Discourses of war, geographies of abjection: reading contemporary American ideologies of terror

• Published in: Third world quarterly 2005-10, Vol.26 (7), p.1157-1172
• Main Author: Debrix, François
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 21st century; Discourse; Fear; Foreign Policy; France; Geography; Geopolitics; Hanson, Victor Davis; Iraq; Kaplan, Robert; Ledeen, Michael A; Military policy; National Security; Political discourse; Political Ideologies; Political leadership; Politicians; Politics; Religious terrorism; Rhetoric; September 11; Terror; Terrorism; U.S.A; United States of America; US 'Empire'; Violence; War
• ISSN: 0143-6597; 1360-2241
• DOI: 10.1080/01436590500235769

This article critically details the strategies and ideologies that inform three key post-9/11 volumes on the politics of terror, war making and national security in the USA. These texts, by renowned American 'masters of statecraft' Robert Kaplan, Victor Davis Hanson and Michael Ledeen, encourage the USA's political and military leadership to embrace terror and violence and to be continuously at war against alleged American enemies. The article argues that these writings are representative of what French post-structuralist and gender scholar Julia Kristeva has called abjection. Indeed, these literatures require their readers to be one with hatred and destruction, and to violently reject anything that appears to be un-American. Their ideologies-which have been immensely influential in post-9/11 American national security circles-aim to prepare and condition American citizens for years of ongoing violence, war and possibly terror. They encourage hatred towards enemies that may not even have been named yet. By openly propagating these kinds of discourse, these scholars' texts render the prospect for peace (in Iraq, the Middle-East and everywhere else) in the 21st century ever more difficult to achieve.