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Discourse of Evil: Speaking Terrorism to Silence
Galip Isen
<1> That the impact of terrorism is equal to
the reaction it elicits may be a truism, but one that deserves further probing
as demonstrated by the way that reaction is put to use politically. Whichever
of 150-strong definitions [1]
is accepted, the consequential aspect of terrorism is "ideational":
the assault targets the concept and experience of normal in the lives and
minds of ordinary people. Several writers argue that terrorism is generally
inefficacious, strategically counterproductive and mostly unsuccessful as
a method of attaining socio-political objectives [2].
However, overall public response to 11 September 2001 has been so profound
that 9-11 probably can go down in history as the first ever "success"
of terrorism.
<2> A few weeks after the carnage of 9-11, The
Village Voice [3]
commented "the whole thing was a prophetic fantasy come true
all as it had been on the screen." Indeed, there are probably
more passages presaging a terrorist attack of similar mode and magnitude in
a plethora of pulp fiction, from Mario Puzo to William Safire or Tom Clancy
than in texts on political science, international relations, sociology, history
or psychology. Therefore, it can be argued that the American (and world) public,
the media, Hollywood producers, paperback publishers etc. had reason to see
such an eventuality as sufficiently plausible to warrant attention and merit
the interest of culture consumers. So can it be safely assumed that numerous
government agencies tasked with technical and psychological preparedness against
such emergencies, must have pored over a respectable array of intelligence
reports, worst case scenarios, contingency plans, preemptive measures and
so on, to anticipate and alleviate the effects of an imminent and devastating
attack [4]
by terrorists.
<3> In that case, ignoring the sheer abominability
of the act for a moment, it is perplexing why the tragedy of September 11
caught America and the rest of the world by such surprise [5].
Opinion polls point to the sociological drift and spread of the shock in the
wake of 9-11 and the aura of mediated communication surrounding it: Terrorism
figures to have become a "buzzword"
[6] in the life course of the ordinary
citizen, too, a force that exerts itself into known conceptions and practices
of life. A conceptual presence exerts its influence primarily on minds and
therefore, the phenomenon of terrorism needs to be probed deeper, if possible,
in areas and aspects reflecting its effect on collective mental frames of
reference. The quintessential question may be how aware an important sector
of humanity is as to what it is so frightened of. Then, it might be more enlightening
to begin reviewing the entire problem in another fashion: When speaking of
terrorism, are we reitirating a tired jargon of matters of prophylactic techniques
and technology, intelligence, detection and punishment, policies and reprisals
etc.? Or are we facing a weakness of modern society against a genre of violence
that may be caused by the very same reasoning applied to understanding and
formulating the evil of terrorism and the already exhausted usual answers?
<4> Polls reveal that Americans who before September
11 tended to assess their government in relation to issues of social policy,
are now more focused on national security
[7]. Terrorism was seen as the most
important problem facing the country right after 9-11 and despite a drop in
rating, continued to vie with economic concerns for the top spot since
[8]. There were responses with a
deeper reaching potential of new socio-political demands: the public voiced
support for deterring terrorism at the expense of "limited" infringements
to individual and personal rights
[9]. A majority of Americans said
they approved the reinstitution of the military draft if more soldiers were
needed in the war on terrorism
[10]. Seventy percent of the people
interviewed six months later reported that they had shed tears in the aftermath
of the attacks and about 20 percent still occasionally did
[11].
<5> In the light of such indicators, it makes sense that the official and public reaction to 9-11 has accorded terrorism, which used to be but the "warfare of losers" the status of a successful modus operandi. The eponymy of the military intervention to Afghanistan as "War against Terror," too, has elevated it to a par with "war" [12], to which aeons of historical conditioning, myths of valor, heroism and victory have accorded a measure of legitimacy. It can further be commented that terrorism has almost come to be accepted as some kind of inevitability. The mere utterance of terror now constitutes a message, and worse, is perceived as a symbol, another semiological instrument of power with the potency of a totem [13], no less fear rousing than the evil it represents [14].
<6> The flood of rhetoric encompassing the policy
moves pioneered by U.S. President George W. Bush and his complement of "communication
elites" had a considerable effect in the management of the discourse
spurred by 9-11 and progressed to the belligerency in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Discourse management is a term fairly widely used in studies of human-computer
interaction and face-to-face communication situations. It usually refers to
the strategies and the control of the flow and direction of messages, choice
of topics, techniques of guiding discussions for influencing outcomes. As
such, in general lexicons the concept has the attributes of a power-play,
oriented to the accomplishment of willed ends, albeit in the limited bounds
of conversational interaction and behavior [15].
Here, rather in the Foucauldian manner, the usage is relatively comprehensive,
comprising more than the techniques, mechanisms and strategies of controlling
small group -- limited issue communication frames. Discourse management
in this broader and rather sociological sense too, is again in part, a process
of setting public agendas, determining the limits and flow of messages, monitoring
their sources, impacts and limiting or remedying their damage. Then, it also
incorporates the selection of particular arrays of means, modes and media
of debate conducive for creating favored mindsets, ways of seeing, thinking,
doing and being-in-the-world. "Discourse," by definition, constrains
communication processes and hence thought and social praxis. It accomplishes
this by delimiting the choices and extent of intellectual foci, the parameters
of knowledge and its production. Thus, prevailing discourse is elemental in
construing whatever is adhered to in the community as "truth." Even
when arguments run counter to the tenets of a favored content and use of language
as "truth," they are still largely determined by it and possibly
contribute to the power it commands, constituting more a complementary para-discourse
than anti-discourse
[16].
<7> Discourse is not a sum total of semantics
or rhetoric. It comprises above and beyond the use of language and symbols,
messages never uttered but still communicated implicitly, concealed in utterances
[17].
All propositions of discourse need not be expressed in order to be "understood."
This hermeneutic process takes place by means of what Tuen van Dijk calls
"macro-structures." Macro-structures organize complex semantic information
enabling the interpretation of such latent cognitive information, accord a
cognitive ability to summarize discourse and resort to it for comprehending
and rendering relevant other information. The constraints of discourse operate
globally on macro-structures and their quite specific contents, providing
a global meaning for discourse
[18].
<8> Michel Foucault concentrated on the power-related
aspects of discourse. He noted that the "production of discourse is controlled,
selected, organized and redistributed to avert its powers, avoid its dangers,
to cope with hazard and to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality"
[19].
According to Foucault, it is the type of discourse which constantly "is
reiterated, discussed, spoken and remains spoken indefinitely" that lends
itself to power [20].
Weltanschaaungen
[21] are directly or implicitly
woven into "ouvres"; texts, statements or utterances as discourse
by way of what Foucault calls the "author function" [22].
The genealogical aspect of discourse constitutes a domain of objects in relation
to which true or false propositions can be denied or affirmed
[23]. It is via this process of
controlling contents that engage the mind, and hence, the mind that knowledge
becomes objectified through discourse into both power itself and an instrument
of power [24].
<9> This view takes into account a rather subtle
dimension of power that has rather been neglected by the concerns of mainstream
social science because it is not an empirical, institutionalized and therefore,
"safe" category. Power, with reference to its psychologically effective
vectors relates directly to its communicative aspect. Similar to what Foucault
extrapolated [25]
in the concept "will to truth"
[26], power, perhaps in its most
influential and most ingenious form, appears as a capability to determine,
dictate or dominate the predominant discourses or "narratives" of
"truth" [27].
Narratives are the most significant form of discourse
[28]. Foucault posits truth as
"a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution,
circulation and operation of statements, linked to systems of power, which
produce and sustain it"
[29]. Truth constitutes a system
of knowledge and knowing, consecutive to which, reality arbitrated.
<10> Inverting Foucault's perspective, it might
be more suitable, however, to state "in potestas veritas":
"power" as a requisite if not prerequisite of truth, rather than
vice versa. The assertion of "truth as power" may allude to it an
essence or character that is independent from "experience"
[30] out of which both power and
truth emerge. Thus, a "capacity of writing truth" affords command
of the most convincing narrative(s) and through that, the capability to describe
the content of socio-political reality. Since narratives implicitly organize
modes of experience, knowing the world and constructing reality
[31], the capability of dominating
discourse/narrative praxes is accompanied with considerable influence in determining
the parameters of legitimacy adopted by and adhered to by the entire society
or its decisive majority. Communicative power manifests itself in motives
as well as actions -- not unlike the Gramscian reference to ideas and consent
as an important component of establishing and maintaining hegemony
[32].
<11> The foregoing also apply to all discourses
and narratives of terrorism, whose form and content are almost exclusively
determined by a polity quorum. Comparable to Charles Wright Mill's
"power elites" or James Der Derian's MIME-NET [33],
this quorum exercises its potency, among other matters, on the structures
and contents of communication and thus, even when not directly involved in
that particular industry, can function as a body of "communication elites"
by means of its global social influence. It consists of the designers, deciders,
advocates, implementers, alternatives, critics and opponents of policy, active
in the fields of politics, academe, media-communications industry and the
clergy [34].
