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.
|