Tracing the Discourses of Terrorism ― Identity, Genealogy and State

This book provides a fresh intervention into the critical terrorism debate, presenting a new conceptualization of terrorism from an historical perspective. It examines how states have articulated statements about terrorism since the 1930s, under what conditions these statements have been made and the effect that discourses made up of these statements have had on global politics.

Ditrych's analysis in particular explores the constitutive role of the present discourse on the global power apparatus (dispositif) in which the concept of terrorism strategically orients a broad set of practices – punishment, discipline and surveillance – that bear on states, populations and individual human bodies. Instead of creating a new theory of the terrorist, the book historicizes terrorism, highlighting the invisible practices of power and knowledge which constitute it.

Looking at the archives of state discourse related to terrorism in the League of Nations and the United Nations, this unique work traces the evolution and key features of terrorism discourse. As such, it makes an original contribution to our understanding of how contemporary terrorism discourse emerged historically, and the forms that it currently takes.

Ondrej Ditrych is a Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague and Assistant Professor at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He was previously a Fulbright Research Fellow at Harvard and Associate Fellow at the EUISS, Paris. He has written on terrorism, transatlantic security, EU external relations, and politics and security in the Caucasus.