This essay takes a critical look at the rubric “age of terror,” a rubric which has enjoyed a certain amount of theoretical and philosophical cachet in recent years. My argument begins by noting the continuity between this hypostatization and contemporary “war on terror” rhetoric, a continuity that is, in certain respects, ironic given the politics of the “age of terror” theorists. It then moves—via Machiavelli, Max Weber, and Hannah Arendt—to a consideration of the topics of state violence (on the (...) one hand) and totalitarian terror (on the other). I use Arendt’s theorization of totalitarian terror for a dual purpose: first, to emphasize the gap between totalitarian terror and the more familiar “terror as means”; second, to question the characterization of recent Islamic terrorism as totalitarian in essence. Arendt’s distinctions between violence, terror and totalitarian terror help us avoid the Schmittian logic installed by advocates of the “war on terror” and by a variety of writers anxious to identify a ill-defined and generic “totalitarianism” as the transhistorical and transcultural “other” of liberalism. Keywords : terror; islamic terrorism; Hannah Arendt; Max Weber; totalitarianism; “Age of Terror”; liberalism; Machiavelli; evil as policy (Published online: 25 August, 2008) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics 2008. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v1i3.1861. (shrink)

The hypothesis that terrorism often emerges when mass collective action declines and radicals take up arms to compensate for the weakness of a mass movement has been around for some time; however, it has never been tested systematically. In this article the authors investigate the relationship between terrorist violence and mass protest in the context of the Spanish transition to democracy. This period is known for its pacts and negotiations between political elites, but in fact, it was (...) accompanied by high levels of terrorist violence and popular mobilization. To test the hypothesis, the authors have created two data sets, one on victims of terrorism and another on participation in demonstrations. The data clearly confirm that terrorism erupted in Spain when participation in demonstrations started to decline. This result sheds new light on the nonstructural conditions associated with the onset of terrorist violence. (shrink)

Even if war, terrorism, and other acts of political violence are inherently wrong, in so radically imperfect a world as our own there remains a need, as Virginia Held suggests, to evaluate such acts so as to distinguish between degrees of their unjustifiability. This essay proposes a notion of deliberative democracy as one criterion for such a comparative evaluation. Expanding on an analysis of the psychologically terrorizing impact of violence borrowed from Hannah Arendt, I suggest that (...) it is principally this that makes for the special wrongness of terrorism, though that by itself does not show that it is never necessary.An effort to distinguish clearly the superiority of states over non-state actors (or vice versa) in this regard proves futile, so I conclude that there is no automatic legitimacy to be gained by either sort. It follows that we should weigh an act of political violence on its own demerits irrespective of whether it is done by a state or by a group in opposition to states, and further that we should resist the propagandistic labeling of non-state violence as “evil” or “terroristic,” where such terms beg the question of its relative merits, in context, vis-à-vis state violence. (shrink)

Even if war, terrorism, and other acts of political violence are inherently wrong, in so radically imperfect a world as our own there remains a need, as Virginia Held suggests, to evaluate such acts so as to distinguish between degrees of their unjustifiability. This essay proposes a notion of deliberative democracy as one criterion for such a comparative evaluation. Expanding on an analysis of the psychologically terrorizing impact of violence borrowed from Hannah Arendt, I suggest that (...) it is principally this that makes for the special wrongness of terrorism, though that by itself does not show that it is never necessary.An effort to distinguish clearly the superiority of states over non-state actors in this regard proves futile, so I conclude that there is no automatic legitimacy to be gained by either sort. It follows that we should weigh an act of political violence on its own demerits irrespective of whether it is done by a state or by a group in opposition to states, and further that we should resist the propagandistic labeling of non-state violence as “evil” or “terroristic,” where such terms beg the question of its relative merits, in context, vis-à-vis state violence. (shrink)

Political violence in the form of wars, insurgencies, terrorism and violent rebellion constitutes a major human challenge. C. A. J. Coady brings a philosophical and ethical perspective as he places the problems of war and political violence in the frame of reflective ethics. In this book, Coady re-examines a range of urgent problems pertinent to political violence against the background of a contemporary approach to just war thinking. The problems examined include: the right (...) to make war and conduct war, terrorism, revolution, humanitarianism, mercenary warriors, the ideal of peace and the right way to end war. Coady attempts to vindicate the contemporary relevance of the just war tradition to current problems without applying the tradition in a merely mechanical or uncritical fashion. (shrink)

How Terrorism is Wrong collects essays by Virginia Held that examine terrorism and other forms of political violence. Held assesses popular attitudes that glorify some kinds of violence and vilify others, and discusses the kinds of moral evaluation appropriate for terrorism, war, violent political change, or repression. This collection suggests ways of improving how we understand and deal with violence.

The meanings of violence, political violence, and terrorism are briefly discussed. I then consider the responsibilities of the media, especially television, with respect to political violence, including such questions as how violence should be described, and whether the media should cover terrorism. I argue that the media should contribute to decreasing political violence through better coverage of arguments for and against political dissidents'' views, and especially through more and better (...) treatment of nonviolent means of influencing political processes. Since commercial pressures routinely conflict with media responsibility, I argue that society should liberate substantial amounts of culture from such pressures. (shrink)

Claudia Card had a long and distinguished career as a philosopher that began at a time when being a woman in philosophy was not an easy matter and ended much too soon with her passing in 2015. Starting with her first and still widely-cited article, “On Mercy,” she published ten monographs and edited volumes and nearly 150 articles and reviews on topics in moral, social, and political philosophy. She is is most widely known for her influential work in analytic (...) feminist philosophy and on evil. She was a pioneer in feminist and lesbian philosophy whose trailblazing work has influenced generations of philosophers; and in her 25 articles and two monographs on evil and evils such as rape, domestic violence, child abuse, war, terrorism, and genocide, she proposed a new way of understanding evil that made a profound contribution to philosophical thinking about these topics. This volume brings together eleven of her articles, including seven essays on war, genocide, and evil, and four essays on topics in feminist ethics. In addition, the volume includes nine essays by other authors that explore and expand upon Card’s philosophical legacy. This unique volume combines Card’s own mature voice with the best in recent scholarship on issues central to her own philosophical concerns. (shrink)

I offer a hopefully compelling defense of the view of those whom I refer to as hard-core opponents of terrorism. For hard-core opponents, terrorism is categorically wrong and, therefore, morally and legally unjustified. I view terrorism as either equivalent to murder or man slaughter in domestic law, or equivalent to crimes against humanity or war crimes in international law. If my argument is compelling, at least two important results follow from it. First, that under no circumstances is (...) terrorism justified. And second, that even if my argument were to be compelling, it will not necessarily end debates about the nature, justification, or excuse of terrorism. (shrink)

