Terror

Interviews with two leading intellectuals on the “concept” of 11 September 2001

Jacques Derrida (JD) – Philosopher and writer (1930-2004).

What is Terrorism?

Giovanna Borradori. - The September 11 whether or not an event of major importance, what role you assign to the philosophy? Is the philosophy can help us understand what happened?

JD - no doubt this “event” it requires an answer philosophical. Better still, an answer that call into question their most radical, the best conceptual presuppositions rooted in philosophical discourse. The concepts in which they are most often described, named, categorized this “event” is a “dogmatic sleep” in which we can awaken a new philosophical reflection, a reflection on philosophy, including political philosophy and on his legacy. The current discourse, the media and the official rhetoric, relies too easily to concepts such as “war” or “terrorism” (national or international).

A critical reading of Carl Schmitt (A German lawyers of the 1930s, a student of Max Weber, who was a Nazi), for example, would be very useful. On the one hand, to take into account, as far as possible, the difference between the conventional war (declared and direct confrontation between two enemy states In the great tradition of European law), the “civil war” and “war supporters” (in its modern forms, although it appears, Schmitt acknowledges, from the early nineteenth century).

But on the other hand, we must also recognize, against Schmitt, that the violence that broke now is not the war (the term “war against terrorism” is very confusing, and it is necessary to analyze the confusion and interest that this abuse rhetorical claims to serve). Bush speaks of “war”, but he was unable to determine the enemy which he said he had declared war. Afghanistan, its civilian population and its armed forces are not the enemies of the Americans, and it has never ceased to repeat it.

Assuming that “Bin Laden” is a sovereign decision maker here, everyone knows that this man is not Afghanistan, it is rejected by his country (for all “country” and almost all states without exception ‘elsewhere), that his training has both the United States and especially that they are not alone. States which indirectly help are not as States. No state does so publicly supported. As for the states that host (harbor) networks “terrorists”, it is difficult to identify them as such.

The United States and Europe, London and Berlin are also shrines, places of training and information for all “terrorists” of the world. No geography, no assignment “territorial” is no longer relevant, since a long time, to locate the seat of these new transmission technologies or aggression. (Incidentally too quickly and in passing, to extend and clarify what I said earlier a threat absolute original anonymous and non-state-type attacks “terrorist” would already need more aircraft, bombs, suicide bombers: just enter a computer system to strategic value, to install a virus or some serious disturbance to paralyze the economic, military and politics of a country or continent. This may tried to be anywhere on earth, at a cost and with reduced means.)

The relationship between land, territory and terror has changed, and we need to know that this is knowledge, ie the techno-science. This is the techno-science that blurs the distinction between war and terrorism. In this regard, compared to the possibilities for destruction and chaotic disorder that are in reserve for future networks in the world, “September 11″ is still archaic theater of violence aimed at striking the imagination. It may well be worse tomorrow, invisibly, in silence, much faster, but not bloody, by attacking the computer networks on which all life (social, economic, military, etc..) A “great country,” the largest in the world.

One day they will say the “September 11″ was the (good) old days of the last war. It was still the order of the gigantic: visible and enormous! What size, how high! There have been worse since, nanotechnology in all kinds are much more powerful and invisible, impregnable, they creep everywhere. They compete in the micrologique with microbes and bacteria. But our unconscious is already sensitive, he knows it already and that’s what’s scary.

If this violence is not a “war” interstate, it does not fall within the “civil war” or “war supporters”, as defined by Schmitt, as it does not, as most of the “war supporters” into a national uprising or a liberation movement to take power on the soil of a nation-state (even if one of the target side or central networks ” Bin Laden “is to destabilize Saudi Arabia, ambiguous ally of the United States, and install a new power state). Even if we continued to talk about terrorism, this designation is for a new concept and new distinctions.

GB - Do you believe we can make these distinctions?

JD - It’s harder than ever. If you want to not rely blindly on language, which is usually docile media to rhetorical gestures or verbal dominant political power, it must be very careful when you use the word “terrorism” and especially “international terrorism “. What terror, in the first place? What distinguishes it from fear, anxiety, panic? Just now, suggesting that the events of September 11 was as major as the trauma he inflicted on consciousness and was not unaware of what had happened but the threat an indefinite future more dangerous than the Cold War, is what I was talking about terror, fear, panic or anxiety?

