Terrorism in Question
Description
Terrorism in Question crafts a political anthropology of post-9/11 "new terrorism" by investigating who needs the category of terrorists and offering a global framework to understand anthropology, Islam and terrorism. In contrast to their depiction as antimodern, barbarian and fanatic, this study theorizes "Muslim terrorists" as radical friends of equality and visionaries of an unrecognized ethical politics. Marshalling fieldwork with media practitioners and refugees, participant observation of counterterrorism conferences in India and Oslo, and encounters with terrorists, it reorients anthropology to elevate its public voice. This book shows how fieldwork, poetry and political theory come together to exemplify decolonized knowledge.
More details
Person
Irfan Ahmad is Professor of Anthropology-Sociology at Ibn Haldun University, Türkiye. He is the author of three monographs and was a Senior Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute, Göttingen, Germany, and taught at UvA and Monash University, Australia. He delivered the 2023 Roy Rappaport distinguished lecture at University of Victoria, Canada.
Content
Dedication
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note to Readers
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Chapter 1. The Argument vis-à-vis the Doxa
Chapter 2. What Might an Anthropology of Terrorism Look Like?
Chapter 3. Injustice and the New World Order: An Alternative Perspective on Terrorism
Chapter 4. Kafka in India: Terrorism, Media, Muslims
Chapter 5. Riot, Pogrom, Terror: Another Theory of "Religious" Violence
Chapter 6. Ethnic Democracy: Facing the Terror of Counterterrorism Agencies
Chapter 7. Epistemic Whitewash: Ethnography of a UNDP Conference on Counterterrorism
Chapter 8. The Truth about Terrorism: The True in Fiction
Anticonclusion
Appendix: Doing Public Anthropology in the Era of the Global War on Terror
Bibliography
Index
