On 7/31/06, Jayson Funke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Good question. I imagine some context-specific rationality is in order.
No doubt defining terrorism/terrorists is itself tricky and provocative.
Pessimistically I would argue that using terms like Al-Qaeda to describe
large swaths of people who differ dramatically stinks of Orientalism.
I have no answer but would merely caution others as to the possible
backlash against using such terminology without thinking it through and
for not dealing with specificity.
It seems to me that one method of attacking the current war on terror
would be to undermine generalizations with specifics - the entire enemy
might begin to unravel.
It's true that empiricist distrust of big abstraction is useful here.
But I've been wondering who's killing whom -- especially when it comes
to very sectarian murders -- in Iraq. You can never make sense of
what's really going on from the Western press, and I doubt that it
would add to my knowledge even if I spoke Arabic and could read
Arabic-language papers, for they probably wouldn't know what's what
either. But it is clear that refugees from Iraq have dramatically
increased, due to a rapid rise in sectarian killings in recent months.
That kind of increase wouldn't have happened without some
organizations behind it.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
