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Twentieth century cinema involving monster conflict featured solitary monsters in combat (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, for example). The writing of Anne Rice and the RPG Vampire: The Masquerade by White Wolf Games introduced the idea of Gothic communities and civilisations in conflict. It was not until after the terror attacks of 11 September that the idea of a clash of civilisations between supernatural societies fully emerged into the mainstream of popular culture. This essay explores the construction of a clash of civilisations between supernatural communities as a form of using the Gothic as a metaphor for contemporary terrorism in film and television series such as Underworld, Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries. Inevitably, it is the lycanthropes that are the disempowered and disenfranchised society and are alternately exploited by and rebel against the dominant vampire civilisation grown decadent and on the verge of collapse. Post-9/11 Gothic posits a world in which vampire society is the new normal, and werewolves represent a hidden danger within. Lycanthropes must be controlled, profiled and/or fought and defeated. Through close readings of the cinematic and televisual texts, I explore the vampire/werewolf clash as metaphor and metonym for the war on terror.
This is a book which aims to overturn existing understandings of the origins and futures of the War on Terror for the purposes of International Relations theory. As the book shows, this is not a war in defence of the integrity of human life against an enemy defined simply by a contradictory will for the destruction of human life as commonly supposed by its liberal advocates. It is a war over the political constitution of life in which the limitations of liberal accounts of humanity are being put to the test if not rejected outright.
The so-called ‘War on Terror’ ushered in a new era of anti-Muslim bias and racism. Anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia, is influenced by local economies, power structures, and histories. However, the War on Terror, a conflict undefined by time and place, with a homogenised Muslim ‘Other’ framed as a perpetual enemy, has contributed towards a global Islamophobic narrative. This edited volume examines the differing manifestations of Islamophobia, as well as resistance and activism combating it across multiple international settings, spanning six continents. The volume maps out categories of Islamophobia across the global North and South.These are the localised histories, conflicts, and contemporary geopolitical realities in the context of the War on Terror which have influenced and textured the ways that Islamophobia has manifested. This ranges from limited instances of racial violence and hate crimes to more pronounced co-dependent relations between interpersonal and institutional racism that have culminated in genocide. This book presents a nuanced appreciation of specific themes that critically engage with the complexity and evolution of Islamophobia in the War on Terror. It provides up-to-date accounts and analysis of Islamophobia across the global North and South and its impact on the political landscape of differing country contexts. Furthermore, this book explores resistance and the need for activism that confronts interpersonal and institutional racism, with the aim of constructing a more coherent understanding of how to challenge Islamophobia.
to those with a just cause and that it should always be punishable under the law. But doubts can arise about this. At least in certain cases, it can be and has been debated whether terrorists have, or ought to have, combatant status. Terrorists themselves often claim to be combatants, particularly when they are captured, since they would like to be accorded prisoner of war status. And, perhaps surprisingly, the Bush administration also claims that terrorists are enemy combatants in its ‘war on terror’. Are terrorists combatants? The concepts ‘terrorist
'Terror' is a diffuse notion that takes no account of local particularities and 'war on terror' is a contradiction in terms. This book is based on the lectures that were given on the subject in Oxford in 2006. Amnesty has described 'war on terror' as a war on human rights. It is also a contest of narratives: stories that the protagonists tell about themselves, about their enemies, and about what is happening now. The book considers how the recent actions of the United States have stressed and stretched two areas of international law: the right of self-defence, and the rules of international humanitarian law. State terrorism, with a bit of careful spin, can be reclassified as counter-terrorism, in other words as inherently good in the same way that terrorism is inherently bad. The book engages with the politico-conceptual difficulties of distinguishing between war and terrorism. The interface and tensions between the human rights tradition and the Islamic tradition, particularly Islamic law, is discussed. The intensification of Western repression against Islamic thinkers or activists has at times been coupled with policies that seemed designed to change the religious trajectory of society. The sexualization of torture is only one way in which the 'war on terror' has delineated who is (and who is not) human. Religion, human rights, and trauma narratives are three other mechanisms for rationalizing suffering. The book also discusses the subject of censuring reckless killing of innocent civilians by the issue of fatwas by Muslim teachers.
actually occurred. He cites Burckhardt on the narratives of Ancient Greece: ‘those events passed down to us in the form of narration … are in many ways uncertain, controversial, coloured, or else … fictions entirely dictated by imagination or bias’. 2 The function of these narratives is to give a meaningful structure to the world in which we live, act and feel. ‘It is precisely the fabrications, constructions and projections – the fashioning of meaning – that are my concern’. 3 Amnesty has rightly described this ‘war on terror’ as a war on human rights. It is
ask the most necessary questions about US hegemony as a ‘stabilizing’ security force, such as whom does the US render secure (individuals and/or political regimes); from what types of threats and from which actors? At the height of the US-led ‘war on terror’ and an inter-ventionist 2 US foreign policy, asking such fundamental questions about the US foreign and security policy
Introduction Islamophobia has an enduring legacy as one of the many iterations of racism, which scholars have traced back to the earliest encounters between Muslim and non-Muslim cultures. Though the term Islamophobia is synonymous with Muslim experiences in the global North, increasingly, in the context of the War on Terror, the term is being used in other spaces where Muslims occupy a minority status across the global South (Grosfoguel 2012 ). This chapter explores the phenomenon of Islamophobia in Myanmar, which
2002 when then Persson government radically altered the text of Sweden’s security doctrine (discussed in detail below). The EU’s external dimension has also gathered pace in light of the ‘war on terror’, with the introduction of new measures to combat international terrorism. The ‘war on terror’, combined with the EU’s economic strength and role in the process of globalisation has a dual consequence
5 September 11 and the ‘war on terror’ Tony Blair’s response to the September 11 2001 attacks was one of unequivocal support for the United States, a framing of the situation in stark terms of good and evil, and elucidation of an ambitiously proactive foreign policy programme to prevent the re-occurrence of attacks of such magnitude. It was therefore quite consistent with the policy style rooted in Blair’s personality traits that had crystallized during the Kosovo war. The period following September 11 saw the prime minister, with his foreign policy approach set