In the last few decades, the mystique of terrorism has turned into a lucrative
trade, giving birth to a new "security sector," reminiscent of the
military-industrial complex. This paramilitary-industrial complex converts
the rhetoric and conceptualization of fear into an economic reality. The "anti-terror
sector" or the "paramilitary industry" can also
be counted upon to stand with this polity quorum. With a multi billion
dollar turnover exceeding the combined national budgets of many so called
"rogue states," it certainly has a stake in designating the narratives
of terror.
<12> As any other social form, terror narratives,
too, "transform the conditions of their emergence by 'dehumanizing' them
into instruments of their own functioning"
[35]. In this discourse, terrorism
as a tool of politics, metamorphoses into Hydra
[36]. Viewed from that perspective,
it becomes less perplexing why 9-11 was received with universal shock and
confusion, even though the public was almost worked up to expecting it by
statement, fiction and reportage. The discourse management of the communication
elite succeeded in withdrawing the entire experiential range of terrorism
into the realm of politics. In its dehumanized form the probability of terror
was abstracted from the phenomenology of everyday life, wrapped in a rhetoric
of power and imbued with the larger-than-life unreality of an apocalypse:
a frightening contingency every believer must accommodate and abide by, but
one everyone knows by virtue of hope, will not happen in this lifetime --
except now that it is proved a real experience, is constantly reiterated
and through reiteration acquires further unreal, nightmarish dimensions. The
only chance terror has of success is in upending and gradually vitiating the
feeling of legitimacy people invest in social existence; a process that seems
to be happening since 9-11. For the first time since the assassination of
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in 1914, an act of terror elicited military
reaction on a major scale in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Furthermore, the
possibility that the belligerence might spread against "small clots of
people in 60 countries" and "like the Drug War, simply might never
end" was not exhausted either
[37].
<13> The narratives favored by the polity quorum
helped nourish the post 9-11 aura of ubiquitous terror the epidemic of "anthrax"
letters, "mailbox bombs," FBI's warnings of explosive laden trucks
in urban areas and then the inevitable threat of nuclear terrorism created
[38].
Significant ratios of Americans still viewed terrorism as the country's most
important problem one year after
[39]. Indeed it is quite possible
to speculate that America could have been paralyzed by an all pervasive, debilitating
fear if Osama Bin Ladin or others of his ilk had continued the secret war,
fanning out violence to the foci of ordinary peoples' lives via widespread
campaigns of terror, for instance in the manner of the live bombs which crippled
life in Israel. Instead, the polity quorum ushered an invincible Hydra
out of its established terrorism discourse
[40], having found the most fertile
social ground to sow credulity in the sheer spectacle of the attacks on the
Twin Towers and the Pentagon, which offered an immense opportunity to cast
awe on any political "management" of truth by feeding the myths,
legends, rhetoric and the potential of the terrorist threat"
[41]. In turn, the Monster seems
to have furnished its creators with the power of polity they crave
[42].
<14> It has to be kept in scope that this "reign
of fear" in America
[43] occurred to greater extent
within the temporal brackets of a major terrorist attack and wars purportedly
against terrorism. Therefore, a look into any probable parallels between polity
and intellectual convictions may help illuminate the sway of the polity
discourse. Just in order to put the sentiments of the public in perspective,
a previous context should be noted: one year after the bombing of the federal
building in Oklahoma City, in April 1996, 72 percent of Americans believed
a terrorists hit on a U.S. city with some weapon of mass destruction was possible.
However, only 13 percent said this worried them a great deal, while 27 were
"somewhat" worried. Two out of three said they were "not at
all" or "not much" worried about terrorism in public places.
Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing a plurality of 49 percent against
43 had said they thought some sacrifice of civil liberties would be required.
A year later, by a two-to-one margin, Americans maintained it would not be
necessary to curb civil liberties in the fight against terrorism
[44].
