17–20 not traumatised. For the LEAS, with a total score of 40, the following ranking

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

177

ranging from 1–10 (very poor knowledge), 11–20 (poor knowledge), 21–30 (good knowledge) and 31–40 (very good knowledge) was assigned. In terms of the ATRTRS, with a score of 130, we ascribed the following ranking. 1–26 (extremely poor reintegration attitude), 27–52 (poor reintegration attitude), 53– 78 (moderate attitude towards reintegration), 79–104 (Good attitude towards reintegration), 105–130 (Very good attitude towards reintegration). For the qualitative data, thematic analysis from a social-identity theoretical lens was adopted, and the six-step process from Clark and Braun (2013) was deployed for the analysis of interview transcript. The first stage involves an in-depth immersion with the transcribed dataset through familiarisation with the data. The next stage involved the active generation of initial codes. The code was used to mirror participants’ concepts and language, while other codes invoke some of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks adopted for the study. Upon completion of the coding, themes were identified. In the fourth stage, an in-depth review of the potential theme was conducted, followed by defining and naming the final themes in the fifth stage. The sixth stages involve the production of the final report. CONSORT 2010 Flow Diagram

Enrolment Assessed for eligibility (n=237)

Excluded (n= 87): Not meeting inclusion criteria (n= 64). Declined to participate (n=15). Other reasons (n= 8). Randomized (n= 150)

Allocation Allocated to intervention (n=75) Received allocated in tervention (n=75) Did not receive allocated intervention (give reasons) (n= 0)

Allocated toi ntervention (n=75) Received allocated intervention (n= 75) Did not receive allocated intervention (give reasons) (n= 0)

Follow-Up Lost to follow-up (givereasons) (n=0) Discontinued intervention(givereasons) (n=0)

Analysed (n=75)

Analysis

Lost to follow-up (give reasons) (n=0) Discontinued intervention (give reasons) (n=0)

Analysed (n=75)

Figure 9.1 Flow diagram depicting Randomised Control Trial. Source: Author’s Creation

178

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Quantitative Results As shown in Table 9.1 (below), the experimental group (LETIT) reported a higher level of intervention acceptability with a score of 100 compared to the media orientation group, which reported 44. In terms of satisfaction, 72 per­ cent indicated being very satisfied for the experimental group, while only 24 percent reported a similar satisfaction rate for the media orientation group. The differences could be due to the type of intervention as the LETIT addresses issues relating to transitional justice, trauma, managing behaviour Table 9.1 Table showing the differences between the acceptability scores of the Service satisfaction scale for LETIT and Media Orientation groups at 12 weeks end of intervention Adamawa S/N

Survey questions

LETIT Media Orientation n =25 n = 25 % % 0

2 1

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Please rate your satisfaction on the acceptability of the intervention. 0 = Unacceptable; 1 = Slightly Unacceptable; 2 = Not Sure; 3 = Slightly Accep­ table; 4 = Acceptable. Please rate your satisfaction with the effectiveness of the intervention. 0 = Not at all effective; 1 = Ineffective; 2 = Not sure; 3 = Effective; 4 = Very effective. How would you rate the quality of the intervention? 0 = Worst approach; 1 = Less Quality; 2 = Not sure; 3 = High Quality; 4 = Best approach. How would you rate your satisfaction with the interven­ tion? 0 = Not satisfied at all; 1 = Not Satisfied; 2 = Not sure; 3 = Satisfied; 4 = Very satisfied. Would you recommend the intervention to others? 0 = Definitely no; 1 = No; 2 = Not sure; 3=Yes; 4 = Defi­ nitely yes.

4

0

1

2

3

4

100

12

12

12

20

44

64

12

12

16

32

28

48

12

16

16

36

20

72

8

20

16

32

24

72

8

16

12

32

32

3

4 32

52

28

28

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

179

and problem-solving, while the media orientation was more focused on messages from the National Orientation Agencies. In essence, it appears that when inter­ vention is informed by the need of the community, which as previous literature has shown, includes trauma (Ike et al., 2022) and a poor sense of transitional justice (Hassan and Routley, 2022) it could report a more positive response. This is demonstrated by the rating of the perceived effectiveness, in which participants in the experimental group indicated 64 percent while the control group participants indicated 28 percent. Table 9.2 (below) indicates a comparison of the scores between the experimental and control groups regarding their level of legal awareness, reintegration attitude and the reduction in traumatic symptoms. First, con­ cerning legal awareness, we saw an increase from Md 2.00 at baseline to 4.00 at the end of the intervention for the experimental group. When compared to the control group, a slight increase was reported from Md 2.00 to Md 3.00. One explanation could be because legal education content was embedded more in the LETIT intervention, whereas the National Orienta­ tion Agencies appear to cover less in-depth legal content in the media group. Second, for the attitude towards reintegration, we reported a higher score from Md 3.00 to Md 4.00 in the experimental group. In contrast, there were no changes for the control group as the scores remained the same at Md 3.00 at baseline to Md 3.00 at the end of the intervention. Similar findings were reported in the reduction in traumatic symptoms, which remained the same at Md 3.00 at baseline and end of intervention for the control group, while for the experimental group, some improvement was reported from Md 3.00 at baseline to at Md 5.00 at the end of the intervention. The explanation for the improvement could be partly related to the in-depth trauma-focused sessions that formed part of the Table 9.2 Descriptive table showing medians and z values using Wilcoxon Sign Rank Test scores across time for baseline and end of intervention in the LETIT (LT) and media Orientation (MO) groups Baseline (LT) Md

