Liberal Terror

Security is meant to make the world safer. Yet despite living in the most secure of times, we see endangerment everywhere. Whether it is the threat of another devastating terrorist attacks, a natural disaster or unexpected catastrophe, anxieties and fears define the global political age. While liberal governments and security agencies have responded by advocating a new catastrophic topography of interconnected planetary endangerment, our desire to securitize everything has rendered all things potentially terrifying. This is the fateful paradox of contemporary liberal rule. The more we seek to secure, the more our imaginaries of threat proliferate. Nothing can therefore be left to chance. For everything has the potential to be truly catastrophic. Such is the emerging state of terror normality we find ourselves in today. This illuminating book by Brad Evans provides a critical evaluation of the wide ranging terrors which are deemed threatening to advanced liberal societies. Moving beyond the assumption that liberalism is integral to the realisation of perpetual peace, human progress, and political emancipation on a planetary scale, it exposes how liberal security regimes are shaped by a complex life-centric rationality which directly undermines any claims to universal justice and co-habitation. Through an incisive and philosophically enriched critique of the contemporary liberal practices of making life more secure, Evans forces us to confront the question of what it means to live politically as we navigate through the dangerous uncertainty of the 21st Century.

He calls for a "new radicalism" and a "liberal American interventionism" to promote democratic values throughout the world - a vigorous new politics of American liberalism."--BOOK JACKET.

Examines global terrorist networks and discusses the long-term future of terrorism.

This edited volume questions the widespread resort to illiberal security practices by contemporary liberal regimes since 9/11, and argues that counter-terrorism is embedded into the very logic of the fields of politics and security.Although recent debate surrounding civil rights and liberties in post-9/11 Europe has focused on the forms, provisions

Analisa o problema do terrorismo nas relações internacionais contemporâneas, o conflito ideológico e examina a extensão nas quais alguns movimentos e campanhas terroristas são promovidos, ajudados e desenvolvidos como armas auxiliares dos movimentos revolucionários e como modo não-convencional de guerra por alguns países.

This book unravels the role of democracy after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and reflects important debates surrounding the security of Muslim communities in the years to come. It looks at the problems of torture, violence and the legal resources available to contemporary democracies to confront terrorism. While terrorism is often regarded as one of the major threats to the West and the nation-state, this book explores the notion that a disciplined sense of terror is what keeps society working. The strengths and limitations of liberalism are examined, as well as the ethical dilemma of torture and human right violations in the struggle against terrorism. This book carefully dissects the origin of the nation-state and how it keeps society united. The author offers a creative and unique approach to democracy and worldwide terrorism, exploring the consequences for the nation-state. This book looks at the connections between terrorism, mobility, consumption, torture and fear. It will be of interest to researchers as well as postgraduate and postdoctoral students within the fields of Human Geography, Politics, Media and International Relations.

Richard B. Miller returns to the basic tenets of liberalism to divine an ethical response to religious extremism. He questions how we should think about the claims and aspirations of political religions, especially when they conflict so deeply with liberal norms and practices, and he suggests how liberal critics can speak confidently in ways that respect cultural and religious difference. --from publisher description.

Tenth Anniversary Expanded Edition Ten years on, Jasbir K. Puar’s pathbreaking Terrorist Assemblages remains one of the most influential queer theory texts and continues to reverberate across multiple political landscapes, activist projects, and scholarly pursuits. Puar argues that configurations of sexuality, race, gender, nation, class, and ethnicity are realigning in relation to contemporary forces of securitization, counterterrorism, and nationalism. She examines how liberal politics incorporate certain queer subjects into the fold of the nation-state, shifting queers from their construction as figures of death to subjects tied to ideas of life and productivity. This tenuous inclusion of some queer subjects depends, however, on the production of populations of Orientalized terrorist bodies. Heteronormative ideologies that the U.S. nation-state has long relied on are now accompanied by what Puar calls homonationalism—a fusing of homosexuality to U.S. pro-war, pro-imperialist agendas. As a concept and tool of biopolitical management, homonationalism is here to stay. Puar’s incisive analyses of feminist and queer responses to the Abu Ghraib photographs, the decriminalization of sodomy in the wake of the Patriot Act, and the profiling of Sikh Americans and South Asian diasporic queers are not instances of a particular historical moment; rather, they are reflective of the dynamics saturating power, sexuality, race, and politics today. This Tenth Anniversary Expanded Edition features a new foreword by Tavia Nyong’o and a postscript by Puar entitled “Homonationalism in Trump Times.” Nyong’o and Puar recontextualize the book in light of the current political moment while reposing its original questions to illuminate how Puar’s interventions are even more vital and necessary than ever.