Instrumentalising race: why critical terrorism studies continues to have a race problem

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper interrogates how the racial logic of instrumentalisation – the intended exploitation of racialised peoples for intellectual capital – shapes the field of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS). I argue that the problem of instrumentalisation highlights CTS’s limitations to advance anti-racism because of how it standardises non-racist (rather than anti-racist) logic and practices in academia. Adopting a postcolonial perspective inspired by Frantz Fanon and Robbie Shilliam, this paper discusses the problem of CTS furthering the structural issue that is counterterrorism policymaking spaces privileging “white faces” rather than engaging knowledge production practices that are more cognisant of the relational attributes of ontology. This distinction of “rather than” is argued to be an important emphasis in how this distinction challenges the quality of criticality within CTS if CTS cannot meet its core commitments in the context of anti-racism. The aim of pursuing this evaluation is not to replace white faces with non-white representations by way of calling for diversity in the CTS professoriate. The focus of this critique of CTS is instead to explain why CTS scholars should re-examine their philosophical commitments and knowledge relations to evaluate how they can better demonstrate intellectual generosity and allyship in service to anti-racist intellectual traditions.