LEAS Awareness Level ATRTRS Reintegration Attitude TSQ Traumatic symptoms

EOI Md

z

p

Baseline (MO) Md

EOI Md

z

p

2.00

4.00

Baseline * EOI -4.261 .000

2.00

3.00

Baseline * EOI -1.801 .072

3.00

4.00

-1.890

.059

3.00

3.00

-2.392

.017

3.00

5.00

-4.491

.000

3.00

3.00

-2.070

.038

180

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

intervention, which also represents one of the identified needs of community members affected by Boko Haram terrorism. Qualitative Findings As initially stated, thematic analysis from a social identity theoretical lens was used to analyse participant experiences of the LETIT intervention in the experimental group and the Media Orientation intervention for the control group. Below is an analysis of the dominant themes across the dataset. Prior to the Interventions: Negative Attitude Towards Reintegration Community attitudes towards reintegration and those to be reintegrated are crucial to the Nigerian government reintegration program’s success. A notable pattern in the dataset using the mixed method approach at both baseline and end of the intervention was that it allows for the qualitative understanding and comparison of participants’ attitudes before and after the intervention of which the attitude towards reintegration prior to the intervention, was char­ acterised by a lack of trust in the genuine reform of former Boko Haram mem­ bers and even the institution carrying out the reintegration process. This was prevalent across the experimental group and the control group. As Mustapha, a male participant in the experimental group commented: My thought about it actually was that I felt that this was just a tactics by the government to continue the crisis, the terrorism in the country, because I actually feel that most of these terrorists will not actually be able to cope to the new live. They will miss the thrill of being in control of people lives and maybe after a few months of reintegration, they will go back to pick up arms and go back, which will thereby lead to con­ tinuity in the terrorism. I actually felt government was not sincere about it. You know, most of these people, have actually taken a lot of lives. So, I just feel that if you come across any Boko Haram and find that this person is a terrorist, you just kill the person and minus one headache. So that was actually my thoughts about it before the LETIT. (Mustapha, Male LETIT, Adamawa interview) Based on the qualitative methodological approach, Mustapha problematises the essence of reintegration because, for him, it might not be able to achieve the desired outcome of true reformation. Words such as “not being sincere” appear significant in that when there is an iota of doubt on the reintegration process, lack of trust and resistance might become pertinent. The findings resonate with previous studies, which note that the community resisted the reintegration of former Boko Haram members, owing to the lack of trust in the reintegration process (Ike et al., 2021). A possible explanation for why the participant expressed such thoughts might be because of the atrocities

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

181

perpetrated by Boko Haram, which span from a suicide bombing, kidnapping and the displacement of communities from their homes (Varin, 2016; Omeni, 2017). Such acts of terrorism appear to be construed as one whose perpetrators may not truly reform from terrorism. As such, using mixed methods involving a qualitative approach has an implication for Nigerian state policymakers. It highlights why community members are reluctant to accept former Boko Haram members into society. As another female participant noted: For me, before now, my thoughts was there shouldn’t be reintegrated because I used to feel they can’t change. And all that. And again, someone that has been, that has that has an experience with them like for instance, let’s say I’m someone. I have a family and I can see a Boko Haram that killed my brother. We are in the same area because so this people were actually some of them it might be some people that we live in the same area with. In fact, while I was in school the cobbler in front of my hostel is actually, was actually one of them. So, do you understand? So, if you see them kill, you will not be comfortable if they are reintegrated into the society because maybe you actually see them killing or butchering someone. Then after a while, you see them in the society that the government say, OK, they are reintegrated, they are no longer hostile and anything they will not kill and all that. No, it will not be nice at all because it will make me remember. I will keep remembering what I saw or whatever he did. (Salamatu, Female LETIT, Adamawa interview) Again, the extract, as informed using qualitative methods, highlights a previously fixated attitude toward reintegration, owing to the perceived sense that former Boko Haram members or defectors are unlikely to reform truly. The participant’s previous experience represents an important aspect that informs her position. Previous studies reported similar findings concerning community resistance towards former Boko Haram reintegration (Owonikoko, 2022). The use of quali­ tative methods in eliciting the participant’s perceptions is that it opens up some of the possible issues associated with the reintegration programme that might have influenced her views, which include the perceived top-down approach, limited involvement of the community in its design and the limited attention to the com­ munity need (Felbab-Brown, 2018). These factors further tend to exacerbate resistance towards reintegration. As a male participant in the control group noted: I do not think it’s fair the way the government are treating the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp […] The way repentant Boko Haram are being treated is far far above the way IDP camp are being treated. Personally, it is not good, is not fair actually. The government are not really trying in such area because just by being repentant Boko Haram you are entitled to those things stipends, houses, cars you will be taken care of, I do not think it is fair. (Musa, male Media, Adamawa interview)

182

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

The perceived lack of attention to the needs of those affected by Boko Haram represents a recurring pattern as uncovered in the qualitative dataset. As the participant’s extract highlights, such feeling breeds resentment, especially con­ sidering the level of attention accorded to former Boko Haram members who go through a series of deradicalisation and reintegration programmes (Hassan & Routley, 2018). Those in the internally displaced person camp are perceived as marginalised, creating an “us vs them” identity, where former Boko Haram members are perceived as the ones receiving favourable attention from the government while the community and internally displaced persons feel neglec­ ted. Based on adopting the qualitative method, the implication of such sub­ jective feelings is a perceived sense that there is no reason to reintegrate them as expressed in the participants’ perceptions. The findings show that there is a sense that the Nigerian state is viewed not to be taking community perspectives seriously when designing a reintegration programme, and this underscores the need for a more robust approach to addressing why communities are resistant. Suleiman, who lost all his properties, including his source of livelihood, during the Boko Haram terrorism, notes that: OK, before the intervention, my view was that. This is not actually right for the government to bring in the terrorist, back to reintegrate them into the society. That was my view. Yes. So, I I I felt that the government should not reintegrate them. That was my uh view on that. (Sulieman, male Media, Adamawa interview) In a similar vein, another female participant noted, “Well, to me, I was like, I was angry. I was angry because. I was wishing. Although I was wishing them, all of them dead” (Aishatu, Female Media, Adamawa interview). The participants’ experience, which is characterised by a sense of loss and anger, informs a feeling of resistance towards reintegration. In essence, based on the inclusion of the qualitative method in the data collection, the importance of these findings for the need to adopt a mixed method approach in CTS is that the qualitative approach compliments the quantitative data by explaining why com­ munity members/ participants resist the reintegration of former Boko Haram members. The qualitative data, in turn, provides a basis within which the LETIT intervention was quantitatively assessed to see if there were any statistical chan­ ges in perceptions and attitudes after the intervention was implemented. This is important as the quantitative ambit provides not only quantitative scores that could be measured at baseline and end of the intervention to see if there are any improvements but also the qualitative methods and data will help show if there is any change in perception and why from the participants’ perspectives. Reflecting Post-intervention: Positive Benefits of the Programme While most participants, regardless of the group they were allocated to before the intervention, expressed anger, resentment and distrust, there were notable

