Conference Day 3 (Saturday 9/10/11)

"Wand Me!": Assuming the (Subject) Position of the Compliant Body in the Age of Terror

William T. Bryan — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 17:15:00 PDT

So, What Is Terrorism? Framing the 9/11 Attacks in African Editorial Cartoons

Duncan Mainye Omanga — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT

As artifacts of political culture, editorial cartoons reveal prevalent public opinion on a particular issue with direct or indirect effects to members of society. The central question addressed in this paper is how editorial cartoons in Kenya’s press framed the 9/11 event and the extent to which such framing accorded or denied terrorists, government agencies and other stakeholders legitimacy. Specifically, the section probes the extent to which the dominant frames careered, and whether framing tilted away or towards legitimizing or delegitimizing terrorism. From these, conclusions are drawn on the extent to which particular aspects of knowledge, opinion or ideologies were constructed within the Kenyan social space in relation to the 9/11 attacks.

Extraordinary Renditions: Imaging, Mapping, and Immobilizing the Lives of Others

Manori Neelika Jayawardane — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT

The Terrorist As Monster: Depictions of Inhumanity

Gavin Cameron — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT

Terror‟s Audience: Cognitive Theatricality, Terrorist Acts, and the Collective Trauma of “Democracy”

Paul “Spike” Wilson II — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 10:45:00 PDT

The Cultural Politics of WMD Terrorism in Post-Cold War America

Harold Williford — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 09:00:00 PDT

Terrorism’s definition is hotly debated and notoriously problematic. The resulting instability of counterterrorism and counterterrorist identity, however, is less often explored. This paper analyzes the prehistory of the War on Terror to explore how the meaning and associations attributed to terrorism by counterterrorists in the 1990s reflect the latter’s priorities, agenda, and anxieties. Prevalent ahistorical post-Cold War representations of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as a “new” threat indicate that WMD-wielding terrorists functioned to justify the continued existence of the American national security state after the Soviet Union collapsed. Close readings of Rainbow Six, a Tom Clancy bestseller and textual nexus of counterterrorist politics and popular culture, contextualize analysis of this characterization of terrorism. The element of WMD in Rainbow Six and similar narratives magnifies the reality of small-scale terrorism to sustain grandiose transnationalist rhetoric about threats to the survival of the human species, which then implicates reproductivity and the gender politics of the “culture wars” in counterterrorist discourse. Clancy’s novel also stages anxieties about multi-national corporations, privatization of technological development, and the body’s vulnerability in a world of permeable borders. The multiple valences of counterterrorist opposition to non-state groups are united by a counterterrorist fantasy of mirroring terrorist dissociation from state institutions to engage in extralegal practices, which anticipates controversial aspects of the War on Terror. The analysis therefore raises the possibility that 9/11 may have slipped into an already developing cultural narrative, been absorbed into its logic and then driven by its own independent compulsions.

Cinema and Terrorism: The Narrative Struggle of Italian Filmmakers

Chiara Ferrari — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 09:00:00 PDT

Narratives of Religiously Motivated Terrorism and Modernity – Making Sense of Ourselves and Terrorist Others in a (Post)-Secular Society

Alex Holznienkemper — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT

It Could Have Been Me: Writing the United Red Army

Mariko Schimmel — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:15:00 PDT

Terrorism as ‘Open Text’: Georg Klein’s novel Libidissi

Mark Looney — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 13:30:00 PDT