Performing terror, anti-terror, and public affect: Towards an analytical framework

Abstract

This essay contends that there is a need for a new conceptual framework in order to analyse the interconnections between three different discourses on global and local terrorism: acts of terror; state mobilizations of anti-terror policy and rhetoric; and thirdly, public affect, which manifests expressions among others of insecurity, suspicion of religious and ethnic Others, and national allegiance. Often the interactions between these three domains enact the ways in which local extremist acts are refracted through global discourses on terror and anti-terror. This paper argues that Butler's notion of 'performativity' provides an analytical tool for the examination of these discourses, and that the internet offers the opportunity to analyse these three domains and the ways in which they interact with each other.

The Indian Public Sphere: Histories, Contradictions and Challenges

“…The global public sphere that was launched by the 9/11 attacks provided a vocabulary and a discourse with which to reinterpret and re-present long-standing sub-national struggles -including, in the Indian context, separatist politics such as Kashmir and the North East, and radical struggles such as the Naxalite movements, which have had a history of violence. As argued elsewhere (Harindranath, 2011(Harindranath, , 2013, counter-terrorism in India, as elsewhere, contains a dimension of 'performativity' -that is, cultural-political, mediated performances by political leaders, deploying specific discourses and images, that reciprocate, on a discursive level, the performance of terrorism. This discursive terrain displays attempts on hegemonic control over public opinion on the meaning of 'terrorism' and what justifies counter-terrorism measures.…”