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

183

changes both in the quantitative data reported previously and also in the qualitative data in terms of how they perceived reintegration after the inter­ vention. This change appears more dominant in the experimental group when compared to the control group, as most participants expressed positive experiences following engagement with the LETIT intervention. As one male participant in the experimental group noted: So, uh, my experience during the intervention uh I think one of my major experiences was I think my mindset. The negative mindset I had about all this umm, repentant Boko Haram. So, I have to see things from other perspectives, you know? So, I realize that I was hundred (100%) blinded by anger towards this people. So, before this interven­ tion program, anything you had said about reintegration, I don’t know about this repentant terrorist, my own my mindset was 100 per cent negative, but during the course of this program, I have a course to see things differently and I did not know that reintegration programme works. Reintegration programme works and eh I could see that not everybody who are terrorists were actually radicals. Some of them were actually forced into it. So, in general I could actually see things differ­ ently. So that was one of the major highlights of this reintegration programme. (Mustapha, Male LETIT, Adamawa interview) Here, Mustapha recounts some positive improvements in how he pre­ viously construes former Boko Haram members’ reintegration which was initially characterised by anger. However, through the intervention, the participant expression highlights a change in perceptions, drawing on plausible explanations as to why some people join the group and the need to be more open-minded towards reintegration. Using the qualitative methods complements the quantitative result in understanding why the participants had a positive change of attitude towards reintegration. The quantitative evidence shows that the intervention had some positive feed­ back and provides substantial backing to the qualitative findings, which are together taken more seriously by policymakers. The qualitative evi­ dence in turn provides a more subjective basis as to why the participant found the LETIT intervention useful and has a more positive impact. For example, another participant who was directly affected by Boko Haram recounts why the LETIT intervention helped change his previously held negative thoughts towards reintegration as follows: At first, I feel bad because there are people that have been victimised, people like us that have been victimised and government do not care about us. While these are the people that are supposed to be punished and govern­ ment wants to, to give them a second chance to life. So, we felt bad, I felt bad. But with the session also that there are people like myself, some of

184

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies them is that they have been lured into that act by circumstances beyond them and they are people that also should be given a second chance like others. I feel it’s a good intervention. (Dabiru, Male LETIT, Adamawa interview)

Feeling neglected while those perceived to be the cause of the harm are given more attention could conjure negativity towards reintegration (Felbab-Brown, 2018; Owonikoko, 2022). This is especially because the participant appears to feel no sense of justice for them; rather than the full course of the law being implemented, some of the former Boko Haram members are being deradica­ lised and reintegrated into society. Hassan and Routley’s (2022) study high­ light the perceived need for transitional justice prior to the former Boko Haram defector’s reintegration to avoid a feeling of neglect. In essence, qualitative data is important because it shows why there is a change in the participant’s initial stance concerning the non-reintegration of former Boko Haram members to a more sympathetic attitude which gives room for an alternative explanation as to why they might have been involved in terrorism. As such, the qualitative findings highlight the effective use of the methods in unpacking the nuances associated with the participants’ subjective experiences, which could, in turn, provide important insight to policymakers on why addressing community needs are essential through using interventions that are designed to achieve such an aim. This way, reintegration programmes are more likely to yield more positive outcomes and, by extension, reduce the chances of former Boko Haram members reoffending following their accep­ tance into society. However, for the media intervention group, while participants acknowl­ edged the positive benefit of the programme, most still indicated their unwillingness to trust the government reintegration programme or even the genuine reform of former Boko Haram members. As one participant noted: I will say and every individual for a citizen of the country to know his rights, and then I will say no at the same time, because of those who are who are the government. […] we have been having this intervention but yet we keep having the same problem. We have cases where Boko Haram have been reintegrated into the society, but yet we are still having the highest level of terrorism in the country all over the country is not safe. So, I don’t think, uh it is actually really fading or taking away the whole thing or the whole problem. (Sulieman, male, Media, Adamawa interview) In a similar vein, another participant noted: despite having attended the intervention: My take on that is […] they should […] eh channel their efforts and their resources towards them and those that have been displaced as a result of

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

185

insecurity because most of them are psychologically traumatised. They have lost their parents. They have lost their means of livelihood. They have lost their properties. They have lost their houses, and they do not have house. And the people that contributed in putting them under that condition, they have been taken care of. While the people that are supposed to be taken care of are allowed to languish in the abject poverty and this add, a kind of salt to the injury. So, to me, we have our correction centres, any repentant Boko Haram or insurgent that repent. Yeah, they [referring to the government] should come and then they put them [referring to repentant Boko Haram members] there. My own take is that those money used to build the houses and send them abroad let them use it and they renovate the correctional centres and make it a place that human beings can stay just like as you have over there in the UK and the other developed countries because the correctional centres is not it has its own purpose. From there they can stay within that environment. (Abednego, male, Media, Adamawa interview) The extract reveals a perceived distrust towards the genuine repentance of former Boko Haram members. This is despite having undergone media orientation drawing on the content from the Nigerian National Orientation Agency. As shown in the qualitative data, prioritising the need of the affec­ ted communities and victims is crucial. This is due partly to their enormous loss, which comprises trauma. Based on the inclusion of the qualitative method, the findings provide a significant explanation as to why the parti­ cipants in the control group, despite the intervention, do not trust the rein­ tegration of former Boko Haram members. It also corroborates the quantitative results, which show fewer positive effects of the media orienta­ tion when compared to the LETIT intervention, which had a positive impact. These findings have policy implication, as they show why govern­ ment intervention is perceived not to work, as demonstrated in issues such as community/victims’ trauma. As a result, any policy that aims to promote reintegration could benefit from addressing the community needs alongside those to be reintegrated to project a feeling of fairness and build confidence in the programme. The findings are also important for improving meth­ odologies in CTS in that the discourse from a participant not only helped understand why they are reluctant to accept former Boko Haram members back but also provided a balanced nuance subjective perspective to why the control group (government intervention) had less impact in changing the participants’ attitude towards reintegration. As the data shows, the reinte­ gration of former Boko Haram terrorists and defectors seems not to be a plausible alternative for the participants in the control group involving government media programmes as a reference to a correctional centre represents one of the preferred options rather than reintegration into the community.

