![]() ![]() The former is that of fascism, in which the spectacle revolves around the cult of personality of leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. ![]() We might look to Guy Debord to shed light on the spectacle of terror.Īs is well-known, in his epochal Society of the Spectacle, published over fifty years ago, Debord divides the spectacle into its concentrated and diffuse forms. Terrorists don’t trade in fear as such, insofar as fear takes a specific, finite object, but rather an infinite atmospheric anxiety. Terrorism’s effect – which, of course, principally lies in its affect – is transmitted and felt not via the event-like eruption violence of itself, but via the spectacular threat of its purely arbitrary, contingent random manifestation. Images of terror are ubiquitous yet no term is more contested and more opaque than ‘terrorism.’ We both know and do not know what it is. Augustine asks: “What is time then? If nobody asks me, I know: but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I know not.” When one asks: What is terrorism then? If no one asks us, we know: but if we are desirous to explain it to one that should ask us, plainly we do not know. In a celebrated passage of Confessions, St. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |