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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 530-550 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Critical Studies on Terrorism |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 27 Jun 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 27 Jun 2024 |
Bibliographical note
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.Keywords
- Barack Obama
- Christian realism
- Irony
- Joseba Zulaika
- Reinhold Niebuhr
- terrorism