186

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

Discussion and Conclusion One of the pressing debates associated with CTS is the methodological lim­ itation, owing to the domination of the discipline with qualitative studies underpinned by discourse and the limited use of mixed-method studies including experimental research design. My study’s main aim was to address this gap by illustrating, using a mixed method randomised control trial experimental design, how applying rigorous methodology and inter­ disciplinary approach composed of law and a psychological intervention and methodology to CTS could help better understand community perceptions and attitudes towards the reintegration of former Boko Haram members in Nigeria. The proposed mixed method experimental design approach adds to CTS in that previous literature have shown that the majority of studies tend to be dominated by qualitative research (Bogain, 2017; Ike et al., 2021; Mar­ tini, 2019; Schuurman, 2020) of which the implication of a wholly discourse informed approach is that, it risks not being taken seriously by policymakers especially as it relates to the difficulties of reintegrating former proscribed groups into local communities in Nigeria. My present study adds to CTS by using a mixed method experimental design to show whether the LETIT intervention was feasible with potential effectiveness when compared to the government media orientation in improving reintegration and, by extension, reducing recidivism which an otherwise wholly qualitative approach would not have allowed. In essence, drawing on the mixed-method randomised control trial experimental design, the study findings are discussed with refer­ ence to the literature while drawing on its implication for policy and its con­ tribution to the field. Based on the mixed-method design, the study’s quantitative arm showed that the LETIT intervention is acceptable and feasible in improving commu­ nity attitude towards the reintegration of former Boko Haram members in Nigeria. The findings validate a previous study which predicted that addres­ sing community trauma could potentially improve their attitude towards reintegration (Ike et al., 2022). However, the feasibility and acceptability of the Media Orientation intervention (control group) were slightly lower. The control group also reported no changes in attitude towards reintegration or improvement in reducing the traumatic experiences of the participants. Using the mixed method approach helps shows that one of the key reasons for the difference is due to the context of the intervention and the fact that one focuses on the government’s National Orientation Agency media content while the other (LETIT) is driven by the directly identified community needs, which include addressing traumatic experiences. The findings also reflect pre­ vious studies, which noted that community members resisted and lacked trust in reintegration programmes, owing to their limited or non-involvement in the programme’s design (Adebayo & Matsilele, 2019; Felbab-Brown, 2018). The social context that informs successful reintegration is essential (Clubb & Tapley, 2018). In essence, the methodological implications of the findings and

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

187

how it can be used to help inform better policy-making aimed at successful reintegration is to address the community’s psycho-social needs, such as trauma, to reinforce positive attitudes towards reintegrating those formerly proscribed groups into society. Another significant implication for improving the methodologies in CTS is that it goes beyond exploring discourses to test­ ing what these discourses mean by identifying why communities resist reinte­ gration and then designing and testing interventions to address these issues. As such, this study provides a balanced and nuanced perspective informed by both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The qualitative findings of the present study illustrate how it could be used from a mixed method perspective to complement and further shed light on the objective findings from the quantitative data by examining participants’ subjective experience of the LETIT and Media Orientation interventions. For example, the qualitative findings help provide more insight into why the participants found the LETIT programme very useful compared to how they were before the interven­ tion. As previously indicated, participants across both groups reported a lack of trust in the genuine reform of former Boko Haram members and the institution involved in the reintegration process. They also expressed scepticism concerning the rationale for the government’s reintegration approach, which was rewarding those that caused harm to the community. The concerns raised by the partici­ pants prior to the intervention have also been reported in previous studies where distrust of former Boko Haram members (Owonikoko, 2022), resentment towards support provided to former defectors (Felbab-Brown, 2018) and per­ ceived poor transitional justice (Hassan & Routley, 2022) reinforces community resistance towards reintegration. However, following post-intervention interviews, I found a positive change in perceptions in the experimental group (LETIT) compared to the control group (Media Orientation), which helps explain the reason for the quantitative findings. In the control group, there were tendencies for participants to express perceptions concerning an unchanged view towards reintegration, owing to their unmet needs. Previous studies have shown that the poor plight of affected victims (Ogunnubi & Aja, 2022), and issues such as trauma limit community attitude towards reintegration (Ike et al., 2022). In essence, the implication of the findings for policymakers is that when commu­ nities feel they are not being carried along in the reintegration process or having their needs met, they are less likely to support the reintegration programme. In terms of the finding’s contribution to CTS, the findings provide a qualita­ tive basis that can be used to make sense of why a specific intervention appears to denote statistically positive acceptance compared to the other intervention. As such this mixed-method experimental design approach provides an evidenceinformed approach to why certain discourses associated with communities on the reintegration of former proscribed groups are privileged over others. Collectively, the implication of these findings for policy is that when designing a reintegration programme, the social context in which reintegration takes place is crucial. Understanding the primary needs of the community could foster positive social identity while encouraging reintegration. In essence, any policy that seeks to

188

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

encourage the reintegration of former violent extremists, including terrorist groups, would deem it wise to address the community needs and involve them in the programme’s design. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this is the first culturally adapted intervention incorporating the fusion of legal education plus trauma-informed therapy for addressing community attitudes towards the reintegration of former Boko Haram members into society. The perceived impact of the intervention was very positive, as indicated by the participants who took part in the study. The study also recorded a very good retention rate. The study’s impact and rigour were further demonstrated in the use of a mixed method experimental design. However, there are some limitations which are acknowledged. First, the study had a small number of participants (n=50). This appears limited and may not be a basis for the generalisability of the findings. However, the experimental design involving a ran­ domised approach with a comparative group represents a key strength. Second, future studies could examine the economic potential of the study and its long-term impact on participants. Notwithstanding the limitations, the present study has methodological and practical implications by providing an evidenced-based approach that could be replicable to other contexts sharing similar characteristics. Its strengths also lie in it being co-developed with direct benefit to the host com­ munity. In this light, it is recommended that future studies examine the cost-effec­ tiveness of the intervention in a fully powered randomised control trial with larger participants to maximise the impact and benefits on a wide population.

Note 1 Acknowledgement: The author acknowledges funding from the American Psychology Law Society: Research to Enhance the Impact and Diversification of Psychology and Law Research.

References Ackerman, G. A. & Burnham M. M. (2021). Towards a Definition of Terrorist Ideology, Terrorism and Political Violence, 33(6), 1160–1190. Adebayo, J. O. & Matsilele, T. (2019). Nigerian experience with post-conflict peacebuilding: Examining operation safe corridors and the Niger Delta amnesty pro­ gramme. Journal of African Union Studies, 8(3), 135–156. Anjide, S. T. & Momoh, S. A. (2022). Deradicalization and Boko Haram: An apprai­ sal of Operation Safe Corridor. International Journal of Social Sciences: Current and Future Research Trends, 13(1), 193–206. Ayegba, U. S. (2015). Unemployment and poverty as sources and consequence of insecurity in Nigeria: The Boko Haram insurgency revisited. African Journal of Political Science and International Relations, 9(3), 96–98. Badey, T. J. (1998). defining international terrorism: a pragmatic approach. Terrorism and Political Violence, 10(1), 90–107. Bogain, A. (2017). Security in the name of human rights: the discursive legitimation strategies of the war on terror in France. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 10(3), 476–500.