<15> Plotting the fluctuations of the public
opinion between 11 September 2001 and the end of the battle in Iraq can chart
the bearing of discourse management on the way the people, as consumers of
history [45],
catenulated their conception of the events to the chain of reasoning evocated
by the government. Reminiscent of George Gerbner's
[46] prognostics that vicarious
exposition to violence may intellectually pave a road leading to a repressive
society, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, a majority of Americans expressed
willingness to at least partially sacrifice civil rights in the hope of defeating
terrorism. Nearly eight-in-ten favored military retaliation for defensive
and revenge purposes, even if thousands of U.S. troops were meant to die
[47]. A follow up two weeks later
showed a still disturbed public as 73 percent worried about another terrorist
attack [48]
involving biological or chemical weapons. A potential 19 million airline passengers
said they already had or would cancel flights
[49]. Although a CBS News Poll
concluded Americans were ready to return to normal in early December
[50], in mid-December the "worried"
still rated 52 percent. On the other hand, only 11 percent were very interested
in reports on the Enron Corporation scandal [51].
A Gallup survey gave other indications of how the American public had identified
with the government's rhetorical interpretation of the 9-11 etiology, attributing
it exclusively to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the twin evils in Afghanistan:
they overwhelmingly supported the intervention, but also, while the Taliban
were being beaten, two-thirds of Americans reported that the U.S. was "winning
the war on terrorism", too
[52].
<16> Pres. Bush's January 30, 2002 State of the
Union address consolidated the support for the war against terrorism which,
after Afghanistan, now openly targeted Iraq
[53]. "Defense"
was established as the highest budget priority
[54]. Gradually, toppling
Saddam appeared as an urgent necessity in the Americans' political agenda,
though sending troops to the Middle East or going to war with or without the
backing of allies [55]
were, for a time, a matter of dissension
[56].
<17> At the time Pres. Bush launched his peremptory
campaign against Saddam Hussein, claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction -- in an address to the UN on September 12, 2002 -- Americans
believed Bush should obtain not only Congressional approval but also the backing
of the U.N., the Western allies
[57] and friendly Arab
countries [58],
before sending in the troops. Three-quarters of Americans already believed
a war with Iraq was inevitable
[59] in January 2003.
Curiously, the public opinion effectively reflected the government's diplomatic
position of the moment: The responders preferred military action in dealing
with Saddam and a diplomatic settlement with North Korea, whose "axial"
role in the Bush administration's view of worldwide threats was rehashed personally
by the President at that time
[60]. Yet, the trend still
favored [61]
that U.N. weapons inspectors be given as much time as necessary
[62].
<17> The ultimate shift came when Bush's managed
to convince the public about his war-on-Iraq policy in his "State of
the Union" address in late January 2003
[63]. By February 10,
he had begun to rally support for combating Iraq without U.N. approval, provided
Great Britain and other major allies supported the U.S. [64].
More than half (52 percent) of Americans were convinced in early March, getting
rid of Saddam Hussein was worth the loss of American troops and other costs
[65].
By the time Bush gave the final ultimatum to Iraq, despite serious opposition
from most of the world including closest allies, three quarters of Americans
believed their government had done everything to solve the crisis diplomatically
[66].
After Iraq was invaded, Saddam was toppled and no weapons of mass destruction
were eventually found, Americans still said they believed their country was
nevertheless more secure now
[67]. Support for the
war effort never wavered. After victory, Bush's approval ratings rose too,
albeit slightly.
<18> During the entire process, the drift of
intellectual concentration and political discussion
[68] visibly turned from
acts of terror to open and out warfare against Afghanistan and Iraq as sponsor
states of terrorism while shifts of public opinion manifested an impressive
parallel with government rhetoric and policy. Public support coincided with
calls to arms against terrorism, instant and peremptory retaliation and stark
measures in post 9-11 social and political literature endorsing Bush's "War
Against Terror." However, little new -- except the names of a few lead
actors and places -- in this rhetoric did not repeat the sentiments
and ideas frequently aired in the last decade(s), complaining that the U.S.
political apparatus was insufficiently geared to react swiftly against terrorism
[69]
-- Another factor that can be interpreted as indicative of the composite nature
of the polity quorum and its narratives.
<19> Though the trends outlined above certainly
do not prove beyond doubt, they seriously signal that the polity quorum
can somehow sway the representations of truth to its will with recourse to
that subtle power of discourse. However, despite the coalescence at home,
America's long enjoyed preponderance as the chief author of "truth"
globally, suffered a significant blow as a consequence of its terror rhetoric
and policy. Not only the U.S. but almost the entire world was flabbergasted
by the 9-11 nightmare. However, long time allies of Washington put a cognitive
wedge between combating terrorism and invading Iraq. The PEW Research Center
Global Attitudes Project released in June 2003
[70] concluded the venture
in Iraq widened the rift between Americans and the people of Western Europe,
further inflamed the Muslim world, softened support for the war on terrorism
and weakened global public support for the U.N. and the North Atlantic alliance
[71].
