Case

Exception Bad
The affirmatives reading of biopolitics through the jargon of
exception neutralizes the ability to resist state powerIgnorance of the origins of state power reproduces biopolitical
violence through a lack of democratization within and against
biopolitics
Jef Huysmans 8, Professor of Security Studies at the Open University,
5/8/2008, The Jargon of ExceptionOn Schmitt, Agamben and the
Absence of Political Society, International Political Sociology,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.17495687.2008.00042.x/full
Contrasting Agambens reading of biopolitics with Foucaults is instructive. Similarly to Agamben, Foucaults work
on biopolitics, discipline and governmentality addresses the emergence and governance of life in its biological
existence as a form of power that considerably differs from legal-constitutional understandings of politics (Foucault
1976, 2004a,b). However, unlike Agamben this life is not an empty, that is, unmediated space or entity. In

life is rendered not primarily through being freed from the politicolegal order but by being constituted through, among others, the mediation of
technologies and professional knowledges. The invention of political economy, knowledge struggles
Foucaults reading,

within psychiatry, the invention of history, etc. defined how modern life, its governance and its politics have been
constituted as a biopolitical dispositifs.
In analyzing how power operates through dispersed, fragmented practices that nevertheless weave a diagram of
constituting and governing societal relations, the total categories in which politics has been conceptualized in the
constitutional framing of exceptionstate versus society, law versus politics, sovereigntycollapse into a relational
picture of various expert discourses, professional knowledges, institutional practices governing a biological and

Instead of
being naked and anomic life, biopolitical life is constituted through an extremely
detailed mediation of social and individual being and is steeped in a
multidimensional history of strategic and tactical interactions . Not means without ends but
economic understanding of life, and a rich history of sociopolitical struggles (Foucault 1997, 2004a,b).

the patching into a dispositifs of multiple strategies of connecting means and ends that have been enacted and

While the central characteristic of Agambens

biopolitics is anomie, Foucaults is extremely detailed and fragmented mediations
that produce, reproduce, and shift strategic, governmental practice and resistance
to it.
struggled over in a multiplicity of sites and times.

These latter struggles over knowledge, truth and governmental technologies and their
bearing upon social relations and individual being often are not articulated primarily within the field
of professional politicians and the state institutions . Politics as the contestation over the
collective structuring of relations between human beings and between them and their environment has left the

Politics becomes fragmented and dispersed

within the societal. One of the central realms of Foucaultian biopolitics is the
traveling and clustering of professional knowledge, skills and technologies, and the
formulation of counter-knowledge, skills and technologies, as the sociological interpretations of
state and has been absorbed by societal practices.

Foucault in the so-called governmentality literature have most explicitly brought out (Dean 1991, 1994, 1999;
Barry, Osborne, and Rose 1996; Hindess 1996; Rose 1999).

Unlike the jargon of exception, this Foucaultian reading does not interpret the
nature of modern politics from the perspective of its ultimate limit . As Marie Mhle's
reading of Agamben and Foucault shows, they fundamentally differ in that Foucault reads modern

politics from the insidefrom the practices that have constituted itwhile Agamben
interprets the nature of modern politics from its absolute outside (Mhle 2007).11 The
idioms of exception and exception-as-the-rule seek to understand the nature of democratic
politics from the perspective of its collapse. For Agamben, the concentration camps, that is, loci
where the exception has become the rule, define the matrix of modern politics (Agamben 1998). The concentration
camp has been the reference point of the absolute limit of modern, democratic government in Europe at least since
the middle of the twentieth century. Schmitt defines the nature of politics through the specter of dictatorship. The
relation to a total enemy and thus the possibility of total war as well as in the existence of an absolute normative
vacuum in which the relation between norms and anomie can no longer be bridged but has to be reconstituted
defines the essence of modern politics. Both points of view conceptualize the political from the point of view of

This thinking of
democratic politics through its limit is a central characteristic of the jargon of
exception (Bartelson 1997). It is therefore not surprising that the key category of democratic
politics, the people as a political societal multiplicity of relations and political
practices, slips out of the jargon of exception . After all, it seeks to understand democratic politics
the absolute limit of democratic governance both in its liberal and social-democratic forms.

from sites and times where it no longer exists.

Foucault sharply brings out this peculiarity of the jargon of exception. Unlike
Schmitt and Agamben, his interpretation draws us into the richness and transformations
of biopolitical history through which modern governance and politics has developed
Reading

(Neal 2006). The question is not what the camps tell us about the nature of modern politics but rather how
practices such as camps and therapeutic policies exist within democratic forms of governance that aim to optimize

These
histories, sites of governance and contestations of knowledge and truth always
consist of highly relational and heavily mediated practices. As stated above, in Foucaults
work, biopolitics does not enact anomie but its contrary: an extremely detailed
governance and self-governance of relations between humans and between humans
and their environment. This view of biopolitical relationality is not totalitarian because
change and resistance are internally generated within biopolitics and therefore
political life is not simply imposition through governance but always also necessarily
struggles over knowledge, technologies, living conditions, discriminations, etc. (for example, Foucault
and improve life and constitute freedom as a defining category of subjects and governance (Mhle 2007).

