CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

'Wanted Dead or Alive': Discourses of Terrorism and Difference in the Media

Organiser: Olaf Hoerschelmann

Bloul, Rachel A. D. (The Australian National University, Australia) TERRORIST :: HERO HERO :: TERRORIST HEROES, FRATERNALISM AND POLITICAL TERROR
The events of the 11 September have unleashed innumerable commentaries on the nature of evil and heroism, and fewer on the intricacies of individual or collective responsibility. Most seek to answer the questions: "How is terrorism possible?" and "Why inflict such evil upon 'thousands of innocents'?". Maybe driven by understandable resentment, or caution, few media comment at or have pondered the ambiguous moral nature of heroism and its connections to violence and social responsibility. This paper was prompted by the widespread refusal in the West to attribute any heroism to 'terrorists', including suicide bombers, refusing to acknowledge how heroic discourses are variously deployed as political ideology(ies). It also recognises 'heroic' personal characteristics very selectively. Thus, it suppresses the possibility of understanding some modalities of the contemporary deployment of heroism; that is the harnessing and institutionalising of what I call 'the heroic pattern' in contemporary terrorist networks.

Hoerschelmann, Olaf (University of North Texas, USA) NEW WAR, OLD ENEMIES: ON FINDING THE MEANING(S) OF TERRORISM IN TELEVISUAL DISCOURSE
This paper analyzes the television coverage of September 11 in the days following the attacks as well as in television programs of the following months. The early coverage of terrorism was characterized by an excessive televisual style (cf. Caldwell, 1995) employed to render the trauma of terrorism visible and meaningful. I argue that this excess of signification demonstrates the initial instability of meanings of terrorism. Next, I analyze the reification of 'patriotism' in commemorative music videos often set against images of destruction and mourning and combined with various nationalist symbols. Finally, I analyze the production of reductive notions of Arab ethnicity and Islam in the seemingly non-political form of late night talk shows. I argue that ultimately broadcasters used terrorism as a catalyst for the reification of dominant discourses on nationalism, patriotism, and ethnicity.

Morton, Stephen (University of Tampere, Finland) THE CRITICAL STANDPOINT OF THIRD WORLD WOMEN IN DISCOURSES OF TERRORISM
The imperative to critically respond to the event of September 11 in western-based cultural studies is in danger of annulling the ethical call of the Other, whose voice it seeks to respond to. To counter this difficulty, this paper will try to examine the standpoint of the Third World woman in relation to the discourse of terrorism. Starting with a discussion of the representation of the female terrorist in Frantz Fanon's Algeria Unveiled, Gillo Pontecorvo's film The Battle of Algiers and Santosh Sivan's film The Terrorist, this paper will examine the active role played by women in violent anti-colonial insurgency movements. The paper will then examine how the epistemological standpoint of the Third world woman terrorist pushes against the media construction of the monolithic Third world woman as a victim-who-needs-to-be-saved from the patriarchal tyranny of traditional `fundamentalist´ societies.

Parameswaran, Radhika (Indiana University, USA) NEWS DELIVERED BY NATIVE INFORMANTS: COLONIAL/NEO-COLONIAL POLITICS OF GENDER AND AUTHENTICITY
Relying on textual analysis, this paper will explore the ways in which the popular CNN news documentary "Beneath the Veil" constructs Afghanistan for popular consumption. In particular, the video will examine the impact of the embodied voice of the woman narrator/journalist who is a "halfie," part Afghani and part British, who grew up in England. How does news about horror and "savagery" in distant lands get mediated when Westernized women natives represent their homelands? Why are women war correspondents "hot" in this current age of global conservatism and fundamentalism? How does the terror of gender politics in Afghanistan become fodder for voyeurism? Considering such questions, the paper's interdisciplinary critique of the video documentary will examine the similarities between anthropology's concerns about truth and representation and journalism's objectives of unbiased truth-telling.