The Figure of the Terrorist in Literature and Visual Culture - by Maria Flood & Michael C Frank

About the Book

Contains thirteen original essays and an expansive introduction, including contributions by some of the foremost scholars in the field.

Book Synopsis

The contemporary preoccupation with terrorism is marked by a curious paradox: whereas the topic has been ubiquitous in public discourse since the late twentieth century, the voices of terrorists themselves are usually silenced. Is the terrorist "the quintessential proscribed or tabooed figure of our times", as cultural anthropologists Joseba Zulaika and William A. Douglass have suggested? The present volume is the first to approach the tabooing of terrorists from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. Covering a broad geographical scope, it explores how different media forms (such as novels, fiction and non-fiction films, or comic books) frame and make sense of the figure of the terrorist: do they reinforce the terrorism taboo, or do they find ways of circumventing it? Each contribution asks how factors such as ideological agenda, religious identity, ethnicity, and gender impact the way the perpetrators of political violence are conceived in different historical moments and cultural contexts.

Review Quotes

Required reading for anyone concerned with the political uses and abuses of the fictionalized Terrorist figure. The collection revisits the notion of the terrorism taboo within literature and cinema to tackle difficult topics like the ambiguity of fiction in constituting and dissolving terrorism.

--Joseba Zulaika, Author of Terrorism: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

This collection makes an exciting intervention that expands the frame of critical terrorism studies to include figures such as football hooligans and white supremacists, as well as offering new comparative readings of well-established terrorist tropes and representations in contemporary global literary and visual culture.

--Stephen Morton, University of Southampton

An exceptional anthology [...] presents a critical and overdue intervention in the landscape of terrorism discourse, testing and dismantling the prevalent terrorism mythography.--Maria Mothes "Journal for the Study of British Cultures"

These essays challenge the "terrorism taboo," in which the figure of the terrorist is deprived of "political subjectivity," through nuanced investigations of this figure--represented in fiction, film, television, and comics--that restore complexity. By complicating and rehistoricizing the figure of the terrorist, these authors ultimately challenge readers to consider how or if empathy--a "difficult empathy"--might be employed.--G. E. Bender "CHOICE connect"