The Cultural Imaginary of Terrorism in Public Discourse, Literature, and Film

Narrating Terror

Michael Frank

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134837366
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Englische Literaturkritik

This study investigates the overlaps between political discourse and literary and cinematic fiction, arguing that both are informed by, and contribute to, the cultural imaginary of terrorism. Whenever mass-mediated acts of terrorism occur, they tend to trigger a proliferation of threat scenarios not only in the realm of literature and film but also in the statements of policymakers, security experts, and journalists. In the process, the discursive boundary between the factual and the speculative can become difficult to discern. To elucidate this phenomenon, this book proposes that terror is a halfway house between the real and the imaginary. For what characterizes terrorism is less the single act of violence than it is the fact that this act is perceived to be the beginning, or part, of a potential series, and that further acts are expected to occur. As turn-of-the-century writers such as Stevenson and Conrad were the first to point out, this gives terror a fantastical dimension, a fact reinforced by the clandestine nature of both terrorist and counter-terrorist operations. Supported by contextual readings of selected texts and films from The Dynamiter and The Secret Agent through late-Victorian science fiction to post-9/11 novels and cinema, this study explores the complex interplay between actual incidents of political violence, the surrounding discourse, and fictional engagement with the issue to show how terrorism becomes an object of fantasy. Drawing on research from a variety of disciplines, The Cultural Imaginary of Terrorism will be a valuable resource for those with interests in the areas of Literature and Film, Terrorism Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Trauma Studies, and Cultural Studies.

1 “Terrorism” and “Terror”

Historical and Conceptual Frameworks

“The Infernal Problems of Definition and Designation”

In the literary scholarship cited at the end of the Introduction, and especially in studies on the cultural impact of 9/11, there is a certain tendency to take the phenomenon of “terrorism” for granted and to limit the scope of the investigation to the depiction of terrorism (and its aftermath) in fictional texts. Clearly, there are good reasons for such a procedure, which corresponds to the traditional division of labor between academic disciplines. Is it not our task as literary critics to analyze textual representations, whereas the phenomenon of terrorism itself belongs to other fields of research? In attempting to go beyond the paradigm of representation, the present study aims to do justice to the fact that “terrorism” as a phenomenon in the real world is always perceived and experienced within a discursive framework, and that the cultural imaginary of terrorism is one element of that framework. Thus understood, literature not only re-presents terrorism after the fact, but it also provides, or at least shapes (“premediates”), some of the images and narrative patterns that come into play whenever terrorism is publicly discussed. I begin this study, therefore, by examining the concept of terrorism itself, before going on to enquire into how literary texts interpret and subsequently approach this concept, or rather, what concepts they apply to the kind of clandestine political violence that we now know as “terrorism.”

International terrorism research is booming. During the last three decades of the twentieth century, it was already becoming increasingly difficult to maintain an overview of the field, but it was the attacks of September 11, 2001, that finally produced the explosion in publications in the most varied of disciplines that we are currently witnessing today. This surge in academic interest corresponds with a historically unparalleled level of awareness of terrorism among the world’s public. Over the last fifteen years, the combating of terrorism has seen the waging of wars, the realignment of geopolitical power relations, and the leveraging of fundamental constitutional principles. Paradoxically, however, the generally shared view of terrorism as one of the most pressing issues of our age goes hand in hand with a problem of definition that can only be described as notorious. The more we speak about “terrorism,” the less clarity exists in relation to the fundamental question regarding what exactly is meant by the term – and to which historical or contemporary uses of violence the term may consequently be (justly) applied. One reason for that difficulty is the term’s fraught and contested history.

Before there was “terrorism,” there was “terror,” a term that long predates the concept of political terror. In a phrase from the Book of Job that has become proverbial, Death is personified as the “king of terrors” (Job 18,14), while an earlier passage speaks of “God’s terrors” (Job 6,4). All early instances of “terror” in written English cited by the Oxford English Dictionary correspond with this biblical usage of the terms, referring invariably to the terror of God or the terror of death.¹ Another early meaning of “terror” is associated with the legal category of territio, denoting the first stage of torture, during which the victim was shown the torture instruments. This practice of psychological torture, also known in English as “territion,” has its origins in Roman law, but it continued throughout the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. What connects it to terrorism, according to Rudolf Walther, is its intended effect: to intimidate an audience beyond the immediate victim.² More relevant in the present context is the redefinition of “terror” in Enlightenment political philosophy. In his opus magnum, De l’esprit des lois (usually translated as The Spirit of the Laws, 1748), Montesquieu identifies fear (crainte) or terror (terreur) as the ruling principle of despotism, contrasting it with the virtue that underlies both the monarchic code of honor and the republic.³ By positing such “principles” – or, as he also calls them, “springs (ressorts)” – Montesquieu wishes to move the analysis of a given political system beyond the mere consideration of its “nature” or “structure” to “that which animates it,” namely, “the human passions that set it in motion.”⁴ Whereas in a monarchy, the power of the monarch is confined by laws and various intermediary institutions that stand between the sovereign and the common people to safeguard the system from declining into arbitrary government, despots know no law other than their own capricious wills. By spreading fear, they smother all ambition (one of the main driving forces of moderate monarchy) in the people.⁵ In a democracy, on the other hand, where the people are sovereign, education instills a strong identification with, and love for, the fatherland and its constitution.⁶ The political virtue that democracies demand from their citizens requires the sacrifice of private interests for the public good, a constant effort of “self-renunciation.”⁷