This dissertation argues that there is an agreed upon commonsense view of violence, but beyond this view, definitions for kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally, politically ideological, given that the political itself is an essentially contested concept defined in relation to ideologies that oppose one another. The first chapter outlines definitions for a commonsense view of violence produced by Greene and Brennan. This chapter argues that there are incontestable instances of violence that are (...) almost universally agreed upon, such as when an adult intentionally smashes a child’s head against a table, purposefully causing harm. It is also claimed that, because political, ideological distinctions between kinds of violence arise from the creation of moral equivalences to the commonsense view of violence, political ideology is the source of disagreement. The second chapter argues that the concept of violence and of the political are essentially contested concepts. Gallie’s criteria for what counts as an essentially contested concept are utilized in order to argue that violence is an essentially contested concept at the level of the political, though not at the level of the commonsense view of violence. In fact, the paradigmatic cases that the commonsense view of violence pertains to serve as the core cases that are then interpreted as kinds of violence at the ideological level. To define violence as altogether wrong, or to define kinds of violence as acceptable and others as wrong is itself a politically ideological move to make, such as when liberalism defines its own uses of violence as justified and legitimate, and its enemy’s violence as unjustifiable and illegitimate. The World Health Organization and Bufacchi’s definitions for violence are presented, as are the definition for terroristic violence defined by Nagel. Erlenbusch’s critique of a liberal view, such as that of Nagel and the World Health Organization, is addressed as a reflection on the fact that, beyond the commonsense view of violence, violence is an essentially contested concept for which an ideologically, politically non-neutral definition is unlikely. The third chapter outlines numerous definitions produced by various philosophers, historians, and theorists, such as Machiavelli, Arendt, Hobbes, Kant, Treitschke, Weber, Bakunin, Sorel, Žižek, and Benjamin. The definitions produced by each demonstrates that person’s political ideological assumptions. Their definitions demonstrate an ongoing disagreement, in the sense of Rancière’s formulation for what counts as a disagreement in that each theorist defines kinds of violence under the yoke of their own political ideology. They all might agree that a single act is violent, under the commonsense view of violence, but they disagree concerning what kind of violence it is. So, though they may point to the same events and actions as examples of violence, what they mean fundamentally differs, and this means that they disagree. Their disagreement arises due to their respective political ideologies. This disagreement shows that there is no neutral justification for the neutrality of a state, particularly if a neutral state must defend itself. The state is instead defined in historically contextual terms of how the state relates to kinds of violence, and the distinctions between kinds of violence are not themselves politically, ideologically neutral. So, the concept of violence, beyond the commonsense view, is an essentially contested concept for which a non-neutral definition is unlikely. Beyond the commonsense view, political ideology is inextricably bound up within distinctions between kinds of violence. The fourth chapter then examines arguments on the question of whether nonviolence counts as a kind of violence. If distinctions between kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally defined, and nonviolence is defined as distinct from violence, then it follows that nonviolence is an essentially contested concept for which no non-neutral definition is possible, at least beyond a commonsense view of nonviolence. A commonsense view of nonviolence is defined as the assumption that nonviolence is not violent in the way that the commonsense view defines violence. That is, nonviolence occurs when there is no action or event that most people would define as a violent one. Definitions for nonviolence, civil disobedience, nonviolent political actions, and nonviolent direct actions are then outlined. These definitions aim at showing that the doctrine of nonviolence does not merely refer to nonviolent acts, but to a strategy that is a means to defeating violence. Given that what counts as the nonviolence that defeats violence is ideologically a matter of disagreement, nonviolence, in this sense, can count as a kind of violence. The fifth chapter concludes, raising questions concerning how violence can be valued, the degree to which a state cannot neutrally justify its neutrality, and the degree to which, beyond the commonsense view of violence, there ever could be agreement concerning what counts as kinds of violence. 1 In this dissertation, I draw on a number of ideas/passages that appeared earlier in my paper “The Efficacy of Scapegoating and Revolutionary Violence," in Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions: A Journal of the World Union of Catholic Philosophical Societies, ed. William Sweet, 10(2014), 203-219. I am grateful to the editors of the journal for permission to draw on this material here. (shrink)

Political theory between moralism and realism -- Telling stories : on art's role in dispelling genocide blindness -- How to do things with hypotheticals : assessing thought experiments about torture -- Genealogy as critique : problematizing definitions of terrorism -- The conceptual tapestry of political violence.

I. The New World Order The issue at the center of Giorgio Agamben's book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995), that of the relation of bare life to politics and the law, has, in the ten years since the book's appearance, been propelled so forcefully into the foreground by events on the world political stage that Agamben's central figure has taken on an uncanny actuality.1The images broadcast around the world of Guantánamo Bay appear like visualizations of the (...) homo sacer, the definition of which is he who “may be killed and yet not sacrificed.”2 Even more so…. (shrink)

The hopes fostered by the end of the Cold War have been shattered, in this troubled beginning of the XXI century, both by a new kind of extreme violence, transnational terrorism, and-more recently-by a global economic downturn with no end yet in sight. Facing these challenges, world governance suffers from the inadequacy both of political theory and of institutions. This book invites us to go back to basics, i.e. to revisit the very foundations of political and (...) moral theory, and reconsider in the light of the present global predicament the relationship between ends and means, the concept of liberty, the precept of solidarity. Terrorism is a test case of our capacity to look beyond our narrow political options in order to attain the common goal of banning it legally, politically and morally. In order to do that, we will have to be able to define terrorism in a way that recognizes it as distinct from other forms, sometimes equally repulsive but different, of violence. It is an effort that requires at the same time ethical sensitivity and a new kind if non-ideological realism. The same effort that must allow us to build and strengthen new international institutions, from the economy to international criminal law. (shrink)

