Translating Terrorism

Centre for Modern Studies guest talk

In the wake of the terrorist attacks that have recently occurred in France and Denmark, it seems crucial to question how terror translates, and what such translation might involve with regard to religious and national identities. In this talk, I inquire into current European (Norwegian, French, and Swiss) counterterrorist discourses to demonstrate that the terrorist is re-assembled (domesticated, foreignized, and translated) differently in each national context, and pursue the analysis by stressing the role affect plays when terror translates into territory, and the citizen becomes a patriot.