Performing terror, anti-terror, and public affect: Towards an analytical framework

Abstract

This essay contends that there is a need for a new conceptual framework in order to analyse the interconnections between three different discourses on global and local terrorism: acts of terror; state mobilizations of anti-terror policy and rhetoric; and thirdly, public affect, which manifests expressions among others of insecurity, suspicion of religious and ethnic Others, and national allegiance. Often the interactions between these three domains enact the ways in which local extremist acts are refracted through global discourses on terror and anti-terror. This paper argues that Butler's notion of ‘performativity’ provides an analytical tool for the examination of these discourses, and that the internet offers the opportunity to analyse these three domains and the ways in which they interact with each other.