1973, 1978, 1997). Such a reading of biopolitics reintroduces the societal as a history, a multiplicity of places and
times, and traditions of thinking the political, thus taking exception to the erasure of the societal and the
catastrophic conceptions of the political in the jargon of exception.

debates about the reconciliation of liberty and security , for

are not, as Agamben argues, an ideological practice that hides the
fundamental break down of the dialectic between law and anomie that has been central to
modern politics (Agamben 2003:144148). Rather these debates insert questions of and
challenges to the role of law and generalized norm-setting in highly charged
biopolitical governance of insecurities. Instead of collapsing the dialectic between law and anomie,
contestation of the protection of civil liberties, demands for re-negotiating balances between
liberties and security are neither simply to be taken at face value as a matter of the
necessity of balancing and rebalancing nor to be seen as the endgame of the validity of legal
mediations of politics and life. Rather they open up a need to revisit the particular kind of
work that law does and does not do in specific sites (Neocleous 2006), such as camps, and what the
practices possibly tell us about if and how the dialectic between law and anomie
operates in biopolitical governance. Fleur Johnss analysis of the camp in Guantanamo Bay is one such example
Looked at from this perspective,
example,

(Johns 2005). She argues that the camp is penetrated by a form of norm setting, thus implying that a dialectic
between norms and anomie, political transgression and law is not absent from the organization and governing
practice in the camp. Unlike some other analyses that focus on constitutional transgressions and battles in the
constitutional courts, Johns emphasizes the importance for biopolitical governance of the detailed and in a sense

banal regulations that seek to structure the everyday practices of the guards, the administrators and the prisoners.
The norm setting is thus not primarily constitutional but administrative.

Bare Life Impact D

Bare Life oversimplifies-It is a matter of degree and value to
life is still possible
Thomas Lemke 5, Professor of Sociology at Goethe University
Frankfurt, Fall 2005, A Zone of Indistinction A Critique of Giorgio
Agambens Concept of Biopolitics, Genomics, Society and Policy, Vol.
1, No. 3, http://www.thomaslemkeweb.de/engl.%20texte/A
%20Zone3.pdf
the decision about life and death no longer appears today as a stable
border dividing two clearly distinct zones (1998: 122). This sentence allows for two completely
For Agamben

different readings. If the accent is placed on the first part of the phrase that stresses the dissolution of a clear
distinction line, the border is conceived as a flexible zone or a mobile line. Or this is the second interpretation if
the accent is put on the last part of the phrase, the phrase seems to indicate that there is no longer a borderline at

This is probably the direction that Agamben

takes when he speaks of a zone of indistinction, the tendentious identity of life and politics
(1998: 122 resp. 148). But this leads into a blind alley. Agamben does not comprehend
camp as an internally differentiated continuum, but only as a line (1998: 122) that
separates more or less clearly between bare life and political existence. As a consequence, he cannot
analyse how inside bare life hierarchisations and evaluations become possible,
how life can be classified and qualified as higher or lower, as descending or
ascending. Agamben cannot account for these processes since his attention is fixed
on the establishment of a border a border that he does not comprehend as a staggered zone but as a
line without extension that reduces the question to an either-or. In other words: Agamben is less
interested in life than in its bareness, whereby his account does not focus on the
normalisation of life, but on death as the materialisation of a borderline. For Agamben
all, that both domains have become indistinguishable.

biopolitics is essentially thanatopolitics (1998: 122; Fitzpatrick 2001: 263-265; Werber 2002: 419).

No Solvency
Aff cant solve-State of Exception rests on an outdated view
of politics that fails to account for a move to sovereign
individuals as the tools of biopolitics
Thomas Lemke 5, Professor of Sociology at Goethe University
Frankfurt, Fall 2005, A Zone of Indistinction A Critique of Giorgio
Agambens Concept of Biopolitics, Genomics, Society and Policy, Vol.
1, No. 3, http://www.thomaslemkeweb.de/engl.%20texte/A
%20Zone3.pdf
Agamben sees the novelty of the modern biopolitics in the fact that the biological
given is as such immediately political, and the political is as such immediately the
biological given (1998: 148; emphasis in orig.). In the political program of the
Nazis, the preoccupation with life is at the same time a struggle against the enemy.
While there are probably convincing reasons to state that in the present we are one
step further on the way towards a politicisation of nature, there are at least two
major problems that this conception of biopolitics fails to address. Firstly, Agamben
does not take into account that the site of sovereignty has been displaced. While in
the eugenic programs in the first half of the 20th century biopolitical interventions
were mainly executed by the state that controlled the health of the population or
the hygiene of the race, biopolitics today is becoming more and more a
responsibility of sovereign subjects. As autonomous patients, active consumers or
responsible parents they demand medical or biotechnological options. Today, it is
less the state that regulates by direct interventions and restrictions, since the
capacity and competence of decision-making is increasingly ascribed to the
individual subject to make informed choices beyond political authoritarianism and
medical paternalism. Decisions on life and death are less the explicit result of legal
provisions and political regulations but the outcome of an invisible hand that
represents the options and practices of sovereign individuals (Lemke 2002b; Koch
2002). Agambens analysis is too state-centred, or rather, it relies on a limited
conception of the state which does not take into account important political
transformations since the Nazi era. He does not take into account that in
contemporary liberal societies political power is exercised through a multiplicity of
agencies and techniques that are often only loosely associated with the formal
organs of the state. The self-regulating capacities of subjects as autonomous actors
have become key resources for present forms of government that rely in crucial
respects on forms of scientific expertise and knowledge (Rose/Miller 1992).

No solvency-Their view of legal rights as the only way bare life

can be created means that bare life will be reproduced in non
legal ways
Thomas Lemke 5, Professor of Sociology at Goethe University
Frankfurt, Fall 2005, A Zone of Indistinction A Critique of Giorgio

Agambens Concept of Biopolitics, Genomics, Society and Policy, Vol.

