The Discourse on Terrorism

This winter, when I visited a friend’s home, I found myself in a rather awkward position of having to witness a familial brawl he was engaged in, with his sister, who was three years younger than him. One particular moment struck me: The sister screamed, in response to a threat (of prohibition of her visit to a college picnic on the following week) issued to her by my friend, “Stop being a terrorist Uday (my friend)! Your terrorist methods aren’t going to terrorize me!”

That one moment was a spontaneous revelation of the fact that the term “terrorist”, in its noun, adjective and verb forms, had seeped into the quotidian vocabulary of private sphere, from it’s earlier public origins. And why would it not? There have been few terms which have, by virtue of their increased and amplified usage, defined the 21st century as intricately and intimately as has the word “terror”.

No doubt, terrorism, as it is generally understood today in the media, existed in earlier centuries as well. However, three factors make this century stand out in the context of this term: First, the widespread availability of almost all forms of mass media (most notably, television and internet) across geographical demarcations, which facilitates the availability, to the masses, of information on nearly every act of terror in any part of the world; second, the end of a bipolar world in the aftermath of the breakup of the former USSR and the emergence of the United States of America as the most powerful nation on earth, giving the U.S. and its allies unprecedented power to impose their seemingly “apolitical” definitions and interpretations of political terms on the global psyche, enabled by their economic and military clout; and third, the further development of newer forms of terrorist methods such as bioterrorism (through anthrax etc).

The origin of the term “terror” can be traced back to the public phenomenon terror cimbricus, which was a state of panic and emergency in Rome in response to the approach of warriors of the Cimbri tribe in 105 BC. However, according to some scholars, there is a difference between the meanings and usages of the terms “terror” and “terrorism”. In the words of Professor David Forte of Cleveland State University, the primary difference between terror and terrorism is that “while terror can be seen as neutrally evil (random violence committed by robbers or rapists or even military personnel), terrorism has a political or moral dimension, being the “systematized use of randomly focused violence by organized groups against non­combatants to effect a political objective.” Going by this definition, one has to locate the genealogy of the term “terrorism” in the context of the French Revolution and its immediate aftermath.

"Terrorism", then, may be traced back to the French word terrorisme, originally referred specifically to state terrorism as practised by the French government during the Reign of terror between 1793 and 1794. The French word terrorisme, in turn, derives from the Latin verb terreo meaning "I frighten".

On 5 February 1794, Robespierre, the leader of the Jacobins, defined “terror” as “nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.” He also openly defined “the government in a revolution” as “the despotism of liberty against tyranny.” Here, one can clearly perceive a positive connotation of the term “terror” attributed to it by the dominant political power. Thus, "terrorism" originally referred to acts committed by a government. After the Jacobins lost power, the word "terrorist" became a term of abuse. Today, the word “terrorism” usually refers to the injuring or killing of innocent people for political purposes, often in such a way as to create a public spectacle, and consequently, compel the state or an organization to do or abstain from performing an act.

These instances validate the argument that every term has a definite genealogy, which itself is deeply rooted in politics. How the word “terrorism” has been understood over generations is largely contingent upon the dominant political and social relations shaping the particular period in history. Most interestingly, even within a particular period, there may be competing understandings and interpretations of the same term. An example is the fact that, as of today, various legal systems and government agencies use different definitions of terrorism in their national legislation. And not only among governments, but also within the same nation, there may be competing definitions of the same term. Given below are various definitions of terrorism forwarded by and adhered to, by different branches of the U.S. government:

“Terrorism is the unlawful use or threat of violence against persons or property to further political or social objectives. It is usually intended to intimidate or coerce a government, individuals or groups, or to modify their behavior or politics.”

— Vice­President's Task Force, 1986

“Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

— Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

“Terrorism is the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.”

— U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)

The birth and subsequent usage of every such definition demands a particular approach to engage, politically as well as academically, with the subject of that definition, here “terrorism”. And due to that need for a definite approach, an entire corpus of vocabulary and grammar takes shape as debates and conversations on that subject develop. And finally, boundaries and limits to such vocabulary and grammar get demarcated, both through practice and prescription, by political practitioners, academics, legal experts and other authorities in that domain. In the broadest possible way, one may try to define a discourse as “a socially limited mode of thought that can be codified through language.”

Now, in the light of this information, let us analyze the definition of “terrorism” forwarded by the U.S. Department of Defence (DoD).

The key words and phrases included in this definition are: “calculated”, “unlawful”, “violence”, “threat”, “to inculcate fear”, “intended to coerce”, “to intimidate”, “governments”, “societies”, “in the pursuit of goals”, “political”, “religious”, “ideological”.

Each of these words and phrases invokes a particular field of knowledge, and automatically contributes towards the demarcation of certain cognitive boundaries for this discourse on terrorism. For example, the word “unlawful” invokes the entire national and international legal framework and its associated personnel. The word religious throws this domain open to comments and scrutiny by a body of so-­called religious scholars, and different reactions by theocratic and secular regimes. Also, the word “political” activates both, subjective rhetoric by politicians, and supposedly objective observation and research by a body of scholars and academics associated with political science. Even within academia, there would be opposing and competing schools of thought. Similarly, the phrase “in the pursuit of goals” itself implies the existence of agency on the part of the perpetrator of the act of terror. This leads to the questions: Why? (addressed by social psychologists, human rights activists, lawyers and theorists, and many others from different but related fields); How? (addressed by historians, geographers, and the likes); etc.

Finally, one must note three significant aspects of discourse:

Firstly, every discourse is as much an act of exclusion as it is an act of inclusion, just like the creation of a statue entails not only the unification and moulding of clay into a particular shape, but also the exclusion and the discarding of the unwanted portion of clay. In the above­mentioned definition of the U.S. DoD, a visible exclusion is that of the identity or the nature of the terrorist, as opposed to the clear definition of the identity of the victim (here, either a state or a society). This exclusion, one may conjecture, is due to the implicit assumption that the state is always innocent, and can never be an agent (active or passive) of terrorism. Such exclusion confirms the inherently political nature of the discourse.

Secondly, no discourse can be isolated from other discourses. Again, “terrorism” may be taken as an example. The word “terrorist” has often be juxtaposed with the word “freedom fighter”. It is often said, and rightly so, that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Here, the discourses on “terrorism” and “nationalism” often intersect and inflect each other, creating newer social and political categories, which in turn, produce their own discourses.

Thirdly, a discourse always metamorphoses into newer forms, through creative usage, as per needs and demands of the hour. The use of the term “terrorist” in the argument between my friend, Uday, and his sister, is a perfect example of how the word has been put to use in a context far removed from (but still, semantically similar to) the context in which it has most often been used.