The Ordinariness of Terrorism: Re-shaping the Banality of Evil as Early 21st Century Zeitgeist
by This paper will advance the proposition that terrorism, far from currently being the ‘most important word in the world,’ is overused and to a point, intellectually stagnant. It will do so by eschewing an ahistorical worldview in favour of past and real-time events that present terrorism as an almost everyday phenomenon, certainly because many-variants, like sexual, domestic and community micro-forms have been ignored in the search for answers to macro- and wholesale (state-sponsored) terrorism.
From the media projection of itself as evident window on contemporary events as they unfold, terrorism becomes almost mainstream in its portrayal by commentators and political analysts alike. Indeed, a (non-clinical) pathology of terrorism suggests that the “normalisation” of the phenomenon presents a teleology of global events that merge into one whole. This is underlined by consideration of a multi-lateral appreciation of this subject, and that a definition of terrorism adds to confusion of what it is by evading a watertight, globally-acceptable definition.
Advancing these thoughts a stage further, the notion of terrorism appears to partly reside in the socio-political imaginations of media pundits, disenfranchised politicians, and academic observers alike, in that it serves to confer legitimacy by using fear as an Orwellian instrument of social control. Finally, it is proposed that terrorism is statistically insignificant in effect, and ranks as less than a road traffic accident in terms of social impact – a true barometer of the “ordinary.”
Introduction
The principal theoretical problem, it seems, with the phenomenon of “Terrorism” today, and noting all the subsequent dilemmas that logically flow from it, amounts to the vexed question of what terrorism actually is. It has been mooted by a number of commentators1exact and workable definition, and one that does not evade the central and obvious precepts of terrorist activities. Be that as it may, without a precise and accurate defining statement to this effect, the study of what is a potentially catastrophic field of human interaction may be doomed to frustration and moribundity, and that we may be constrained by a lack of critical insight. To be sure, a leading discipline in this area of enquiry, International Relations (IR), has had its own obstacles to deal with, such as for example being labelled as “Fortress IR,” the “backward discipline.”2 This therefore leads one to assume that, without a sound and thorough theoretical base to build on, any outcomes may be perceived as fundamentally flawed and of little, if any worth. However, and given the inherently facinorous nature of terrorist operations, tightening up theoretical definitions and related issues would seem to be preferable in an era of apparently gratuitous nuclear proliferation. that there remains a problem with pinning down an
Moreover, there remains an essentialist element about studying this area; that is, without a thoroughgoing understanding of the enquiry, we may be doomed to miss the central premises of terrorism, and indeed why terror remains a prime focus of global attention when some may argue, with some conviction, that more pressing matters have been sidelined by the search for absolute hermetic security, which is probably impossible to attain in any meaningful sense in any event. Following on from these observations, we may also find ourselves taken in by the theoretical and empirical mirage of the scale of threats provided by this form of political expression.
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