Coady understands political violence to include war as well as terrorism, interventionism, revolution and the violence of mercenaries. His discussion ranges widely over the concept of violence, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and ethical issues surrounding mercenaries. Some of this has appeared in print before, but much of it is new.Although war is but one form of political violence, in his view, much of his concern is with the just war tradition. Contrary (...) to some contemporary just war theorists, who question whether war is presumptively wrong, he takes the just war tradition to counsel against war unless strict conditions are met. He thinks that these conditions can be met, but apparently only rarely. He follows many contemporary writers, however, in seeing the just war tradition as an alternative to the traditions of realism and pacifism, both of which he examines critically.Coady's discussion of terrorism is particularly timely. He rejects the tendency to view …. (shrink)

Coady understands political violence to include war as well as terrorism, interventionism, revolution and the violence of mercenaries. His discussion ranges widely over the concept of violence, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and ethical issues surrounding mercenaries. Some of this has appeared in print before, but much of it is new.Although war is but one form of political violence, in his view, much of his concern is with the just war tradition. Contrary (...) to some contemporary just war theorists, who question whether war is presumptively wrong, he takes the just war tradition to counsel against war unless strict conditions are met. He thinks that these conditions can be met, but apparently only rarely. He follows many contemporary writers, however, in seeing the just war tradition as an alternative to the traditions of realism and pacifism, both of which he examines critically.Coady's discussion of terrorism is particularly timely. He rejects the tendency to view …. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy principle is exposed to in-depth philosophical analysis and historical examination with the aim of showing that the political follows hostility, violence and terror as form follows matter. The book argues that the partisan is an umbrella concept that includes the national and global terrorist.

Violence and Messianism looks at how some of the figures of the so-called Renaissance of "Jewish" philosophy between the two world wars - Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin and Martin Buber - grappled with problems of violence, revolution and war. At once inheriting and breaking with the great historical figures of political philosophy such as Kant and Hegel, they also exerted considerable influence on the next generation of European philosophers, like Lévinas, Derrida and others. This book aims to (...) think through the great conflicts in the past century in the context of the theory of catastrophe and the beginning of new messianic time. Firstly, it is a book about means and ends - that is, about whether good ends can be achieved through bad means. Second, it is a book about time: peace time, war time, time it takes to transfer from war to peace, etc. Is a period of peace simply a time that excludes all violence? How long does it take to establish peace? Building on this, it then discusses whether there is anything that can be called messianic acting. Can we - are we capable of, or allowed to - act violently in order to hasten the arrival of the Messiah and peace? And would we then be in messianic time? Finally, how does this notion of messianism - a name for a sudden and unpredictable event - fit in, for example, with our contemporary understanding of terrorist violence? The book attempts to understand such pressing questions by reconstructing the notions of violence and messianism as they were elaborated by 20th century Jewish political thought. Providing an important contribution to the discussion on terrorism and the relationship between religion and violence, this book will appeal to theorists of terrorism and ethics of war, as well as students and scholars of Philosophy, Jewish studies and religion studies. (shrink)

C ontemporary religious terrorism propels in the forefront of philosophical, sociological, anthropological and political discussions and analysis the issue of religious violence. The violence belongs to the nature itself of religion? If so, what mechanisms can be activated to reduce violence? How to reconcile Christianity's central idea - the love of our neighbor - with the sacred violence thesis? How can the idea of religious violence be reconciled with the idea of religious love? (...) Weak thinking, that is the logic of a weak thinking may be a solution? We try to answer to such questions by appealing to the debate of ideas offered by the French anthropologist René Girard and the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo. (shrink)

Unlike one-to-one threats, terrorist threat texts constitute a form of violence and a language crime that is committed in a complex context of public intimidation, and are communicated publicly and designed strategically to force desired sociopolitical changes [19]. Contributing to law enforcement and threat assessors’ fuller understanding of the discursive nature of threat texts in terrorism context, this paper examines how language is used dialogically to communicate threats and to construct both the purpose of threatened actions and the (...) victims. The paper uses a critical discourse analytic approach and takes a set of eleven digital threat texts made by two jihadists as a case study. It draws on van Dijk’s concept of ideology [64], the law enforcement-based taxonomy of threat types as reported by Napier and Mardigian [40], van Leeuwen’s model of social actor representation and discursive construction of purpose of social actions [69], and Martin and White’s Engagement system [34]. The analysis reveals victims specified and genericised, excluded and adversary. This linguistic construction is underpinned by a dichotomous conceptualisation of the social actors’ affiliations, positions, values, cultural activities, goals, and material and symbolic resources. The threats are delivered to the victims, agents acting on their behalf (e.g. security forces) or property associated with them (e.g. oil refinery), and are of two primary types—direct, and veiled. The former are predominant and serve inter alia to augment the public-intimidation impact of terrorist discourse. Threatened violence is of goal-, means- and/or effect-oriented social purposes, which suggest a categorisation of threats based on these purposes. The analysis reveals a dialectic, refutative nature of argumentation, and a discourse pregnant with heteroglossic utterances that contract (i) to close off and disalign with state officials’ contradictory voices, and (ii) to produce tension, providing clues to terrorists’ motivations and what constitutes the heart of political violence. (shrink)

Wretchedness and terrorism, and differences we make between them -- A theory of justice, an anarchism, and the obligation to obey the law -- The principle of humanity -- Our omissions and their terrorism -- On democratic terrorism -- Doctrines, commitments, and four conclusions about terrorism for humanity.

In The Cruel Radiance, Susie Linfield challenges the idea that photographs of political violence exploit their subjects and pander to the voyeuristic tendencies of their viewers. Instead she argues passionately that looking at such images—and learning to see the people in them—is an ethically and politically necessary act that connects us to our modern history of violence and probes the human capacity for cruelty. Grappling with critics from Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag and the (...) postmoderns—and analyzing photographs from such events as the Holocaust, China’s Cultural Revolution, and recent terrorist acts—Linfield explores the complex connection between photojournalism and the rise of human rights ideals. In the book’s concluding section, she examines the indispensable work of Robert Capa, James Nachtwey, and Gilles Peress and asks how photography should respond to the increasingly nihilistic trajectory of modern warfare. A bracing and unsettling book, The Cruel Radiance convincingly demonstrates that if we hope to alleviate political violence, we must first truly understand it—and to do that, we must begin to look. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the developing area of feminist scholarship on women and political violence, through a study of women in one of Europe's oldest illegal armed movements, the radical Basque nationalist organization ETA. By tracing the changing patterns of women's participation in ETA over the past four decades, the article highlights the historical factors that help explain the choice of a small number of Basque women to participate directly in political violence, and shows (...) how these factors have differed from those for men. While the gender politics of radical nationalism are intricately linked to cross-cultural associations of militarism with certain forms of masculinity, the article also stresses the importance of understanding women's activism in ETA in the context of the organization's characteristic as an ethnic nationalist movement, as well as the wider historical circumstances of the movement's development, including the modernization of Spanish and Basque society over the past four decades. Although comparisons with women in other armed movements are possible, such historical specificities undermine any attempt to construct a universal theory of women and ‘terrorism’, such as Robin Morgan's ‘couple terrorism’ thesis. Finally, the article examines the changing representations of female ETA activists in the Spanish and Basque media. Although women ETA activists are now regarded as ‘normal’, popular representations continue to link women's armed activism with deviant sexuality and the transgression of their natural destiny as mothers. The different treatment of women is evident as well in claims of sexual torture made by some detainees. The article concludes that although the participation of women in political violence poses disquieting questions for the largely anti-militarist women's movement, case studies of women in armed organizations, as well as their place in the wider practices of conflict, are an important contribution both to feminist debates about violence and to wider studies of political violence. (shrink)

Terrorism, Security and Nationality shows how the concepts and methods of political philosophy can be applied to the practical problems of terrorism, state violence and national security. The book clarifies a wide range of issues in applied political philosophy, including the ethics of war, theories of state and nation, the relationship between communities and nationalisms, and the uneasy balance of human rights and national security. Ethnicity, national identity and the interests of the state, concepts commonly (...) cited to justify terrorist acts, all imply starkly contrasting notions of what constitutes a political community. Paul Gilbert examines the reasons for political violence and the plausibility of such justifications. He investigates notions of terrorism as unjust war and as political crime and concludes by considering the proper response of the state to political violence. (shrink)

Tough anti-terrorism policies are often defended by focusing on a fixed minority of the population who prefer violent outcomes, and arguing that toughness reduces the risk of terrorism from this group. This reasoning implicitly assumes that tough policies do not increase the group of 'potential terrorists', i.e., of people with violent preferences. Preferences and their level of violence are treated as stable, exogenously fixed features. To avoid this unrealis- tic assumption, I formulate a model in which policies (...) can 'brutalise' or 'appease' someone's personality, i.e., his preferences. This follows the endogenous prefer- ences approach, popular elsewhere in political science and economics. I formally decompose the effect of toughness into a (desirable) deterrence effect and an (un- desirable) provocation effect. Whether toughness is overall effi cient depends on which effect overweighs. I show that neglecting provocation typically leads to toughness exaggeration. This suggests that some tough anti-terrorism policies observable in the present and past can be explained by a neglect of provocation. (shrink)

Reinterpreting Sartre’s main methodologies and removing Hegelian dialectics from his notion of violence, this book demolishes the supposed hostile intersubjective relations that characterizes all concrete relations. Furthering this stance, it reconstructs an interpretation of the "violent Sartre" and crafts an alternative response: one that rejects terrorist tactics, preemptive war and Western hegemony through democratization. Based on the latest debate on Sartre’s works on ethics and politics, this project examines the relevancy and new importance they hold for contemporary concerns -- (...) the reactionary nature of terrorism, the extremity of counter-violence, and limitations of democratization efforts -- all claiming to be justified in the name of "freedom" and "liberation." While it is the concern over the "terrorist’" nature of his writings that dominates the current debate, this project starts from the premise that it is as important to ask why violence is unjustified when it can put an end to a situation that disparages humanity. In arguing for the need for moral limitations to all violent struggles, and the need for seeing others as ends-for-themselves, it proceeds to outline a response based on existential humanist ethics that can reaffirm our moral compass. (shrink)

Accounts of terrorism, which locate the emergence of the concept in the French Revolution, tend to accept two premises. First, they assume that the concept of terrorism names a particular form of violence. Second, they regard Robespierre as the first practitioner of terrorism, thus suggesting an understanding of the term as state violence. While this article substantiates the second premise by way of a discussion of the first systematic articulation of terrorism by Tallien in (...) 1794, it problematises the first premise through an examination of archival evidence from the period between 1794 and 1797. By identifying a variety of conceptual uses of terrorism as a form of government, political philosophy and political identity, I argue for an expansion of the conceptual space within which terrorism is primarily understood as a form of violent action. (shrink)

ABSTRACT he paper examines the digital practices and discourses of the Islamic State when exploiting Social Media Communication environments to propagate their jihadist ideology and mobilise specific audiences. It draws on insights from Social Media Critical Discourse Studies, observational approaches, and visual content/semiotic analysis. The paper maintains the complementary nature of technological practice and discursive content in the process of meaning-making in digital jihadist discourse. The study shows that digital practices of strategic sharing, distribution and campaigns to re-upload textual materials (...) are made possible by exploiting SMC communicative affordances. As for the analysis of discursive content, the paper focuses on YouTube and highlights strategic patterns and covert references in an IS-produced flagship video. It illustrates how IS discourse constructs its envisaged in-group/outgroup by symbolising current events within historical, political and ideological conflict scenarios, i.e. the incessant resistance and legitimacy of forces of virtue vs evil. By foregrounding symbolic references to military outgroup actors, IS legitimises its own violence and projects a powerful self-identity against a global hegemony. The paper shows how the combination of a technologically savvy operation and a resistant, anti-hegemonic narrative, embedded in a strategically framed symbolism of Islam, may resonate with global -diasporic digital consumers. (shrink)

