Recessive Objects

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-75
Author(s):  
Sun-ha Hong
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Las Vegas ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Lone Wolf ◽  
Pure Data ◽  
A Site

The Snowden files are recessive objects: things that promise to extend our knowability but, in doing so, catalyze speculation and doubt. Drawing on media phenomenology, this chapter connects this recessivity to the surveillance systems themselves and the war on terror. The effort to predict the “lone wolf” terrorist, from the Boston bomber to the Las Vegas shooter, paradoxically becomes a site for smuggling in old racial prejudices about the monstrous Other. The convenient myth of “pure” data here encounters the far older and troubling project of national, territorial, and racial purity.

scholarly journals Recognizing Friend and Foe: Biometrics, Veridiction, and the Iraq War

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefka Hristova
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Recognition Method ◽  
Unique Identity ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
A Site ◽  
Identification Practices

In analyzing the deployment of biomertics in Iraq, argue that whereas the body was seen as a site of verification in 20th century surveillance and identification practices, in the ongoing War on Terror, and the Iraq War more specifically, it became a site of veridiction - a site in which the truth about the security of the state can be analyzed (Foucault 2008:32). The body thus became the basis for determining not so much one’s unique identity but one’s friendliness to the normative state order. Enemies could thus be identified and confined as a group, and in this process the state could be secured. In the ongoing of the War on Terror, the visual regime of veridiction has been further articulated to the logic of digital technologies in order to categorize an unfamiliar diverse population into a binary simplistic schema consistent of true and false, therefore friend or foe, and thus “go” - allowed to move through the country or “no go” - destined to be detained. In other words, the digitization of veridiction as the primary goal of biometrics is evident in the automation of the recognition method, the conversion of the archive into database, the transition away from the anthropological station onto mobile dispersed data-gathering enterprise, and replacement of scientific expertise with easy-to-use automated intelligence.

The abyss of counterterrorism

2019 ◽  
pp. 154-175
Author(s):  
Marco Pinfari
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Law Of War ◽  
State Actors ◽  
The Law

This chapter engages with contemporary counterterrorist practices and discusses cases in which state actors either deal with “terrorists” according to the prescriptions inherent in the symbolic and metaphoric systems used to frame them in the first place, or impersonate the monster prototype (entirely or in some of its components) in their counterterrorist strategies. It first presents the so-called Dahiya Doctrine as an example of how the framing of an enemy as the paradigmatic, cosmic adversary of a people could help a state (Israel) justify violations of the law of war. The following paragraphs discuss the performative construction of the War on Terror as the war of monsters against monsters, focusing first on the impersonation of monstrosity as part of the condoning of unconventional interrogation and detention methods, and then on the move toward de-humanized, (allegedly) surgically effective, and automatized weapon platforms and surveillance systems.

The Power of Literature to Decipher the Archetype of Lone-Wolf

2021 ◽  
pp. 182-194
Author(s):  
Maximiliano Emanuel Korstanje
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Lone Wolf ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

The Soviet Union collapse marked the end of the Cold War and the rise of the US as the only superpower, at least until 9/11, a foundational event where four civil aeroplanes were directed against the commercial and military hallmarks of the most powerful nation. Terrorism and the so-called War on Terror characterized the turn of a bloody century whose legacy remains to date. The chapter explores the dilemmas of lone-wolf terrorism from the lens of literature as well as cultural theory. The authors hold the thesis that terrorism activates some long-dormant narrative forged in the colonial period respecting to the “non-Western other.” Having said this, the chapter dissects the plot of some novels and TV films, which takes part in the broader cultural entertainment industry. Based on the logic of living with the enemy, novels alert on the importance to scrutinize the non-Western guests (migrants) as future terrorists.

scholarly journals Protecting Whiteness: Counter-Terrorism, and British Identity in the BBC’s Bodyguard

2022 ◽  
pp. 030582982110563
Author(s):  
Louise Pears
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
White Identity ◽  
British Identity ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
The Uk ◽  
A Site ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This article uses Bodyguard to trace the ways that whiteness is represented in counter-terrorism TV and so draw the links between whiteness, counter-terrorism and culture. It argues that Bodyguard offers a redemptive narrative for British whiteness that recuperates and rearticulates a British white identity after/through the War on Terror. As such it belongs to a later genre of counter-terrorism TV shows that move on from, but nonetheless still propagate, the discursive foundations of the ongoing War on Terror. This reading of Bodyguard is itself important, as popular culture is a site where much of the British population made and continues to make sense of their relationship to the UK during the War on Terror, forging often unspoken ideas about whiteness. It affords the opportunity to draw out the connections between whiteness and counter-terrorism, connections that need further scholarly attention to fully understand the complex relationships between security and race.

Methods for a neoliberal order: views on Yemen

Race & Class ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-103
Author(s):  
Hosam Aboul-Ela
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Global Order ◽  
New Methods ◽  
History Of ◽  
Virtual City ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
City State ◽  
A Site ◽  
Arabic Speaking

In Barbara Harlow’s last works, there was a distinctive methodological shift as she confronted the new realities of the post-9/11 world. The implications of this methodological movement are explored in this article through a reading of the history of the Yemeni city of Aden. Aden’s history – as a protectorate, an Arabic-speaking port, a virtual city-state and a link to East Africa – suggests the ways in which historical particularity often fits the colonial discourse paradigm imperfectly. Aden also later became a centre of radical anti-colonial solidarity in the 1970s, a centre of extreme jihadi activity during the war on terror and, most recently, a site of catastrophe manufactured by global elites. This historical trajectory also calls for a critical accounting of new methods and approaches for addressing the inequalities of the contemporary global order.

Guantánamo, Cuba: Poetry and Prison on Divided Ground

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-315
Author(s):  
Esther Whitfield
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regional Literature ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Public ◽  
Detention Centers ◽  
The Many ◽  
A Site

Abstract Guantánamo as a site whose legal contortions and human rights abuses have global reach and urgency has long been the focus of the many scholars, lawyers, and activists who have fought to keep its detention centers in the public eye. And yet, alongside advocates who have insisted on the site’s urgent moral ties to the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and the international community broadly defined—and in defiance of both a US war on “terror” and a Cuban war on “imperialism”—there have persisted smaller-scale gestures aimed at situating the Guantánamo naval base as geographically continuous with, and affectively connected to, Cuba. This article reads the poetry of Mohammed el Gharani and Ibrahim al-Rubaish, former detainees included in Marc Falkoff’s collection Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak, and of José Ramón Sánchez, longtime resident of the Cuban city of Guantánamo, as a form of regional literature produced on contested ground. It proposes that, when read across the dividing line and between languages, poetry presents a more intimate and locally specific Guantánamo than the widely known version.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-180
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Ehrlich
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
Las Vegas ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
New Era ◽  
A Site

The conclusion summarizes what happened after the heyday of the Oakland-Kansas City sports rivalry to the cities and their sports teams: the Kansas City Chiefs, the Kansas City Royals, the Oakland A’s, and the Oakland Raiders. Kansas City worked to keep the Chiefs and Royals by renovating its sports complex; it also built a new downtown arena, the Sprint Center. Oakland would lose the Raiders twice (once to Los Angeles and once to Las Vegas), and it would struggle to find a site for a new stadium for the A’s. The conclusion considers the implications of yesterday’s Kansas City-Oakland sports rivalry for a new era of city-sports relations.

Representing torture in Zero Dark Thirty (2012): Popular culture as a site of norm contestation

2019 ◽  
pp. 175063521986402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabi Schlag
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
The Public ◽  
Global War ◽  
A Site ◽  
Enhanced Interrogation ◽  
Kathryn Bigelow ◽  
The Continuum

The global war on terror (GWOT) is undoubtedly the most recent case where a government authorized ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, a euphemism for torture. In addition to shocking stories and photographs from Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and CIA black site prisons, popular culture assists in the production of torture’s public image and indicates a site of norm contestation. Therefore, the aim of this article is threefold. First, the author shows that Zero Dark Thirty (2012, dir. Kathryn Bigelow) is constitutive for the public image of torture and its meaning-in-use. Second, she argues that the film’s representation of torture works as a popular site of contesting the anti-torture norm. Finally, she reflects on the continuum between popular culture and the politics of torture.

scholarly journals Labeling and Framing: Understanding Responses to Terrorism and the Far-Right

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-76
Author(s):  
Alannah Piasecki
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Lone Wolf ◽  
State Label ◽  
The Media ◽  
Violent Acts ◽  
Critical Understanding ◽  
Politically Motivated Violence

The War on Terror narrative has created gaps in the critical understanding of terrorism studies, particularly in how the media and the state label politically motivated violence. The understanding of what terrorism means for western states has shifted dramatically after the events of September 11, 2001. With that shift, there has also been an increase in social movements that attempt to work within or work outside the current government rhetoric. However, the existence of such movements and groups and the violent acts they commit has been on the rise. This paper seeks to explore whether or not the inconsistent labeling of far-right social movement violence in western states as ‘lone wolf violence’ or ‘hate crime’ rather than ‘terrorism’ is detrimental to the critical understanding of both terrorism and counter terrorism.

Eels Under Standing Wave Conditions

1982 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 492-495
Author(s):  
O.L. Krivanek ◽  
J. TaftØ
Keyword(s):  
Standing Wave ◽  
Wave Conditions ◽  
Set Up ◽  
A Site ◽  
Complex Crystal

It is well known that a standing electron wavefield can be set up in a crystal such that its intensity peaks at the atomic sites or between the sites or in the case of more complex crystal, at one or another type of a site. The effect is usually referred to as channelling but this term is not entirely appropriate; by analogy with the more established particle channelling, electrons would have to be described as channelling either through the channels or through the channel walls, depending on the diffraction conditions.

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