Rethinking Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

189

Brewin, C. R., Fuchkan, N., Huntley, Z. & Scragg, P. (2010). Diagnostic accuracy of the Trauma Screening Questionnaire after the 2005 London bombings. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 23(3), 393–398. Brewin, C. R., Rose, S., Andrews, B., Green, J., Tata, P., McEvedy, C., Turner, S. & Foa, E. B. (2002). Brief screening instrument for post-traumatic stress disorder. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 181(2), 158–162. Bryman, A. (2016). Social research methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clarke, V. & Braun, V. (2013). Successful qualitative research: A practical guide for beginners. In Successful qualitative research, pp. 1–400. Clubb, G. & Tapley, M. (2018). Conceptualising de-radicalisation and former comba­ tant re-integration in Nigeria. Third World Quarterly, 39(11), .2053–2068. Curtis, M. & Kennard, M. (2020, July 14) Revealed: UK Home Office paid £80,000 to a lobby group which has funded Conservative MPs. Open Democracy. Accessed 18 May 2023 from https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/revealed-u k-home-office-paid-80000-to-a-lobby-group-which-has-funded-conservative-mps. Dollard, J., Miller, N. E., Doob, L. W., Mowrer, O. H. & Sears, R. R. (1939). Frustration and aggression. Yale University Press. Ejiofor, P. F. (2022). ‘Fulanis are foreign terrorists’: the social construction of a suspect community in the Sahel. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15(2), 333–355. Felbab-Brown, V. (2018). The limits of punishment, transitional justice and violent extremism. United Nations University: Centre for Policy Research. from https://i. unu.edu/media/cpr.unu.edu/post/2761/LoPWeb070119.pdf. Gilks, M. (2020). The security-prejudice nexus: “Islamist” terrorism and the structural logics of islamophobia in the UK. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 13(2), 24–46. Gurr, T. R. (2015). Why Men Rebel. Routledge. Hassan, I. & Routley, L. (2022). Operation Safe Corridor: The Deradicalisation and Reintegration of ex combatants. Human Rights Watch. (2022) Those Who Returned Are Suffering”: Impact of Camp Shutdowns on People Displaced By Boko Haram Conflict in Nigeria. Accessed 6 September 2023 from www.hrw.org/report/2022/11/02/those-who-returned-are-suf­ fering/impact-camp-shutdowns-people-displaced-boko#:~:text=Displacement%20in %20the%20Northeast,Cameroon%2C%20Chad%2C%20and%20Niger. Ike, T. J. (2018). Reconceptualising the role of law in countering terrorism: a case study of Boko Haram in Nigeria. Journal of Law and Criminal Justice, 6(1), 107–112. Ike, T. J. (2022). ‘Its’ like being a Christian is tantamount to victimisation’: A Quali­ tative study of Christian experiences and perceptions of insecurity and terrorism in Nigeria. Cogent Social Sciences, 8(1). Ike, T. J., Antonopoulos, G. A. & Singh, D. (2022). Community perspectives of terrorism and the Nigerian government’s counterterrorism strategies: A systematic review. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 0(0), 1–30. doi:10.1177/17488958221110009. Ike, T. J., Jidong, D. E., Ike, M. L., Francis, C. & Ayobi, E. E. (2022). Reintegration of former Boko Haram members and combatants in Nigeria: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of community members’ experiences of trauma. Third World Quarterly, 1–19. Ike, T. J., Singh, D., Jidong, D. E., Murphy, S. & Ayobi, E. E. (2021). Rethinking reintegration in Nigeria: community perceptions of former Boko Haram comba­ tants. Third World Quarterly, 42(4), 661–678. Ike, T. J., Singh, D., Murphy, S., Jidong, D. E., Porritt, F. & Ayobi, E. E. (2022). Community perspectives of former terrorist combatants, militants and reintegration

190

Methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies

programmes in Nigeria: A systematic review. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 14(2), 142–168. Institute for Economics and Peace, (2019). Global Terrorism Index: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism, Institute for Economic and Peace, Sydney. Institute for Economics and Peace, (2022). Global Terrorism Index: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism, Institute for Economic and Peace, Sydney. Institute for Economics and Peace. (2020). Global Terrorism Index 2022: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism. Iyekekpolo, W. O. (2016). Boko Haram: Understanding the context. Third World Quarterly, 37(12), 2211–2228. Jackson, R., Breen Smyth, M. & Gunning, J., (2009) Critical Terrorism Studies: Framing a new research agenda. In Jackson, R., Gunning, J. & Breen Smyth, M. (Eds), Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda (pp. 216–236). Routledge. Jarvis, L. (2019). Terrorism, counter-terrorism, and critique: opportunities, examples, and implications. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12(2), 339–358. Kertcher, C. (2021). The disposition of Terrorism During the war on terrorism: The UNSC’s approach to concrete terror emergencies in the Middle East. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 14(4), 555–577. Mark, S. (2004). Al-Qaeda and the nature of religious terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 16(4), 795–814. Martini, A. (2019). The BBC, “War on Terror” and the discursive construction of terrorism: Representing al-Qaeda. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12(2), 364–366. Morrison, J. F. (2022). Talking stagnation: Thematic analysis of terrorism experts’ per­ ception of the health of terrorism research. Terrorism and Political Violence, 34(8), 1509–1529. Ogunnubi, O. & Aja, U. A. (2022). The de-radicalization, rehabilitation and reinte­ gration project in Nigeria’s counter-terrorism strategy: Operation Safe Corridor in context. African Identities, 1–17. Omeni, A., (2017). Counter-insurgency in Nigeria: The military and operations against Boko Haram, 2011−2017. London: Routledge. Onuoha, F. (2014). Boko Haram and the evolving Salafi Jihadist threat in Nigeria. In M. Pérouse de Montclos (Ed.), Boko Haram: Islamism, politics, security and the state in Nigeria (pp. 9–32). Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique. Owonikoko, S. B. (2022). “Take them to Government House or Aso Rock”: Commu­ nity receptivity to reintegration of Operation Safe Corridor’s deradicalised Ex-Boko Haram members in Northeastern Nigeria. Cogent Social Sciences, 8(1). Parker, T. & Sitter, N. (2016). The four horsemen of terrorism: It’s not waves, it’s strains. Terrorism and Political Violence, 26(2), 217–224. Rasler, K. & Thompson, W. R. (2009). Looking for Waves of Terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 21(1), 28–41. Sageman, M. (2014). The Stagnation in Terrorism Research. Terrorism and Political Violence, 26(4), 581–586. Schuurman, B. (2020) Research on terrorism, 2007–2016: A review of data, methods, and authorship. Terrorism and Political Violence, 32(5), 1011–1026. Tajfel, H., Turner, J. C., Austin, W. G. & Worchel, S. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. Organizational Identity: A Reader. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Varin, C. (2016). Boko Haram and the war on terror. California: Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Index