Organized terror, triggered a tool, how different does this fear that a tradition, from Hobbes to Schmitt and even Benjamin, held for the condition of the rule of law and the exercise of sovereign power, to the condition of politics and of the State? In Leviathan, Hobbes does not speak only of “fear” but “terrour.” Benjamin told the state it seeks to acquire, through threats, specifically, a monopoly of violence. We will say, of course, that any experience of terror, even if it has a specificity, is not necessarily a result of terrorism. Without doubt, the political history of the word “terrorism” derives largely from the reference to the French Revolutionary Terror, which was exercised on behalf of the State and rightly assumed that the legal monopoly of violence.

If we refer to definitions or explicitly legal terrorism, what is there? The reference to a crime against human life in violation of laws (national or international) and involves both the distinction between civilian and military (victims of terrorism are supposed to be civilian) and political (influence or change the policy a country by terrorizing its civilian population). These definitions do not have the “state terrorism”. All the terrorists of the world claim to respond, to defend itself, a former state terrorism, which does not say his name, covers all kinds of reasons more or less credible.

You know the accusations, for example, and especially against the United States suspected of engaging in or encouraging state terrorism. On the other hand, even during declared wars between states, in the form of the old law, the terrorists were frequent outbursts. Well before the bombing more or less solid the last two wars, the intimidation of civilians was a classic appeal. For centuries.

We must also say a word about the term “international terrorism” that feeds the official political discourse throughout the world. It is also implemented in many official condemnation from the UN. After September 11, an overwhelming majority of states represented at the United Nations (perhaps unanimously, I can not remember, it remains to be verified) condemned, as it had done more than once recent decades, what it calls “international terrorism”.

However, during a meeting transmitted on television, Mr. Kofi Annan had to remind the passage of many previous debates. Just when they were preparing to order, some states had expressed their reservations about the clarity of the concept of international terrorism and criteria can be identified. Like many legal concepts which are very serious issues, what remains obscure, dogmatic or pre-critical in these concepts does not prevent the powers that be legitimate and called on it when it seems appropriate.

On the contrary, as a concept is confusing, it is more docile to opportunistic appropriation. This is the result of hasty decisions without philosophical debate about “international terrorism” and his conviction that the United Nations authorized the United States to use all means deemed timely and appropriate by the ‘U.S. administration to protect themselves before the “international terrorism”.

Without going too far back, not even recall, as is often, and rightly so, these days, that terrorists can be rented as freedom fighters in a context (for example in the fight against ‘Soviet occupation in Afghanistan) and denounced as terrorists in another (often the same combatants, with the same weapons, today), there is the difficulty we would have to decide between “national” and ” international “in the case of terrorism in the history of Algeria, Northern Ireland, Corsica, Israel and Palestine.

Nobody can deny that there has been state terrorism in the French repression in Algeria between 1954 and 1962. Then the terrorism practiced by the Algerian rebellion was long considered a domestic phenomenon as Algeria was supposed to be an integral part of French national territory, as terrorism then French (exercised by the State) was as a police and internal security. Only decades later, in 1990, the French Parliament retrospectively conferred the status of “war” (so confrontational international) to this conflict, in order to provide pensions to “veterans” who claims.

Therefore showed that this law? Well, it was necessary and could change all the names previously used to describe this than it was euphemistically known in Algeria, the “events” just (due again to the public popular of able to name the “thing” properly). The army repression, as police operation inside and State terrorism, was once again suddenly a “war”.

On the other hand, the terrorists were and are now seen in much of the world as freedom fighters and heroes of national independence. As for the terrorism of armed groups who have imposed the establishment and recognition of Israel, it was national or international? And the various Palestinian terrorist groups today? And the Irish? And Afghans who fought against the Soviet Union? And the Chechens?

Starting from when terrorism stops there be denounced as such to be hailed as the only legitimate one? Or vice versa? Where to move the boundary between national and international police and the army, the intervention of “peacekeeping” and war, terrorism and war, civil-military territory and structures that provide the potential defensive or offensive a “society”? I say vaguely “Company” because there are cases where a political entity, more or less organic and organized, is neither a State nor an all-state, but virtually State: see what is now Palestine or the Palestinian Authority.

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