1, No. 3, http://www.thomaslemkeweb.de/engl.%20texte/A
%20Zone3.pdf
*Edited for offensive language*
Agambens concept of biopolitics is marked by a second weakness that also
demonstrates his excessively legalistic approach. Biopolitical mechanisms confront
not only those who have been deprived of elementary rights and reduced to the
status of living beings. The analysis of biopolitics cannot be limited to those without
legal rights, such as the refugee or the asylum seeker, but must encompass all
those who are confronted with social processes of exclusion even if they may be
formally enjoying full political rights: the useless, the unnecessary, or the
redundant. While in the past these ominous figures inhabited only peripheral
spaces in the so-called third and forth world, today in a global economy these forms
of exclusion can also be found in the industrialized centres. As a result of the crisis
of the welfare state and Fordist modes of social integration, more and different
segments of the populations are effectively excluded not only from labour and the
working process but from education, housing and social life (Castel 2000; Imbusch
2001).
By concentrating on questions of law and the figure of the sovereign ban, Agamben
ignores central aspects of contemporary biopolitics. He takes for granted that the
state of exception is not only the point of departure for politics, but its essence and
destination. In this light, politics is reduced to the production of homines sacri a
production that in a sense has to be called non-productive since bare life is only
produced to be suppressed and killed. But biopolitical interventions cannot be
limited to registering the opposition of bare life and political existence. Bare life is
no longer simply subject to death; it falls prey to a bioeconomical imperative that
aims at the increase of lifes value and the optimalisation of its quality.
Contemporary biopolitics is essentially political economy of life that is neither
reducible to state agencies nor to the form of law. Agambens concept of biopolitics
remains inside the ban of sovereignty, it is blind (oblivious) to all the mechanisms
operating beneath or beyond the law (see also Brckling 2003).

Law Good
Their critique of the law has no solvent alternative system
Matthew Sharpe 6, Professor of political philosophy and
psychoanalytic studies at Deakin University's School of International
and Political Studies, 2006, 'THINKING OF THE EXTREME SITUATION ...
' ON THE NEW ANTI-TERRORISM LAWS, OR AGAINST A RECENT
(THEORETICAL AND LEGAL) RETURN TO CARL SCHMITT, 24 Austl.
Feminist L.J. 95,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13200968.2006.1085435
4?journalCode=rfem20#.VbzwCflViko
Arguably the most worrying question that can be asked about the passage of
Australia's antiterrorism laws, I commented in the Introduction, is simply the
absence of any more concerted public opposition to them, given their extreme and
illiberal nature. This essay has addressed this question in the theoretical field, by
critically examining Giorgio Agamben's influential legal and political philosophy. For
all its undoubted empirical relevance, I have argued, Agamben's work deleteriously
hypostasizes the profoundly reactionary legal theory of Carl Schmitt to the elevated
rank of that which would tell us the Truth not only of our current malaise but of
-Western politics ... from the very beginning'. 13 9 By taking the extreme situation
as yielding the truth of law, and arguing that emergency jurisprudence is more or
less necessary and universal in later modernity, I have argued that Agamben
proffers a theory which uncannily mirrors the justificatory apparatus of the
postmodern-conservative or neoconservative governments of the USA and
Australia. If Agamben allows us to interpret the 'state of exception' that is currently
being advocated by the Australian and other executives, that is, he also strays
perilously close - in a logic familiar since at least The Dialectic of Enlightenment - to
explaining away any possibility that we could actually do anything more about it
than to 'bunker down' and hope for the advent of some redemptive politics 'beyond
law' altogether.

Aff cant solve-No way to challenge current power structures

Tara McCormack 10, Lecturer in International Politics at the University
of Leicester, 2010, Critique, Security and Power: The political limits to
emancipatory approaches, Routledge Critical Security Studies,
m.friendfeedmedia.com/48db0c148fff1c2b0524b6226fde42760e83ab67
In the preceding chapters I have attempted to develop an argument about the
political limits to critical and emancipatory approaches to contemporary
international relations. The key claim of critical and emancipatory theorists is to
pose a challenge to contemporary global power structures. In the preceding
chapters I have argued that critical approaches cannot pose a challenge to
contemporary power relations. However, this is neither because, as critical theorists
such as Richard Devetak have argued, critical theorists need to ensure that they

maintain a distance from interventionist policies (2007) nor because, as radical

critics have argued, critical theorists are simply the theoretical wing of liberal
interventionism (Douzinas, 2007).
Rather, the work has sought to draw out the problematic political assumptions of
critical and emancipatory theorists and similarities with contemporary security
policies and rhetoric. There are theoretical and political limits to contemporary
critical and emancipatory approaches which mean that whatever the intent of
contemporary critical theorists they cannot pose a challenge to contemporary
power structures or discourses. This argument was explored in two ways, in
chapters 13 I engaged with contemporary critical and emancipatory approaches to
security, and in chapters 46 with critical approaches to the Yugoslav break-up and
wars. In chapter 1 I drew out the central arguments of contemporary critical and
emancipatory theorists that security needs to be reconceptualised in terms of
human freedom and well being, and that more cosmopolitan forms of international
organisation should be constructed, in which human rights and dignity should not
be a matter of chance depending upon which state a person happens to be born in,
but universal rights. In chapter 2 I put critical and emancipatory theory in its
contemporary context, and argued that critical theorists were engaging with a
security framework which has decreasing relevance in the contemporary context.
Within major international institutions, such as the UN, and in the policy and policy
discourse of states the old certainties of the pluralist security framework were being
subjected to critique and redefinition at the highest level of international policy
making. In fact, security policies and discourses are much similar than otherwise to
the prescriptions of critical security theorists.
This suggests that contrary to the claims of contemporary critical and emancipatory
theorists they are not engaging in the here and now. However, engaging with
structures and discourses of contemporary power must be fundamental to the task
of posing a challenge to those power relations and structures. This suggests that
critical and emancipatory theorists are idealistic, because their critique is not driven
by an engagement with contemporary power structures. In chapter 3 I explored this
theoretical problem in more depth, and argued that for contemporary critical and
emancipatory theorists the source of critical engagement was in their own moral
values rather than engagement with structures of power. This points to a serious
theoretical limit to contemporary critical and emancipatory approaches. Critical and
emancipatory theorists are engaging in an exercise in idealism, this is shown
because their critique is not rooted in an engagement with, and critique of,
contemporary structures and discourses of power. Rather, the critique of critical
theorists is little more than a statement of their own moral values.