Note: Page numbers in bold refer to tables and page numbers followed by ‘n’ denote endnotes. add and stir approach 109 African women, coloniality and exclusion of 104–119 Afro-Feminism 105, 108 Al Haq 30 Al Qaeda 129, 130, 131, 139 amnesia 73 antagonism 33, 34 anthropophagy 8, 9, 83, 84, 87, 91, 97; concept of, 84; as devour eurocentric claims and practices in 88–92; economic prescription of 91 anti-Arab racism 31 anti-classical principles 88 anticolonial critics 36 anti-colonial principles 8, 84 anti-colonial solidarity 39 anti-conservative principles 88 anti-democratic attacks in, Brazil 82–99; economically 96–97; philosophically 97; socially 95–96; terrorism visuality through 08/01 92–97 anti-fascist organisations 128 anti-imperialism 70 anti-Islam 157 anti-moralist resistance 38 anti-Muslim 159 antiqueer 31 antiracist 33 anxiety 91, 158 arena-shifting 134 awareness 57, 129, 134, 164, 174, 176, 179 banlieues 159 barbarism 152

barriers: racial 110; structural 109 bias 2; epistemic 53, 72; knowledge 113; political 137 biopolitical profiling 83 Boko Haram: members in Nigeria, 170–188; terrorism 172–175, 180–183 Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements 136 Brazil, anti-democratic attacks in 82–99; economically devouring 96–97; philosophically devouring 97; socially devouring 95–96; terrorism visuality through 08/01 92–97 Brazilian culture 88 British counterterrorism strategy 139 British Labour Party 138–142 bureaucracy 90, 104, 130 capitalism 50, 90, 132, 140, 161 centre-right parties 133 citizenship 157 civilisation 31, 36–38, 152 clashing knowledge systems 109, 112–114 coherent theory 68 colonial coercion 89 Colonial Discourse Analysis 69 colonial imposition 49 colonialism 8, 36, 38, 39, 47, 49, 50, 70, 89, 96, 99, 107, 113, 116, 117, 155 coloniality 46–48, 84, 92, 109; in Africa 118; and clashing knowledge systems 112–114; and exclusion of African women 104–119; of gender 8, 44–60; and informal interventions 109–112; matrix of 47, 48 Coloniality of Being/not being 86, 87

192

Index

Coloniality of Knowledge 86, 87

Coloniality of Power 86, 87, 96

colonial matrix of power 47

colonial-modernity 6, 45, 48, 55

colonial present 36

colonial trauma 89

commodity 90

common sense 2, 47, 58

common sense knowledge 160

communautarisme 159–162 community, concept of 141

community reintegration, 172–188 community-targeted approaches 141

complacency 111

conflicts 76, 111, 114; issue-specific 133;

political 34, 133; violent 108

constitution of modernity 50

constructivist approach 105, 107

contestation; counterterrorism, as contestation across political parties 127–143; politicisation as 133–135 contextual diversity 107

Cooperation Studies 84

Copenhagen school of Security Studies 129–130 cost-effectiveness 188

counterextremism 127

Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) 9; clashing knowledge systems 109; coloniality 109; epistemic exclusion and the methodological challenge in 116–118; fears of imperial continuities in 114–116; informality 109; misrepresentation of women’s agency and methodological dilemma in 106–109; universal form of knowledge in 105 counterterrorism 2–4, 8, 67, 68, 72, 73,

74, 77, 85, 107; as contestation across

political parties 127–143; in Lake

Chad Basin 74–77

Counter Violent Extremism 133

crime 90, 93, 141

criminal act 149

critical criticism 34

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 150

Critical Indigenous Studies scholars 36

critical realism 2

critical research on terrorism 72

critical scholars 74

Critical Security Studies (CSS) 5, 82, 83, 129

critical terrorism scholarship 105

Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) 1, 3, 6,

8, 34, 35, 82, 83, 105; anthropophagy,

as devour eurocentric claims and practices in 88–92; decolonial mission for 6, 44–60; deconstructive mission for 6; discourse, importance of 149–151; Eurocentric claims in 90; issues within 4; non-English linguistic corpora 149–164; postcolonial spaces and 67–79; queer approaches to 7; rethinking methodologies in 170–188; state-centrism of 127–143; Visual and Decolonial studies 84–88, 87 critical visual research program 82

criticism and community 72

cultural artefact 69

cultural differences 141

cultural element 91, 156

cultural metaphor 89

culture 84, 98, 115, 131, 133, 140, 151,

161–164

culture war 34

Customs and Border Protection

(CBP) 136

data analysis 106

data collection 4, 182

data processing 106

decision-making 111, 130, 133

decolonial approach 1, 2, 8, 45, 46,

49–51, 57, 59, 84–88, 98, 99

decolonial mission for Critical Terrorism Studies 6, 44–60; coloniality 46–48; gender as structuring principle in modern-colonial world 51–59; gendered coloniality 48–49; vs. postcolonial approaches 49–51 Decolonial Studies 82

decolonising visual methods 83

deconstruction 45, 51

deconstructivist approach 6

democracy 156; manifestation of 94

democratic protests 93

Department of Homeland Security

(DHS) 136

depravity 36

deradicalisation 75, 108, 133, 142,

174, 182

deterministic discoursism 155

devalorisation 52, 56

dichotomies 16, 55, 68, 116

disciplinary violences 33

discourse: analysis 33, 155; defined 150;

importance of 149–151; dominant 57–

59; identity-based 158

discourse-centred approach 46

Index discourse-oriented methods 2 discrimination 5, 36, 117, 140, 152, 156 disease 36 dispossession 36, 37 diverse counterterrorism approaches 174 diverse transversal approaches 83 diversification 5 diversity 2, 4, 34, 67, 115 dominant discourse 57–59; metaphorical stickiness 58–59; terrorism 44–60 donor funding 114, 115, 117 economic development 105 economic violence 32 economy 90, 91 emancipation 2–4, 5–7, 128; subjects of 78 emotional women 151 empirical data 106, 172 empowering women 118 epistemic bias 53, 72 epistemic exclusion, CVE 116–118 epistemic fatigue 74 epistemic violence 4, 5, 6 epistemological issues 72 equalist efforts 108 essentialist terrorist 35 Ethical Socialism 140 ethnic cleansing 36 ethnic minorities 128, 157, 159 Eurocentric claims 91, 92 Eurocentric discourses 86 Eurocentricity 1, 3 Eurocentric knowledge 9, 50 Eurocentric methodologies 107, 108 Eurocentric models 105 European colonialism 84 European global expansion 107 evidenced-based approach 188 executive-centric methodology 127 Extinction Rebellion (XR) 138 extreme political polarisation 132 extremist 39, 93, 127, 128, 133, 136, 138, 140, 141, 170, 188 Facebook 30 failed states 52, 53 far-right extremism 95 fatigue 73 femininity 52, 54–56, 153 feminisation as racialisation 55–57 feminist 2, 5, 6, 7, 33, 46, 49, 53, 116 foreign experts 118 foreign ideology 105, 113

193

foreign policy 31 Foreign Policy Analysis 131 Foreign Terrorist Organisation 137 formal interventions 111 fragile states 52, 53 French jihadist women 151 French Republican model 164 frustration-aggression theory 173 fundamentalism 36 gender 2, 31, 32, 34, 37, 38, 86, 107; code 57; dominant discourse 57–59; feminisation as racialisation 55–57; hierarchies 151; inclusion 113; non-conforming people 32; order 54–55; as structuring principle in modern-colonial world 51–59; on system level 54–55; unit of analysis 46 gendered coloniality 8, 44–60, 48–49 gendered-racialised binaries 56 gender equality 110, 115 gender identities 49, 52 genocide 36 geographical diversity 107 geographical interventions 69 geographical space 75 geographical violence 70 geopolitics 75 globalization 71, 72 global jihadism 31, 40n1 Global War on Terror (GWOT) 30, 31, 37, 40n1 government policy 131 hegemony 75 heterogeneous practices 130 heteronormativity 4, 32, 33, 39 heterosexual matrix 36 heuristic approach 69 high-risk defectors 174 holistic approaches 111 homosexuality 32, 37 homosexual lifestyle 36 human experiences 108 human rights 113, 115, 116 human rights organisation 30 human security 3, 75 hybrid epistemologies 9 hybridity 70, 163 hybrid researcher 163, 164 hypothesis 104, 107 identity-based discourse 158 identity politics 34

194

Index

ideological intractability 31 illegitimacy 59 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 136 immigration laws 160 imperialism 39, 70, 77, 118 inadequate temporality 50 inclusion criteria 175 indigenous cultures 55 Indigenous knowledge 104, 109, 110, 113, 116, 117 Indigenous people 88, 89, 91, 95–97 indigenous savage 31, 37 Indigenous women 108, 109, 111 indoctrination 36 inequality 68, 69, 90, 152, 157 inferior race 53 informal interventions 109–112 informality 109, 118 innovation 29, 32; methodological 74 insecurity 75, 76, 83, 135, 138, 185 integrated approaches 111 inter-disciplinarity 71, 74 interdisciplinary appropriation 69 interdisciplinary research 77 international interventions 112 International Law 4 International Politics 4 International Relations 69, 72, 129, 149 interpretivist epistemology 175 irrationality 59 Islam 35, 37, 59, 132, 158, 161 Islamic terrorism 37, 38–39 Islamophobia 31, 37, 39, 136, 170 Islamophobic discourse 142 Israeli couscous 38 issues 34, 75, 116, 153, 164; within CTS 4; displacement 173; epistemological 72; security 128, 131; of terrorism 1 Jewish people 29 jihadism 132 jihadist woman 151 justice 40n1, 90, 95, 111, 184 Kenya, violent extremism in 104–119 knowledge bias 113 knowledge gap 113 known terrorist 29 Labour party 128 Labour’s counterterrorism program 140 laïcité 157–158 law-and-order policies 138

left-wing parties 127, 135, 138, 139 Legal Education Awareness Scale (LEAS), 176 Legal Education plus Trauma-Informed Therapy (LETIT) 175, 176, 178, 178,179, 183, 185 Legal informed Cognitive Behavioural Therapy 172 legitimate research methods 2, 3 legitimation 35, 57, 154–155 LGBTQ+ people 31–33, 38–40, 135, 136, 139 liberalism 105 liberal theory 105 low-risk defectors 174 masculinity 52, 54–57, 153 materiality of space 69 material support 29, 30 material visuality 86 matriarchy 91 matrix of coloniality 47, 48 Media Orientation intervention, 178, 178, 179, 179, 186, 187 mental illness 36 messianism 97 metaphor 67, 69, 71, 84, 88, 89 metaphorical approaches 70 metaphorical stickiness 58–59 metaphysical operation 91 methodological innovation 74 methodological plurality: challenges of 4–7; and reflexivity 1–10 methodology 33, 89, 115, 117, 127, 128, 134, 171; for CVE 105 migration 76 military education 96 Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment network 91 mixed approach 127 mixed-method randomised control trial 170–188; Legal Education plus Trauma-Informed Therapy (LETIT) 176; media orientation 176, 178, 178, 179, 179, 186; method of analysis 176–177, 177; negative attitude towards reintegration, 180–182; positive benefits, 182–185; qualitative findings, 180; quantitative results, 178–180; sampling, participants and intervention 175–176; study design 175 mobilisation 134 modality of security 85 modernity 46–48, 50

Index money-making scheme 91 monopoly 45 morality 6, 18, 32, 38, 34 multiculturalism 158, 160 multigenerational processes 108 Muslim Ban 136 Muslims 39, 40, 132, 139, 140 mutual manifestness 160 national identity 131, 152, 153, 157–159, National Orientation Agencies, 179 national security 75, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135, 137; agencies 130; issues 128 Native Studies scholars 36 neo-colonialism 68, 69, 70, 71 neoliberal economy 139 neoliberal identity 38 neo-Nazi 138 Neo-Republicanism 160 New Liberalism 140 Nigeria 170–188; Boko Haram and community reintegration in 172–175 9/11 terrorist attacks 1, 3185, 91, 92 non-English linguistic corpora: Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) 149–164; and positionality 162–164 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) 110, 111, 114, 132, 137 non-state actors 53, 114, 132 non-state terrorist organisations 53 non-violence 38 non-violent radicalisation 140 open classroom 29 Open Democracy 138 open-ness and dialogue 72 Operation Safe Corridor (OSC) 174 Orient 54, 56, 57 Orientalism 70 Orientalist systems 82 orthodox 1, 44, 73, 105 orthodox terrorism studies 3 ostracism 36 over-determined phenomenon 35 paedophilia 37 Palestinian: Al Haq 30; anti-colonial struggle 29; human rights organisation 30; refugees 83; schoolchildren 30; violent resistance 30 Paris School of Security Studies 129 parochialism 83 pastoral-security gaze 85 patriarchy 91

