Re-Visioning Terrorism

Re-Visioning Terrorism: A Humanistic Perspective is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that aims to offer a plurality of visions on terrorism, expanding its meaning across time and space and raising new questions that explore its multifaceted occurrences. The different ideological, philosophical, and cultural perspectives emerging from the essays and the variety of humanistic disciplines involved intend to provide a complex and even contradictory picture that emphasizes the fact that there cannot be a univocal conception and response to terrorism, in either the practical or the intellectual domain. The editors borrow the concept of rack focus response from cinema to create an innovative and flexible interpretative approach to terrorism. Rack focus refers to the change of focus of a lens so that one image can come into focus while another moves out of focus. Though the focal distance changes, the reality has not changed. Both items and events coexist, but given the nature of optics we can only see clearly one or the other. This occurs not just with lenses, but also with human perceptions, be they emotional or intellectual. The rack focus response requires that we try to shift focus from the depth of field that is absolutely clear and familiar to the "e;other"e; that is unclear and unfamiliar. This exercise will lead us to reflect on terroristic events in a more nuanced, nondogmatic, and flexible manner. The essays featured in this volume range from philosophical interpretations of terrorism, to historical analysis of terror through the ages, to cinematic, artistic, and narrative representations of terroristic events that are not limited to 9/11.

Re-Visioning Terrorism: A Humanistic Perspective is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that aims to offer a plurality of visions on terrorism, expanding its meaning across time and space and raising new questions that explore its multifaceted occurrences. The different ideological, philosophical, and cultural perspectives emerging from the essays and the variety of humanistic disciplines involved intend to provide a complex and even contradictory picture that emphasizes the fact that there cannot be a univocal conception and response to terrorism, in either the practical or the intellectual domain. The editors borrow the concept of rack focus response from cinema to create an innovative and flexible interpretative approach to terrorism. Rack focus refers to the change of focus of a lens so that one image can come into focus while another moves out of focus. Though the focal distance changes, the reality has not changed. Both items and events coexist, but given the nature of optics we can only see clearly one or the other. This occurs not just with lenses, but also with human perceptions, be they emotional or intellectual. The rack focus response requires that we try to shift focus from the depth of field that is absolutely clear and familiar to the "other" that is unclear and unfamiliar. This exercise will lead us to reflect on terroristic events in a more nuanced, nondogmatic, and flexible manner. The essays featured in this volume range from philosophical interpretations of terrorism, to historical analysis of terror through the ages, to cinematic, artistic, and narrative representations of terroristic events that are not limited to 9/11.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 Re-Visioning Terrorism: The Rack Focus Response, by Elena Coda and Ben Lawton
PART 1: APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING TERRORISM
2 Deleuze, the Event, and the Problem of Terrorism, by Kenneth E. Noe
3 Symbolic Violence as Subtle Virulence: A Philosophy of Terrorism, by Jonathan Beever
4 The Martyr’s Vision: Why the Suicide Bomber’s Eye Is Cast Not to the Sky—But to the Other, by Hatem N. Akil
PART 2: PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM THROUGH THE AGES
5 Resisting Alexander: Insurgency and Terrorism in Ancient Athens, by Timothy Howe
6 State Counterterrorism in Ancient Rome: Toward a New Basis for the Diachronic Study of Terror, by Ricardo Apostol
7 Terror in the Old French Crusade Cycle: From Splendid Cavalry to Cannibalism, by Sarah-Grace Heller
8 The Invention of Modern State Terrorism During the French Revolution, by Guillaume Ansart
PART 3: AMERICA AND THE WAR ON TERROR
9 Fictions of Counterinsurgency, by Louise Barnett
10 The Cultural Politics of WMD Terrorism in Post-Cold War America, by Harold Williford
11 Historicizing the Present in 9/11 Fiction, by Todd Kuchta
12 Reading 9/11 Through the Holocaust in Philip Roth’sThe Plot Against America and Art Spiegelman’sIn the Shadow of No Towers, by Stella Setka
PART 4: NARRATIVE, CINEMATIC, AND VISUAL CASE STUDIES
13 Regarding Terror: The German Autumn and Contemporary Art, by Fabian Winkler
14 Forms of (In)visibility in Recent Spanish Films on Basque Terrorism, by Jaume Martí-Olivella
15 Writing Victims: Post-Terrorist Fiction(s) in the Basque Country and Spain, by Roland Vazquez
16 Knights of Justice? Blockbuster Terrorism inCode Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, by Aaron Choo and Wilson Koh
CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX