The Symbolic Construction of Community

Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies

Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, youth & resources in Sierra Leone

This article argues for the need to recover the concept of political myth in order to understand the crucial phenomena of our epoch. By drawing on Blumenberg’s philosophical reflections on myth, it proposes to understand political myth as the continual process of work on a common narrative by which the members of a social group can provide significance to their political conditions and experience. In order to show how this understanding of political myth can throw light on important aspects of contemporary politics, the article analyses the work on one of the most conspicuous political myths of our time: the clash of civilizations. By reconstructing the mechanisms through which this myth works, the article shows how a paradigm that has been strongly criticized as too simplistic and scientifically inadequate could have turned into a successful political myth, i.e. into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rethinking Political Myth The Clash of Civilizations as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Programmes of organized, political violence have always been legitimized and sustained through complex imaginative geographies. These tend to be characterized by stark binaries of place attachment. This article argues that the discursive construction of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ since September 11th 2001 has been deeply marked by attempts to rework imaginative geographies separating the urban places of the US ‘homeland’ and those Arab cities purported to be the sources of ‘terrorist’ threats against US national interests. On the one hand, imaginative geographies of US cities have been reworked to construct them as ‘homeland’ spaces which must be re-engineered to address supposed imperatives of ‘national security’. On the other, Arab cities have been imaginatively constructed as little more than ‘terrorist nest’ targets to soak up US military firepower. Meanwhile, the article shows how both ‘homeland’ and ‘target’ cities are increasingly being treated together as a single, integrated ‘battlespace’ within post 9/11 US military doctrine and techno-science. The article concludes with a discussion of the central roles of urban imaginative geographies, overlaid by transnational architectures of US military technology, in sustaining the colonial territorial configurations of a hyper-militarized US Empire.

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Cities and the ‘War on Terror’

Imaginaries of 'terrorism' and 'Arab mind' backwardness can be seen as closely connected: the latter explains the former as irrational--violence thus becomes the product of backward cultures. I regard this way of representing the violence of peripheralised peoples as a specific expression of symbolic violence: new barbarism. The 'new barbarism' thesis implies explanations of political violence that omit political and economic interests and contexts when describing violence, and presents violence as a result of traits embedded in local cultures. New barbarism and neo-Orientalist imaginaries may serve as hegemonic strategies when the production of enemy imaginaries contributes to legitimise continuous colonial economic or political projects, as can be witnessed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Neo-Orientalism and the new barbarism thesis: Aspects of symbolic violence in the Middle East conflict(s)

In the Arab world, ideological resistance of supporters during football matches have coalesced with another rebellion, of youth breaking the chains of patriarchal power. The political implication of this social process is tremendous. As youth have experienced that they have had to yield to the will of parents and grandparents at home, and to the old dictators in the public field, finding a social arena where one could liberate one-selves from the former implicated a congruent dissolution of authority ties also towards the latter. As football is a primary medium through which youth autonomy could be experienced, football has a seismic political potential. The role of ultras supporters in the Egyptian revolution and the political role of nationalist supporters in Jordan in killing political taboos are cases where supporters represent more than simply a barometer of political trends. The supporters have initiated struggles crucially affecting political developments in their countries.

From football riot to revolution. The political role of football in the Arab world

The political role of football for Palestinians in Jordan.

To refer to Palestinian refugee camps as states of exception, appropriating the paradigm of Giorgio Agamben, is definitely tempting. Agamben argues that in times of crisis, individual rights of cit...

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‘State of exception’ or ‘state in exile’? The fallacy of appropriating Agamben on Palestinian refugee camps

In Jordan, national identity is composed of two sub-national identities: the Transjordanian identity of Jordan's indigenous inhabitants from east of the Jordan river, and the Palestinians originating in the west of the Jordan river. Historically, the Jordanian throne has maintained power through an alliance with the Transjordanians. As the majority of the Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, democratisation in Jordan would likely imply the Palestinians taking over the political momentum in the country. When unrest has erupted in Jordan, as during the democracy protests of the Arab Spring, this has on some occasions been labelled as threats to the national unity by the Jordanian monarchy. No one wants to return to the civil war of 1970. On the other hand, to avoid democratisation, the memory of the civil war must be sustained. Since the civil war, Jordan has had a history of ethnic-based football riots. These are reminders of the threats to stability, security and national unity. But as long as they are c...

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Papers

Neo-Orientalism and the new barbarism thesis: Aspects of symbolic violence in the Middle East conflict(s)

From football riot to revolution. The political role of football in the Arab world

The political role of football for Palestinians in Jordan.

‘State of exception’ or ‘state in exile’? The fallacy of appropriating Agamben on Palestinian refugee camps

‘A Threat to National Unity’ – Football in Jordan: Ethnic Divisive or a Political Tool for the Regime?