Location
Stewart Center 313
Session Number
Session 26: PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS ON TERRORISM
Start Date
10-9-2011 1:30 PM
End Date
10-9-2011 3:00 PM
Abstract
Jean Baudrillard’s semiotic analysis of violence leads us to understand the form of violence as three-fold: aggressive, historical, and semiotically virulent. Violence of the third form is the violence endemic to terrorism. If violence has been typically understood as of the first two types, terrorism should be understood as the virulence of simulacra. The conflation of these types of violence explains the failure of militaristic responses to terrorism. This paper will explore Baudrillard’s conception of symbolic violence as the virulence of signs and help us come to terms with the semiotic foundation of terrorism.
Included in
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Symbolic Violence as Subtle Virulence: The Philosophy of Terrorism
Stewart Center 313
Jean Baudrillard’s semiotic analysis of violence leads us to understand the form of violence as three-fold: aggressive, historical, and semiotically virulent. Violence of the third form is the violence endemic to terrorism. If violence has been typically understood as of the first two types, terrorism should be understood as the virulence of simulacra. The conflation of these types of violence explains the failure of militaristic responses to terrorism. This paper will explore Baudrillard’s conception of symbolic violence as the virulence of signs and help us come to terms with the semiotic foundation of terrorism.
Comments
keywords: terrorism, Baudrillard, semiotics, signs, symbolic, virulence, 9/11, Beever, violence