195

peacebuilding theory 111 petty sovereigns 130 physical violence 32 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 138 political bias 137 political conflicts 34, 133 political ideologies 128, 129 political men 151 Political Science 129 political science-oriented methods 2 political theory 35 political violence 6, 30–32, 35, 67, 72, 73, 171 politicisation as contestation 133–135 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) 29, 30 post-9/11 events 73 postcolonial approaches 2, 5, 8, 46, 49; critique of 50; decolonial vs. 49–51 postcolonial spaces and CTS 67–79; counterterrorism in the Lake Chad Basin 74–77; dialogic possibility and collaborative futures 77–78; faces of 72–74; in postcolonial scholarship 69; social and cultural artefact 69 Postcolonial Studies 70, 71 postcolonial theory 69, 72 post-structural feminists 49, 51, 52, 54, 55 potential threats 85 poverty 74, 152 presidential systems 135 Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) 5, 6 primary data 106, 171 process ownership 104 project tourists 117 provincialize Europe 71 psycho-social needs, 187 pull-factors 137 punitive racialisation 31 qualitative data 177, 184, 185 qualitative methods 6, 7, 107, 170, 171, 175, 180–183, 187 quantitative data 183 quantitative methods 2, 6, 10, 171, 175, 187 queer abjection 34, 39 queerphobia 36 queer theory 2, 31–32, 36, 38 race 46, 56, 57, 86, 88, 92, 93, 117 racial barriers 110

196

Index

racial hierarchies 47 racial homogeneity 115 racialisation 32, 37; feminisation as 55–57 racism 92, 152 racist 46, 170 racist epistemologies 47 radicalisation 48, 77, 107, 130, 132, 133, 161 radical Islamism 158 radical resistance 38 raw material 71 reconstructive potential 5 referent of security 75 refugees 83, 173 regimes of truth 82 regional security 75 reintegration, negative attitude towards 180–182 religion 32, 36, 48, 49, 55, 60n5, 132, 134, 170 religious diversity 38 religious equality 142 religious terrorism 49; in Terrorism Studies 46 Republican model 152–154 Republic in France 156–157 rethinking methodologies in Critical Terrorism Studies 170–188 risk 2, 6, 39, 76 sampling techniques 175 Schmittian centralistic decisionism 130 Science-and-Technologies Studies 5 scientific methods 10, 170 secularism 163 securitised value 133 security 129, 139; reinforcement 94; visualities of 82 Security Studies 69, 72, 77 segregation 36, 117 self-esteem 174 self-identity 47 self-inquisitive behaviour 83 semi-presidential systems 135 Service satisfaction scale 178 settler colonialism 36, 38 sex 31, 32, 34, 37, 38, 117 sexual difference 37 sexuality 31, 32, 34, 38, 48 sexual orientation 117 shared knowledge 160 social antagonism 38 social artefact 69

social-democracy 133 social identity 174, 177 socialism 140 Socialist Party 161 social justice 170 social-liberalism 133 social media 94 social order 34, 39, 90, 91 social realities 127 social relation 150 social science 6, 69, 71, 84 socio-cultural norms 163 socio-cultural perspectives 112 socio-economic emancipation 141 socio-economic impacts 75 socio-economic reasons 173 sovereignty 30, 75, 114, 130 space/spatiality 67; conceptualisation of 70; cultural approaches 70; writing 71 Spanish party system 131 spatial discourse 74, 75 spatial politics 67, 69, 70, 73 spatial practice 8, 67, 69, 74 Stasi commission 130 state-centrism of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) 127–143; British Labour Party 138–142; politicisation as contestation 133–135; US Republican Party 135–138 State Democratic Law 93 state-power metaphors 152 state terrorism 53 stereotypes 95 structural barriers 109 Subaltern Studies 71 subjectivity 69 suicide bombings 155 superior races 53 surveillance 39, 40n1, 137, 139 sustainable community-based liberational developmental framework 30 systematic reviews 172 systemic dependency 112 systemic exclusion 106, 117 system-level, gender on 54 systems of narration 152 territory 89 terrorism 7, 56, 59, 67, 87, 89, 129, 132, 149; as abjection 32–34; Boko Haram 172–175; constitution of 149; critical research on 72; dominant discourse on 44–60, 47, 48; meaning-making of 92; moralisation of 34–38; queerness and

Index 31–34; queer theory 31–32;

scholarship 140; terrorist 34–38;

visuality through 08/01

anti-democratic attacks in Brazil

92–97

terrorism discourse 5 Terrorism Studies (TS) 1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 34, 44, 58, 67, 72, 73, 128, 170; methodological state-centrism of 128–133; religious terrorism in 46; traditional current in 73 terrorist 5, 7, 34–38, 39, 53, 92, 129, 134, 149; act 30, 132, 149; attacks 75, 137; discourse 8; organisations 30; violence of 36 terrorist subject 133 The Attitude Towards Deradicalised Terrorist and their Reintegration scale 176 Third Space 70 top-down approach 181 trade-off 141 traditional approaches 4 traits 52 transcultural global process 68 trans-disciplinarity 71, 74 transformation 45, 51, 91 transgender 106 transitional justice 172, 178, 179, 184, 187 translation technique 156 transnational global process 68 transphobia 31, 36–39 transversal CTS approaches 87 trauma 88, 92, 93, 172, 174, 175, 178, 179, 185 Trauma Screening Questionnaire 176 ubuntu 116 uncertainties 115 UN Declaration on Human Rights 115 under-determined phenomenon 35 ungoverned spaces 75, 76 Union of Agricultural Works Committees (UAWC) 30, 37 Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) 115, 116

197

untrustworthy 161 US Republican Party 135–138 violence 2, 7, 34–36, 39, 45, 53, 74, 77, 83, 89, 92, 93, 129, 137, 152; and Critical Terrorism Studies 1, 3; disciplinary 33; economic 32; female 153; geographical 70; of “Muslims” 39; non-state 73; physical 32; political 6, 30–32, 35, 67, 72, 73, 171 violent conflicts 108 violent extremism in Kenya 104–119 violent scholarship, 19, 23, 24 Visual Analysis (VA) 82, 83 Visual and Decolonial studies 84–88 visual modalities 85, 86 visual security 86 Visual Security Studies 86 vulnerability indicator 85 warfare 36 War on Drugs 40n1 War on Terror 30, 31, 36, 40n1, 83, 85, 131, 140, 152 weak states 52, 53 Western gender code 52 Western liberalism 5 Western methodology 107 Western modernity 55–57 Western-oriented frameworks 76, 77 Westphalian narrative 53 Westphalian system 53 White-Hetero-Patriarchy 117 Wilcoxon Sign Rank Test scores 179 women 49, 51, 152; emotional 151; empowerment 118; issues 54; jihadist 151; misrepresentation of women’s agency and methodological dilemma in 106–109; and terrorism 150, 151 writing spatiality 71 xenophobia 84, 138 YouTube 29 Zionist colonisation 30 Zoom 29