| Summary/Abstract |
Since 9/11, the rise of Islamist extremism has taken hold of the national imagination as the greatest threat facing the USA. The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing seemed to add a new chapter to the War on Terror with the ‘introduction’ of homegrown terrorists who wantonly kill innocent Americans, just as the 19 hijackers did. They are evil. Yet, the narrative of the Tsarnaevs that emerged shortly after the attack crafted a far more ambiguous relationship to these threatening bodies. What allows for such ambiguity, given the Tsarnaevs’ murderous acts? In this article, I look at how identity demarcation was used directly after the bombing as a form of securitization, paying particular attention to the role of the stranger. Contributing to both identity and ontological security theory, I argue that analyzing the discursive (re)presentation of the liminal and its mediation between inclusion and exclusion best captures the multifaceted nature of security, which includes both ontological and material well-being. I show that the particular manner in which the stranger shows up in the portrayal of the Boston attack helps steer American identity practice(s) down specific paths of meaning-making that are not as clear-cut as ‘righteous Self’ versus ‘evil Other.’
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