Facing the world as it is? On irony and (counter)terrorism

Abstract

Terrorism and counterterrorism are often described as “ironic”, but conceptual engagement with irony has been very limited. Building on the lifework of cultural anthropologist Joseba Zulaika, this article considers irony as an analytical meta-perspective in the critical study of (counter)terrorism. It draws on the life and work of German-American Christian ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) to argue that the ironies of (counter)terrorism under U.S. president Barack Obama, who admired Niebuhr, point to an unconscious failure of collective self-understanding. Dissolving these ironies requires new narratives of American identity that cut across foreign and domestic politics, state and non-state actors, the “war on terror” and white supremacy in a long view of history. Facilitating this multidirectional process of self-reflection and -transcendence is a key task for critical scholars of (counter)terrorism.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2024.2360273
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Aston Centre for Europe
Additional Information: Copyright © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Critical Studies in Terrorism. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Barack Obama,Christian realism,Irony,Joseba Zulaika,Reinhold Niebuhr,terrorism,Political Science and International Relations
Publication ISSN: 1753-9153
Last Modified: 09 Dec 2024 09:15
Date Deposited: 16 Jul 2024 16:01
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://www.tan ... 53.2024.2360273 (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2024-06-27
Published Online Date: 2024-06-27
Accepted Date: 2024-05-20
Submitted Date: 2023-12-23
Authors: Graef, Josefin

Download

[img]

Version: Accepted Version

Access Restriction: Restricted to Repository staff only until 27 December 2025.

License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial


Export / Share Citation


Statistics

Additional statistics for this record