Their critique fails-Forces within the law can transform it

Antonio Negri 4, Italian Moral and Political Philosopher, Spring 2004,
It's a Powerful Life: A Conversation on Contemporary Philosophy,
Interviewed by Cesare Casarino, Associate Professor Of Cultural
Studies And Comparative Literature At The University Of Minnesota,
Cultural Critique, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4140765

AN: Whenever I tell him what I have just finished telling you, he gets quite irritated, even angry. I still maintain,

the conclusions he draws in Homo Sacer lead to dangerous political

outcomes and that the burden of finding a way out of this mess rests entirely on
him. And the type of problems he runs into in this book recur throughout many of his
other works. I found his essay on Bartleby, for example, absolutely infuriating. This essay was published
nonetheless, that

originally as a little book that also contained Deleuze's essay on Bartleby: well, it turns out that what Deleuze says
in his essay is exactly the contrary of what Giorgio says in his! I suppose one could say that they decided to publish
their essays together precisely so as to attempt to figure this limitthat is, to find a figure for it, to give it a form-by
some sort of paradoxical juxtaposition, but I don't think that this attempt was really successful in the end. In any
case, all this incessant talk about the limit bores me and tires me out after a little while. The point is that, inasmuch
as it is death, the limit is not creative. The limit is creative to the extent to which you have been able to overcome it
qua death: the limit is creative because you have overcome death.
cc: Yes, and the creativity-indeed, the productivity-that derives from having overcome this limit is the creativity of
absolute freedom in the Spinozian sense. This is, in fact, one way of understanding what Spinoza means when he
says that one must free oneself from the fear of death and that nobody is more free, more powerful, and more
dangerous than somebody who no longer fears death: in Spinoza, absence of the fear of death is at once absolute
freedom and untrammeled productivity, namely, the expression of the most creative potentials, the zenith of
creativity; or, more precisely, in Spinoza, that moment of absolute freedom that is the absence of the fear of death
constitutes the indispensable condition of possibility for such an exponential leap in expression, production, creation
(without, perhaps, necessarily guaranteeing it ).
AN: And while Spinoza tells us to free ourselves from the presence of death, Heidegger tells us the contrary.
cc: But let's return one last time to the question of naked life. In your recent book Kairbs, Alma Venus, Multitudo,
you discuss at length the question of poverty; in fact, one could say that you elaborate there a specific conception
of poverty, that you produce the concept of poverty." I want to return to this concept later. What interests me for
the moment is to note that in those pages on poverty you also engage with the question of nakedness, you often
speak of the nakedness of poverty. At one point, for example, you write that, far from being an object constituted by
the suffering inflicted by biopolitics, the poor are precisely the biopolitical subject, and, moreover, that "the poor are
the naked eternity of the power [potenza] to be."12 As I was reading these passages, it occurred to me that your
insistence on the question of nakedness here is a reference and a reply to the nakedness of Agamben's naked life.
AN: Yes, I completely agree: the fact that I took this term up again and redeployed it is a clear indication of Giorgio's
presence and influence in my work-and I must say I am pleased about it, and I am glad that you noticed it.
Undoubtedly, there is always ongoing dialogue, exchange, discussion between Giorgio and myself.
cc: What is the nature of the exchange in this specific case? What is the difference between the nakedness of
poverty and the nakedness of naked life?

AN: The nakedness of poverty is immediately linked to love, that is, to a positive
power [potenzal. Such nakedness is always already there as element of being.
cc: And hence it is part and parcel of constituent power-the concept with which we began this conversation and
which you claim differentiates your project from Foucault's as well as from Deleuze and Guattari's projects.
Unsurprisingly, the concept of constituent power also turns out to mark a crucial difference between your project
and Agamben's project. Agamben has commented on this matter. In Homo Sacer, he briefly discusses your
Insurgencies, and, in particular, he critiques the way in which you separate constituent power and constituted
power from each other in that work: he maintains that you are not able to find a plausible criterion according to
which a distinction between these two powers can be made, and, furthermore, that it is not possible to sustain or
even to posit any separation between them anyway. What do you think about such a critique?

Giorgio has always tried to show how juridical categories as well

as the juridical as a category cannot be raised or made to answer to coherent
metaphysical criteria. His critique, in other words, is a purely negative critique: what I mean
by this is not that he criticizes the substance of what I say about constituent power; what I mean, rather, is that he
does not want to solve this problem, that he believes it is not even advisable to look
for a solution to this problem at all. In the end, I find this type of critique to be rather banal.
AN: I am not really sure.

cc: Could you be more specific?

Giorgio's main critique of my positions consists of arguing that constituent power and
constituted power cannot be distinguished from each other according to any
juridical-political criterion. Well, thank you very much! That's entirely obvious-and, in fact, my analysis of
AN:

constituent power begins precisely from this problem. All jurists argue that constituent power does not exist unless
it is codified, that it ruptures the juridical system and its continuity, that it cannot come into being unless it has

According to such arguments, therefore,

constituent power paradoxically can take two forms at once: on the one hand, it lives
outside the Law, and, on the other hand, it lives inside the Law, that is, in the form of the
Supreme Court's power to innovate the legal system [ordinamento giuridico].
been recognized and validated by constituted power.

