The necessity of "terror"

Elleke Boehmer

pp. 139-153

in: Begüm Özden Fırat, Sarah De Mul, Sonja van Wichelen (eds), Commitment and complicity in cultural theory and practice, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Abstract

The rhetoric and the realities of terror and terrorism press heavily upon the world around us. In this hyper-mediatized age, acts of terror almost immediately transmute into media events, and so appear ubiquitous, all-encompassing, all-justifying, and, moreover, are absorbed into the rituals of the everyday (Houen 2002; Zulaika and Douglass 1996). To demonstrate a radical political commitment means — perhaps more than ever before — to take a stand on our complicity, or our refusal of complicity, with "terrorist" formations.