The point is less how America, whose emerging image looks rather negative
[72],
is valued worldwide than the difference of opinion and discourse management
between parties that profess fealty to the same political culture of liberal
democracy. Within the U.S. too, dissident voices declared Bush's pro-war policy
irrational. They accused Washington of pursuing a hidden agenda to gain control
of oil resources and strategic regions. Since it would be difficult to convince
the American public to approve shedding blood "for oil or empire,"
in narratives Saddam was equated with Osama, and Iraq was treated as if it
were al Qaeda [73]
itself. The point of view here underlines how effective the discourse
of the U.S. polity quorum is in tacitly providing the people with templates
of thought and supplementary political action.
<20> To conclude, it sounds as plausible premise
that the polity quorum, capitalizing on a discourse of fear, has succeeded
in asserting itself as a composite Heracles who can vanquish the Hydra,
the fictional beast it endowed with the power to terrorize. The cognizance
of the evil and the threat terror has shed on ordinary lives and lifestyle
is thus commanded and induced vicariously by pundits who, by virtue of power,
claim to experience and understand the horror "for us" and who,
in the same vein, believe they can prescribe remedies although their "preemptive"
or "restorative" measures have proved to be of dubious yield by
historical record. The personification and reification of evil in the vile
is the universal hermeneutic style of the polity quorum. Persistent
narratives lead the student of terrorism into omitting probably the most significant
aspect, the human essence of violence. Indeed, this may mirror the
chief intellectual shortcoming in grasping terrorism as an exclusively political
problem [74],
whereas it should rather be explored as a holistic human issue.
<21> One key to understanding terrorism lies
in the semiologic repercussions of the term. Terror, although a one-time-event,
conveys a lingering message that is also the medium it travels in.
The act of terrorism per se, is an act of the individual: Mohammad
Atta, the alleged author of the 9-11 assault on major symbols of American
might, is no longer anywhere he can be apprehended, tried and punished. Similarly
it is Timothy McVeigh that has been put to death, not the memory of the horror
he created. For the terrorist, the magnetism of terrorism
[75] generates from the
exhilaration of possessing a might to rule over life and death, the power
to create fear and mystery, feeling alive with the knife's edge psychological
acrobatics of gambling with fate, including one's own, all the while, believing
to be special and important for being in the service of a sublimated ideal.
The deed itself is not so much "rational" as "rationalized"
[76].
The political, ideological, religious etc. "causes" serve as socio-cultural
props for idealizing the attraction to the power of commanding and dealing
death. Therefore, it appears extremely difficult if not impossible to "preempt"
the violent manifestations of such irrationality using the dominant paradigms,
implements and methods of conventional symmetrical rationality.
<22> Conversely, from the viewpoint of terror's
actual or potential victims, the repetition of its discourse of evil over
and over, levies terror a message of potency and significance that articulates
into a single psychological expression: fear from an imminent, unpredictable,
unexpected experience of violence beyond the boundaries of "normal,"
because its origin, reason, target, timing and effects are unknown to those
who (may) suffer its effects. Heuristically, normal can be given a
lasting name only in an existence where social cohesion is based on legitimacy
[77].
A state of terror obscures the recognition and knowledge of what is safe for
physical and psychological survival, hence, of what is normal and legitimate.
In any case, such terror does not have to be of political nature to precipitate
similar reverberations. Waves of psychopathic murders as committed by such
killers as John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer
or snipers who shoot unexpected passersby may create the kind of horror that
can sway traditional parameters of normalcy as effectively as the acts of
the Red Army Faction or the Hamas.
<23> Only the resultant force of two social and
psychological processes operating collaterally may be expected to curb the
appeal of terrorism: On one hand, the structures of social experience must
continue to provide the adaptational values which prevent the fabric of social
interaction from disintegrating
[78] and avert the de-normalizing
effects of violence on individual consciousnesses. On the psychological dimension,
this corresponds to a paradigm shift that in practice, will strip the
"ism" from terror, reducing it to no more than the status
of a common crime. In this way the "message" can be vitiated, so
that the medium will also become void [79].
<24> To silence the gun, it seems, not more and
more powerful guns are needed as much as inspired voices that when speak their
minds, drown the rumble of explosions [80].
Notes