Off Case

Terror DA

AT Terror Reps/Security K
Our scholarship is sound-It uses unbiased, in depth study to
prove terror threats real
Michael J. Boyle and John Horgan 8, School of International Relations,
University of St. Andrews, and, International Center for the Study of
Terrorism, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University,
April 2008, A Case Against Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Studies
On Terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 51-64
We believe this is overstating the case. Like much of political science, the study of
terrorism has been influenced by the logic of problem-solving theory and includes
a strong dose of instrumental rationality. But to imply that all those working within
an empirical tradition of research in terrorism studies do not challenge the status
quo, or suggest uncomfortable truths to those in power, is misleading. Many of the
serious scholars who work in this field are sympathetic to the normative goals that
CTS scholars espouse, and are unafraid to speak truth to power when needed. For
example, many terrorism scholars do not hesitate to tell governments bluntly that
unpopular certain foreign policy choices (such as the US invasion of Iraq or the
Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza) generate terrorism, and that
addressing pervasive economic and social inequalities is an essential part of
counter-terrorism.4
In fact, in a 2004 Open Letter to the American People, over 700 security studies
scholars in the USA and elsewhere signed their names to a case which included the
following: We judge that the current American policy centered around the war in
Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period, one which harms the
cause of the struggle against extreme Islamist terrorists. One result has been a
great distortion in the terms of public debate on foreign and national security policyan emphasis on speculation instead of facts. (Security Scholars for a Sensible
Foreign Policy (2004)5
The list included such well-known terrorism experts as Jessica Stern, David Rapoport
(Co-editor of Terrorism and Political Violence), and Mia Bloom. If terrorism scholars,
including these, were solely interested in telling comforting lies to those in power,
they would shy away from these uncomfortable facts and would certainly not
publicly identify themselves with such an openly critical stance.
Moreover, many of the embedded experts identified by name in existing CTS work
have deep liberal concerns for economic and social justice (Hoffman 2007,
Wilkinson 1977, and subsequent revisions). Their ambitions may not be entirely
emancipatory (Linklater 1996), but neither are they content to accept the world as
it is. Let us be clear: within the broad community of self-ascribed terrorism experts
there are some charlatans who will do whatever they need to get close to power
and to solve problems for them. But these are not representative of the serious
scholars in the field, and even those who do not adopt the language of critical
theory often work with the same social, political and moral purpose of advancing
social justice as CTS scholars.

Serious and reflective scholars of terrorism also do not deny the observation that
theory is often for some one, and for some purpose. What they do not share is the
explicit normative and ideological commitment to emancipation, however defined.
One of our chief concerns about CTS is that the precise meaning of this commitment
to emancipation has not been made clear, beyond the basic point that
emancipation would involve strengthening the voices of moderation and increasing
the political voice of some dissident groups (McDonald 2007, p. 257). These are
worthwhile goals, certainly, but not unique to CTS in any respect. So the analytic
value of this maddeningly vague notion of emancipation in this instance is not yet
obvious to us. How exactly does attacking the concept of terrorism generate
greater prospects for freedom in existing social relations, or produce a broadly
progressive outcome (McDonald 2007, p. 257)?6 In part due to the fact that CTS
advocates have not yet made their ontological and epistemological commitments or
their intellectual debts within critical theory clear, it remains unclear just who has
agency in their account, how emancipation would be achieved, and to what
substantive normative and political goals emancipation is directed.

Our Terrorism studies are best-Self-Reflexivity

Michael J. Boyle and John Horgan 8, School of International Relations,
University of St. Andrews, and, International Center for the Study of
Terrorism, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University,
April 2008, A Case Against Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Studies
On Terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 51-64
Jackson (2007c) calls for the development of an explicitly CTS on the basis of what
he argues preceded it, dubbed Orthodox Terrorism Studies. The latter, he suggests,
is characterized by: (1) its poor methods and theories, (2) its state centricity, (3) its
problem solving orientation, and (4) its institutional and intellectual links to state
security projects. Jackson argues that the major defining characteristic of CTS, on
the other hand, should be a skeptical attitude towards accepted terrorism
knowledge.
An implicit presumption from this is that terrorism scholars have laboured for all of
these years without being aware that their area of study has an implicit bias, as well
as definitional and methodological problems. In fact, terrorism scholars are not only
well aware of these problems, but also have provided their own searching critiques
of the field at various points during the last few decades (e.g. Silke 1996, Crenshaw
1998, Gordon 1999, Horgan 2005, esp. ch. 2, Understanding Terrorism). Some of
those scholars most associated with the critique of empiricism implied in Orthodox
Terrorism Studies have also engaged in deeply critical examinations of the nature
of sources, methods, and data in the study of terrorism. For example, Jackson
(2007a) regularly cites the handbook produced by Schmid and Jongman (1988) to
support his claims that theoretical progress has been limited. But this fact was well
recognized by the authors; indeed, in the introduction of the second edition they
point out that they have not revised their chapter on theories of terrorism from the
first edition, because the failure to address persistent conceptual and data problems
has undermined progress in the field. The point of their handbook was to sharpen

and make more comprehensive the result of research on terrorism, not to glide over
its methodological and definitional failings (Schmid and Jongman 1988, p. xiv).
Similarly, Silkes (2004) volume on the state of the field of terrorism research
performed a similar function, highlighting the shortcomings of the field, in particular
the lack of rigorous primary data collection. A non-reflective community of scholars
does not produce such scathing indictments of its own work.
One might counter that the problem is in fact that scholars of terrorism are not
sufficiently self-critical in the theoretically informed way that CTS aims to be. And of
course, there are certainly instances of scholars working in terrorism studies who
appear to be unaware or less than critical of their theoretical foundations or who do
not frame their criticisms in theoretically informed language. But it is not the case
that the critiques offered by CTS on this point are novel; critics have attacked
scholarship on terrorism for its bias and silences long before critical theory was
imported into its study, and further some of the most trenchant criticisms of
terrorism studies come without the language and assumptions of critical theory
(George 1991, Mueller 2006, respectively).

