Counterterrorism without terror?

Identity-threats to the nation-state

Workshop

Ecole Normale Supérieure (Room R1-16, 1st floor)

18 June 2018

If we understand counterterrorismas the range of techniques and practices deployed by the state in response to terrorism, either real or imagined, then at its very core, it grows from terrorism, is parasitic upon it, cannot live without. The more the enactment of the rule of law converges with the other as potential terrorist, the more the deeper a kind of virtual terrorismsends its roots in to the earth of liberal society.

Identity studies have long been understood national identity as a matter of national security. In the high era terrorism, the question of ‘us and them’ is increasingly collapsed on the question of ‘us and the terrorist’. Identity studies as terrorism studies.

Matters that were once politically assimilated to societal questions like immigration, integration or even citizenship, have become inescapable issues of security politics. Most recently, violence produced in the name of one specific religion, Islam, has crystallised the fears of many. These fears produce new political practices—for example ubiquitous, data-driven surveillance—aimed at the re-vitalisation of national identity.

How this instrumentalisation of nationality in security policies takes shape in different European countries? Can we observe the same mechanisms in non-European countries? Is it a ‘globalised’ phenomenon or is it a security practice proper to the West? Can these new tendencies be explained by a return to identity theory and treated with a revived politics of identity. Is there an alternative to illiberal forms of counterterrorism?

This workshop, organised by the Chair in Geopolitics of Risk in the FP7 SOURCE Societal Security Network, will examine these and related questions. Multidisciplinary and comparative approaches will be privileged.

10:00 - Welcome and Opening Remarks : Sarah C. Perret, Chaire de Géopolitique du Risque (SOURCE/ENS)

10:30 - Panel 1: Counterterrorism and Counter-radicalization in Liberal Societies

Alessandra Russo (Centre Emile Durkheim, Sciences Po Bordeaux) & Ervjola Selenica (Centre for International Education, University of Sussex): The knowledge production on de-radicalisation and counter-terrorism across scholarly and policy-making discourses and practices

Charlotte Heath-Kelly (PAIS, University of Warwick): Counter-Radicalisation Surveillance as Neoliberal Welfare Provision

Kyle Grayson (Newcastle University): Fasco-liberalism and the reorganisation of spatial orders

12:30 - Lunch Break

13:30 - Panel 2 : Regimes of Citizenship and Counterterrorism Policies

Xavier Guillaume (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen): Identity ascriptions and political communities: connecting regimes and models of citizenship with counter-terrorism policies

Marie Beauchamps (PPLE, University of Amsterdam): Introducing Denaturalization as an Affective Technology of Government

Tugba Basaran (University of Cambridge): Security, Law, Outlaw

15:30 - Coffee Break

15:45 - Panel 3: Instrumentalization of Citizenship in Non-Western Societies

Ben Hayes (Transnational Institute/PRIO): Globalisation of Counterterrorism

Chowra Makaremi (EHESS, CNRS): “Enemies of God", "enemies of the State", "enemies of the Nation": anti-terrorism and State formation in the Islamic Republic

Kristoffer Liden(SOURCE/PRIO) : Policing ideas: Countering Violent Extremism as technology of illiberal governance

17:45 - Concluding Remarks: J. Peter Burgess, Chaire de Géopolitique du Risque (SOURCE/ENS)