| Summary/Abstract |
More than a decade of the war on terror has increased levels of direct and structural violence and strengthened the forces of political oppression across the globe. Within this historical material context, as well as the intellectual context of the “narrative turn” and the wider “cultural turn” currently underway in International Relations, this article explores the ways in which the terrorism novel might act as a mode of discursive resistance or literary resistance to these (oppressive) forms of power, as a site of emancipatory agonistic politics, and as a social scientific method of analysis. Among possible forms of discursive resistance, the novel—as a narrative mode—has genuine potential due to its affective as opposed to confrontational form, its engagement with the emotional aspects of international politics, its lack of conventional boundaries, and its potential reach. However, to date, the terrorism novel has not realized its potential as a mode of resistance, but has instead tended to reinforce the counterterrorism truth regime by reinforcing and maintaining the modern terrorism taboo. In this respect, the publication of Confessions of a Terrorist: A Novel (Jackson 2014) represents something of a watershed, as it is one of the first sympathetic fictional depictions of a terrorist and the first to give primary voice to the perspective of the terrorist. Allowing the terrorist to speak not only acts to resist and undermine the terrorism taboo and generate empathetic projection, but potentially also creates an agonistic moment in which the violent subaltern can speak on an equal footing directly to the counterterrorist—and by extension, to the reader. The article concludes by reflecting on the potential of the novel as a site of both resistance and agonistic encounter and the challenges of employing literary resistance to domination.
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