Prefer our studies-Our scholars use rigorous methodology and

policy relevance is good
Michael J. Boyle and John Horgan 8, School of International Relations,
University of St. Andrews, and, International Center for the Study of
Terrorism, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University,
April 2008, A Case Against Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Studies
On Terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 51-64
One of the tensions within CTS concerns the issue of policy relevance. At the most
basic level, there are some sweeping generalizations made by CTS scholars, often
with little evidence. For example, Jackson (2007c) describes the core terrorism
scholars (without explicitly saying who he is referring to) as intimately connected
institutionally, financially, politically, and ideologically with a state hegemonic
project (p. 245). Without giving any details of who these core scholars are, where
they are, what they do, and exactly who funds them, his arguments are tantamount
to conjecture at best. We do not deny that governments fund terrorism research and
terrorism researchers, and that this can influence the direction (and even the
findings) of the research. But we are suspicious of over-generalizations of this count
on two grounds: (1) accepting government funding or information does not
necessarily obviate ones independent scholarly judgment in a particular project;
and (2) having policy relevance is not always a sin.
On the first point, we are in agreement with some CTS scholars. Gunning provides a
sensitive analysis of this problem, and calls on CTS advocates to come to terms with
how they can engage policy-makers without losing their critical distance. He
recognizes that CTS can (and should) aim to be policy-relevant, but perhaps to a
different audience, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society
than just governments and security services. In other words, CTS aims to whisper
into the ear of the prince, but it is just a different prince.

Gunning (2007a) also argues that research should be assessed on its own merits,
for just because a piece of research comes from RAND does not invalidate it;
conversely, a critical study is not inherently good (p. 240). We agree entirely with
this. Not all sponsored or contract research is made to toe a party line, and much
of the work coming out of official government agencies or affiliated government
agencies has little agenda and can be analytically useful. The task of the scholar is
to retain ones sense of critical judgment and integrity, and we believe that there is
no prima facie reason to assume that this cannot be done in sponsored research
projects. What matters here are the details of the research what is the purpose of
the work, how will it be done, how might the work be used in policy and for these
questions the scholar must be self-critical and insistent on their intellectual
autonomy. The scholar must also be mindful of the responsibility they bear for
shaping a governments response to the problem of terrorism. Nothing not the
source of the funding, purpose of the research or prior empirical or theoretical
commitment obviates the need of the scholar to consider his or her own
conscience carefully when engaging in work with any external actor. But simply
engaging with governments on discrete projects does not make one an embedded
expert nor does it imply sanction to their actions.
But we also believe that the study of political violence lends itself to policy
relevance and that those who seek to produce research that might help policymakers reduce the rates of terrorist attack are committing no sin, provided that
they retain their independent judgment and report their findings candidly and
honestly. In the case of terrorism, we would go further to argue that being policy
relevant is in some instances an entirely justifiable moral choice. For example,
neither of us has any problem producing research with a morally defensible but
policy relevant goal (for example, helping the British government to prevent suicide
bombers from attacking the London Underground) and we do not believe that
engaging in such work tarnishes ones stature as an independent scholar. Implicit in
the CTS literature is a deep suspicion about the state and those who engage with it.
Such a suspicion may blind some CTS scholars to good work done by those
associated with the state. But to assume that being embedded in an institution
linked to the establishment consists of being captured by a state hegemonic
project is too simple. We do not believe that scholars studying terrorism must all be
policy-relevant, but equally we do not believe that being policy relevant should
always be interpreted as writing a blank cheque for governments or as necessarily
implicating the scholar in the behaviour of that government on issues unrelated to
ones work. Working for the US government, for instance, does not imply that the
scholar sanctions or approves of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The assumption
that those who do not practice CTS are all embedded with the establishment and
that this somehow gives the green light for states to engage in illegal activity is in
our view unwarranted, to say the very least.
The limits of this moral responsibility are overlooked in current CTS work; indeed, if
anything there is an attempt to inflate the policy relevance that terrorism scholars
have. Jackson (2007c) alleges that the direction of domestic counter-terrorism
policies are to a large degree based on orthodox terrorism studies research (p.
225). Yet he provides no examples, let alone evidence for this claim. Jackson further

alleges terrorism studies actually provides an authoritative judgment about who

may legitimately be killed, tortured, rendered or incarcerated by the state in the
name of counter-terrorism (p. 249). Again, there is a tension here: Jackson conjures
an image of terrorism studies which no matter its conceptual and empirical flaws is
somehow able to influence governments to the point of constructing who is and is
not a legitimate target. This implies that not only is there a secret cabal of terrorism
researchers quietly pulling the strings of government, but also that those engaged
in terrorism research sanction abuse of human rights and state directed violence.
This implies a measure of bad faith on the part of some terrorism researchers, and
we believe that CTS advocates should offer a more nuanced portrayal of those
engaged in policy relevant search than this assessment allows.

The criticism breaks down intellectual cooperation and creates

false dualisms that wreck progress
Michael J. Boyle and John Horgan 8, School of International Relations,
University of St. Andrews, and, International Center for the Study of
Terrorism, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University,
April 2008, A Case Against Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Studies
On Terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 51-64
Jackson and his colleagues argue the case for critical terrorism studies depends in
the first instance on a credible and compelling critique of the current state of
orthodox terrorism studies (Jackson 2007c, p. 226). We are not yet convinced.
Limited, narrowly selective literature reviews, based in part on research surveys
conducted in the 1980s, do not constitute valid grounds on which to develop
assertions about the scope and focus of research in this field in 2007. In some
instances, we believe that the case for CTS has been built on an aggressive reading
of the most easily identifiable limitations of the progress of terrorism research, and
has downplayed the difficulties associated with research (specifically, the natural
limits of the data). The core set of concerns have already been articulated by the
very people CTS advocates identify with the orthodoxy, thus undermining the
claim that CTS is fundamentally different. It might be difficult for some proponents
of CTS to accept, but perhaps we are not so different after all.
This raises the question of why we need an explicitly CTS approach at all. It is
manifestly clear from the papers produced under the CTS banner so far that this is
an intellectual project, designed to reclaim terrorism from orthodox terrorism
scholarship and to insist on a different interpretation of its context and causes. But
in calling for the establishment of an explicitly critical terrorism studies, the onus
of responsibility is on its advocates to make a clear case for not only how this is
justified, and with appropriate, transparent, and clearly articulated evidence, but
also to demonstrate how the concerns implicitly claimed to be characteristic of CTS,
are sufficient to distinguish it from what it says is the orthodoxy, which presumably
is bereft of such concerns. We do not believe this case has been fully made in work
published so far.

Instead, we believe that some CTS advocates have rather ironically created a
false dualism, between them and us which overlooks the similarities between
both camps. One particularly strand of critical theory represented in International
Relations by the work of Rob Walker is focused on breaking down false dualisms,
like inside/outside, identity/difference, time/space, among others (Walker 1993, also
Rengger and ThirkellWhite 2007, p. 10). This raises an unsettling question. Will the
creation of CTS as a mirror image of terrorism studies in its critique of the field
just replicate another unhelpful dualism? Is this not at odds with the point of critical
theory, that is, to embrace open dialogue and to envisage a community (in this
case, of scholars) that does not exclude alternative views?
Jackson and others recognize this problem, and are concerned about the: potentially
fraught intellectual struggle and there are many dangers along the way, not least
that CTS will fail to engage with Orthodox Terrorism Studies scholars and security
officials and instead evolve into an exclusionary and marginalized, ghettoised
subfield. It will be the responsibility of both critical and orthodox terrorism
scholars to ensure that this does not occur, but that through rigorous and respectful
dialogue the broader field is invigorated and revitalized. (Jackson 2007b, p. 227)
On this point, we agree. But we have to ask the fundamental question: why create
the dualism in the first place, by fostering a camp of scholars with strong prior
theoretical or ideological commitments if it leads scholars with the same goals to
not engage seriously with one another? To avoid this outcome, CTS advocates will
need to engage seriously and fairly with the rest of us in their research. But to do
this they will need to offer a respectful but critical reading of current research on
terrorism. We will do our best to promote the same respectful dialogue, and we
hope that this critical reading of the current CTS work is taken in that light.

Our studies use robust methodology and bear no resemblance

to the warmongering they critique
Michael J. Boyle and John Horgan 8, School of International Relations,
University of St. Andrews, and, International Center for the Study of
Terrorism, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University,
April 2008, A Case Against Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Studies
On Terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 51-64
The call for an explicitly CTS carries with it the assumption that is represents a
departure from what can only be assumed to be uncritical terrorism studies.
Jacksons allegation that he has laid out the basis for a multi-level critique of the
field is not yet convincing to us (Jackson 2007c, p. 250). What CTS has produced so
far is not always grounded in a fairminded appraisal of a complex, multi-disciplinary,
inter-disciplinary though often flawed or imperfect field of study. This is a field
rife with conceptual development, yet in some CTS accounts it finds itself criticized
for failing to meet standards it could not possibly aspire to be even if it wanted.
For better or worse, research work on terrorism is growing at exponential rates, and
what has emerged as a critique of todays terrorism research is not convincing to

those familiar with the progress that terrorism research has made, especially
recently.
Jackson and other CTS advocates are correct; any orthodoxy should be challenged.
But as we have attempted to demonstrate in the preceding discussion, throughout
the history of research on terrorism over the past forty years, there really is no
orthodoxy worthy of the name to be found. There may well be some
methodological orientations or theoretical overtures that aspire to dominance, and
of course these can (and should) be debated and challenged, but this is a much
more general point and not reducible to a single portrayal of terrorism studies. The
challenge facing CTS is to offer a fully informed theoretical position, or set of related
positions. We believe that a critical theory approach to terrorism studies can deliver
such a theoretical position, but only with a full review of the literature without
undue theoretical or ideological prejudices (literally, of course, prejudgments), and
with due respect to the efforts of those CTS advocates claim represent a different
set of concerns and values than they do. And we say to CTS proponents directly if
this is done, you will discover that you have more in common with us than you
believe.

The terror threat is real and increasing-Their studies are not

based in facts
Alex P. Schmid 9, senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of
Social Conflicts, University of Leiden, 2009, Perspectives on Terrorism,
Vol. 3, No.
4, http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/83/ht
ml
In the late 1960s traditional War and Peace Studies were challenged on the
European continent by "critical polemologists". Today, "Orthodox Terrorism Studies"
are challenged by "Critical Terrorism Studies" (CTS) . The critical polemologists who
criticised almost exclusively NATO but not the Warsaw Pact have disappeared long
ago. Critical Terrorism Studies tend to be equally one-eyed by being "critical" mainly
about Western counter-terrorism rather than focusing also on non-state terrorism.
Ideology plays a large role such disputes. For many of the CTS scholars "objective
social science is a hegemonic project to sustain the status quo" (H.Toros & J.
Gunning, p. 106) while "CTS is at heart an anti-hegemonic project" (R. Jackson et al,
p. 227).
The editors accuse, in their introduction "the orthodox field" of orthodox terrorism
studies of functioning "ideologically in the service of existing power structures", with
their academic research. Furthermore, they claim that orthodox scholars are
frequently being used "to legitimise coercive intervention in the global South."
(p.6). The present volume is edited by three authors associated with the Centre for
the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence (CSRV) in the
Department of International Politics in Aberystwyth (Wales, UK). They also happen
to be editors of a new Routledge journal "Critical Studies on Terrorism' . The
"critical" refers principally but not exclusively to the "Frankfurt-via-Welsh School