Shortly after the bus and subway bombings in London on July 7, 2005, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called upon world leaders to reach consensus on a definition of terrorism, one that would facilitate 'moral clarity' and underwrite the United Nations convention against terrorism. The Secretary General's plea to world leaders help to highlight the practical significance and urgency of having a workable definition of terrorism. For the task of defining terrorism is not only theoretically (...) or academically important; it is important for far-reaching practical, moral, and political purposes as well. For without at least some semblance of a workable definition of terrorism, it is impossible to identify and collect data on acts of terrorism throughout the world; to understand and address the root causes of terrorism; and to reach international agreement and undertake collective action in addressing terrorism. And yet in spite of practical and moral urgency of the task at hand, consensus on an acceptable definition of terrorism has been notoriously elusive. (shrink)

_Terrorism, Security and Nationality_ shows how the ideas and techniques of political philosophy can be applied to the practical problems of terrorism, State violence and national identity. In doing so it clarifies a wide range of issues in applied political philosophy including ethics of war; theories of state and nation; the relationship between communities and nationalisms; human rightss and national security. Paul Gilbert identifies conflicting conceptiona of civil strife by different political communities and investigates notions (...) of terrorism both as unjust war and as political crime. He concludes by considering the proper response of the State to political violence. (shrink)

_Terrorism, Security and Nationality_ shows how the ideas and techniques of political philosophy can be applied to the practical problems of terrorism, State violence and national identity. In doing so it clarifies a wide range of issues in applied political philosophy including ethics of war; theories of state and nation; the relationship between communities and nationalisms; human rightss and national security. Paul Gilbert identifies conflicting conceptiona of civil strife by different political communities and investigates notions (...) of terrorism both as unjust war and as political crime. He concludes by considering the proper response of the State to political violence. (shrink)

This paper will explore the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an exemplar of political mythmaking, a genre of narrative designed to channel and thereby to quell social anxiety and to orient select groups toward desirable beliefs and practices. One of the Declaration’s most fundamental and forceful elements is its enshrinement of the “inherent dignity” of each member of the human family. Drawing upon contemporary theorizations of mythmaking and sacralization, this article will elucidate the manner in which inherent (...) dignity functions as the central item of sacredness within what we might call the “secular morality” of universal human rights. (shrink)

Reinterpreting Sartre’s main methodologies and removing Hegelian dialectics from his notion of violence, this book demolishes the supposed hostile intersubjective relations that characterizes all concrete relations. Furthering this stance, it reconstructs an interpretation of the "violent Sartre" and crafts an alternative response: one that rejects terrorist tactics, preemptive war and Western hegemony through democratization. Based on the latest debate on Sartre’s works on ethics and politics, this project examines the relevancy and new importance they hold for contemporary concerns -- (...) the reactionary nature of terrorism, the extremity of counter-violence, and limitations of democratization efforts -- all claiming to be justified in the name of "freedom" and "liberation." While it is the concern over the "terrorist’" nature of his writings that dominates the current debate, this project starts from the premise that it is as important to ask why violence is unjustified when it can put an end to a situation that disparages humanity. In arguing for the need for moral limitations to all violent struggles, and the need for seeing others as ends-for-themselves, it proceeds to outline a response based on existential humanist ethics that can reaffirm our moral compass. (shrink)

In the summer and autumn of 2015, I met with activists in Athens and Thessaloniki, with the aim of collaboratively producing a conceptual mapping of LGBTQ social movement discourses. My point of entry was the use and signification of “racism” in LGBTQ discourses (and more generally in common parlance in Greek) as a superordinate or “umbrella” concept that includes “homophobic” and “transphobic” but also “misogynist,” “ageist,” “ableist,” and class- or status-based prejudice, discrimination, and oppression, in addition to that, of course, (...) based on “race” or “ethnicity.” As a political theorist whose work over the past decade has focused on the concept of intersectionality, its origins in US Black feminist thought, and its transnational travel beyond the Anglo-American context in which it originated, I wanted to examine how this use of “racism” relates to the concept of “intersectionality” which is now emergent in the Greek social movement context, in particular in LGBTQ and feminist discourses, yet which has not been engaged by academics, neither in the nascent and struggling field of gender studies, nor in legal theory. How do LGBTQ activists define the referential scope and semantic contents of these concepts, based on what knowledges grounded in lived experiences, and on what kinds of social movement strategies? How do these concepts and their theoretical underpinnings reflect or direct activists’ political resistance to the widespread violence that they identify within and on the borders of Greek society? Do they enable coalition-building with other minoritised groups targeted by institutional and interpersonal “racism”? In approaching these questions, I wanted to trace the ways in which my interlocutors produce theories, through which social conditions of racial and heteropatriarchal power are made visible, are explained, and are contested—conditions that they identify with the institutions—“nation, religion, and family”—that make up what they termed the “triptych” or the “syntax of power.” What emerged in my conversations with activists were vivid accounts of the atmospheric violence facing LGBTQ people in Greece, its institutional and interpersonal manifestations, both banal and extreme. Indeed, many activists defined violence as the quintessence of oppression as such, and as what links various systems or forms of oppression—or, “racisms”—to one another. In what follows, I draw on these conversations not to answer the questions with which I set out, but, primarily, those that my interlocutors generated, which concern, ultimately, the unlivability of queer and trans lives—the violence LGBTQ people face and resist, particularly at the intersections of youth, poverty, disability, rurality, racialisation, criminalisation, and patriarchy. (shrink)

Rather than focusing on political and legal debates surrounding attempts to determine if and when genocidal rape has taken place in a particular setting, this essay turns instead to a crucial, yet neglected area of inquiry: the moral significance of genocidal rape, and more specifically, the nature of the harms that constitute the culpable wrongdoing that genocidal rape represents. In contrast to standard philosophical accounts, which tend to employ an individualistic framework, this essay offers a situated understanding of harm (...) that features the importance of interdependence and relationality and that conceptualizes harms as embodied and contextual. The paper ultimately reveals what is distinctive about this particular crime of sexual violence by exploring the logic of genocidal rape: genocidal rape involves the harm of forced self-betrayal unleashed relationally, causing victims as representatives of their group to participate inadvertently in the destruction of that group. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that a particular war is just or unjust, that terrorism is always wrong, or that torture can sometimes be morally justified? What are the moral bases for the possession or use of nuclear weapons, intervening in other nations' civil wars, or being a bystander to genocide? Such questions take us to the heart of what is morally right and wrong behaviour in our world. Global Violence: Ethical and Political Issues provides readers (...) with the analytical tools to better understand the suppositions that underlie the debates about such questions, as well as equipping them to advance their own reasoned and informed moral analyses of these topics. The book engages different normative approaches from the fields of ethics, international relations and political philosophy and uses them to examine a set of case studies on the subjects of inter-state and civil war, nuclear weapons, terrorism, torture and genocide. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that a particular war is just or unjust, that terrorism is always wrong, or that torture can sometimes be morally justified? What are the moral bases for the possession or use of nuclear weapons, intervening in other countries’ civil wars, or being a bystander to genocide? Such questions take us to the heart of what is morally right and wrong behaviour in our world. Global Violence: Ethical and Political Issues provides readers (...) with the analytical tools to better understand the suppositions that underlie the debates about such questions, as well as advances its own reasoned and informed ethical analyses of these topics. The book engages different normative approaches from the fields of ethics, political theory, and international relations and uses them to examine a set of case studies on the subjects of inter-state and civil war, nuclear weapons, terrorism, torture and genocide. (shrink)