Considering the great influence of De l’esprit des lois on political thought in Enlightenment France in general, and writings like Saint-Juste’s L’Esprit de la Révolution et de la constitution de France (The Spirit of the Revolution and the Constitution in France, 1791) in particular, it remains puzzling that the protagonists of the “Reign of Terror” so readily adopted the term terreur, which denoted a method that Montesquieu had unequivocally identified as despotic. This is not the place to trace the whole history of the Revolutionary apologetics of terror from Marat to Saint-Juste and Robespierre. For the present purpose, it will suffice to cite the most famous example: Maximilien Robespierre’s address to the National Convention on February 5, 1794, in which he attempted to explain the differences between despotic and republican terror.⁸ Like Saint-Juste in his above-mentioned book, Robespierre had formerly opposed the death penalty. Once an advocate of human rights, he now led the Committee of Public Safety, the de facto government of France during the Terror. In his speech – perhaps the most oft-cited document from the period – Robespierre set out “to designate clearly the purposes of the revolution and the point which we wish to attain” in order to remind his listeners that the current wave of state violence was only a transitory measure.⁹ Amidst the Reign of Terror, Robespierre promised a democratic Reign of Virtue, marked by the “tranquil enjoyment of liberty and equality.”¹⁰ “Since virtue and equality are the soul of the republic,” he told his fellow republicans,

and that your aim is to found, to consolidate the republic, it follows, that the first rule of your political conduct should be, to let all your measures tend to maintain equality and encourage virtue, for the first care of the legislator should be to strengthen the principles on which the government rests. Hence all that tends to excite a love of country, to purify manners, to exalt the mind, to direct the passions of the human heart towards the public good, you should adopt and establish.¹¹

So far, Robespierre’s description of the foundations of democracy – patriotic love and a personal dedication to the public good – is perfectly in line with Montesquieu, and so is his notion that each political system has its own fundamental principle. Yet, the passage clearly describes an ideal future rather than a present reality, what should be, not what is. When Robespierre turns to the actual state of things, the tone of his speech changes notably:

If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.

It has been said that terror is the spring of despotic government. Does yours then resemble despotism? Yes, as the steel that glistens in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles the sword with which the satellites of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his debased subjects; he is right as a despot: conquer by terror the enemies of liberty and you will be right as founders of the republic. The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Is force only intended to protect crime? Is not the lightning of heaven made to blast vice exalted?¹²

Robespierre is at great pains here to counter the impression that the revolutionary regime of 1793–94 was dangerously similar to despotism, the very system of government that the revolutionaries had once set out to eradicate, accusing the Ancien Régime of tyranny. While conceding that terror is indeed a characteristic feature of despotism, Robespierre insists, nevertheless, that the Jacobins have not replaced one tyranny with another – an argument requiring a fair amount of verbal acrobatics. Terror, he explains, is merely a weapon, and as such, it is available to all types of government, legitimate as well as illegitimate ones. The fact that despots employ terror does not automatically make anyone who employs terror a despot. Because terror is a means to another end, the aim of its use makes all the difference. For this reason, Robespierre concludes that the present system – which he describes as “popular government […] during a revolution,” soon to be substituted by its regular, peacetime counterpart – is not despotic. The opposite is true. After all, the sole purpose of the current Terror is to fight despotism.

Robespierre does not leave it at that, however. In a rather bold move, he brings together two antagonistic principles: virtue and terror. From the point of view of Montesquieu’s typology of political systems, the whole first paragraph in the above excerpt seems contradictory, even oxymoronic. Not content with arguing that terror and virtue can be made compatible, Robespierre proclaims that, under the present circumstances – the state of emergency created by the Revolutionary Wars abroad and counter-revolutionary insurrections at home – terror and virtue must necessarily go hand in hand. If the revolutionaries wish to assert liberty and establish republican virtue against the adherents of tyranny, the enemies of freedom have to be defeated first. Despotism must be fought with its own weapon. For without terror, virtue would be impotent, meaning that the present government would be unable to defend the nascent republic against its external and internal foes. To allow despotism to triumph would truly be despotic. In short, temporary terror for the sake of liberty (and from the hands of the virtuous) is preferable to the permanent terror of despots, even if it is itself despotic.

The term “terrorism” distances itself from the Jacobins’ advocacy of “terror.” The first appearance of the French neologism terrorisme for which we have evidence occurred in 1794.¹³ After Maximilien Robespierre was deposed and executed, the Thermidorians used the “ism” word with unambiguously pejorative intent, in order to differentiate themselves from the Great Terror of 1793–94 (which did not, however, prevent them from frequently applying its principal tool themselves – namely, the guillotine). Thus, the word “terrorism,” which quickly entered other languages from French,¹⁴ has always been a loaded term. From the very first years o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Cultural Imaginary of Terrorism
• 1 “Terrorism” and “Terror”: Historical and Conceptual Frameworks
• 2 Imagining Clandestine Operations: Early Literary Responses to Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism
• 3 Terrorist Invasions in Turn-of-the-Century Fiction
• 4 Terrorist Aliens: 9/11 and/in Science Fiction
• 5 It Could Happen Here: Narrating Terror after 9/11
• Conclusion
• References
• Index