Critical Theory Perspective". The twelve contributors are not all equally "critical" in a
Habermasian sense. The programmatic introduction of the editors is followed by two
solid chapters from Magnus Ranstorp (former Director of CSTPV, St. Andrews, and
currently Director of the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish
National Defence College) and Andrew Silke (formerly with the UK Home Office and
now Field Leader for Criminology at the University of East London). They both
rightfully criticize some of the past sins and present shortcomings of the field of
Terrorism Studies. One of them approvingly quotes Marc Sageman who observed
that "disagreements among experts are the driving force of the scientific
enterprise". Such disagreements, however, exist among "orthodox" scholars like
Sageman and Hoffman or Pape and Abrams. In that sense, the claim by some
critical theorists that the field of traditional Terrorism Studies is ossified without
them, is simply is not true. One of the problems with many of the adherents of the
"critical" school is that the focus is almost exclusively on the strawman they set up
to shoot - "orthodox" terrorism discourse rather than on the practitioners of
terrorism. Richard Jackson claims that "most of what is accepted as well-founded
'knowledge' in terrorism studies is, in fact, highly debatable and unstable" (p.74),
dismissing thereby almost four decades of scholarship as "based on a series of
'virulent myths', 'half-truths' and contested claimsbiased towards Western state
priorities" (p.80). For him "terrorism isa social fact rather than a brute fact" and
"does not exist outside of the definitions and practices which seek to enclose it,
including those of the terrorism studies field" (pp.75-76). He objects to prevailing
"problem-solving theories of terrorism" in favour of an approach that questions " the
status quo and the dominant acts within it" (p.77). Another contributor, J.A. Sluka,
argues, without offering any proof, that "terrorism is fundamentally a product of
social inequality and state politics" (p. 139). Behind many of the critical theorists
who blame mainstream terrorism research for taking 'the world as it finds it' there is
an agenda for changing the status quo and overthrowing existing power structures.
There is, in itself, nothing wrong with wanting a new and better world order.
However, it is not going to be achieved by using an alternative discourse on
terrorism and counter-terrorism. Toros and Gunning, contributors of another chapter,
state that "the sine qua non of Critical Theory is emancipation" (p. 99) and M.
McDonald als puts "emancipation as central to the study of terrorism" (p.121).
However, there is not a single word on the non-emancipated position of women
under Islam in general or among the Taliban and their friends from al-Qaeda in
particular. One of the strength (some argue weakness) of Western thinking is its
ability for self-criticism something largely absent in the Muslim world. In that
sense, this volume falls within a Western tradition. However, self-criticism should
not come at the cost of not criticising adversaries by using the same yardstick. In
this sense, this volume is strangely silent about the worldview of those terrorists
who have no self-doubts and attack the Red Cross, the United Nations, NGOs and
their fellow Muslims with equal lack of scruples. A number of authors in the volume
appear to equate terrorism uncritically with political violence in general while in fact
it is more usefully thought of as one of some twenty sub-categories of political
violence - one characterized by deliberate attacks on civilians and non-combatants
in order to intimidate, coerce or otherwise manipulate various audiences and parties
to a conflict. Part of the volume advocates reinventing the wheel. J. Gunning, for

instance, recommends to employ Social Movement Theory for the study of

terrorism. However, that theory has been employed already explicitly or implicitly
by a number of more orthodox scholars, e.g. Donatella della Porta. Many "critical"
statements in the volume are unsupported by convincing evidence, e.g. when C.
Sylvester and S. Parashar state "The September 11 attacks and the ongoing war on
terror reinforce gender hierarchy and power in international relations" (p.190).
Jackson claims that the key question for critical terrorism theory is "who is terrorism
research for and how does terrorism knowledge support particular interests?"
(p.224) It does not seem to occur to him that he could have studied this question by
looking at the practitioners of terrorism and study al-Qaeda's ideological writings
and its training and recruiting manuals. If CTS is a call for "making a commitment to
emancipatory praxis central to the research enterprise" (R. Jackson et al, p. 228),
CTS academics should be the first on the barricades against jihadists who treat
women not as equals and who would, if they get their way, eradicate freedom of
thought and religion for all mankind. It is sad that some leading proponents of
Critical Terrorism Studies appear to be in fact uncritical and blind on one eye.

Their knowledge base is useless-Filled with logical fallacies

and missapropriation of knowledge
Charlotte Heath-Kelly 10, Reasearch Fellow, University of Warwick,
June 2010, Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Theory and the
'Naturalistic Fallacy', Security Dialogue, Vol. 41, No. 3
Critical Terrorism Studies and Critical Security Studies, for that matter show no
cognizance of the direction accorded to history by Horkheimers attachment of
materialism to idealism. The occasionally vaunted method of pearl fishing utilized
by the two research agendas (see Toros & Gunning, 2009: 88; Booth, 2007: 39,
492), where slices of arguments and devices are appropriated without regard for the
whole context, is responsible for this. CTS embraces emancipatory practice for
normative reasons, but not within a conception of historical becoming as revealed
by the law which holds sway in the apparent arbitrariness of the scientific and other
endeavours (Horkheimer, 1982: 89). The responsibility of the pearl-fishing method
for this error is clear: when one checks the bibliography of the Critical Terrorism
Studies edited collection, only one reference to a Horkheimer-authored work can be
found. The lack of attention paid to Horkheimers wider philosophy is responsible for
CTSs ignorance of the conception of historical progress that crucially underpins the
theme of emancipation.
Of all the CTS and CSS scholars, Ken Booth (2007: 127130) devotes the most
attention to the conception of progress understanding moral progress to be visible
in retrospective comparison. He makes no reference to an understanding of
historical becoming or unidirectional history, however. As there are limited grounds
on which to base an acceptance of Horkheimerian philosophy of history, we must
reject the Frankfurt School basis for objective reason and emancipation (as
subsequently did the major Frankfurt scholars, Adorno and Horkheimer, except that
they maintained a much transformed and limited idea of emancipation concerning
the development of human mutuality with nature; see Wyn Jones, 1999: 3839).

CTS (and Critical Security Studies, for that matter) shows no signs of recognizing the
presence of a philosophy-of-history approach and utilizes Horkheimerian theory,
alongside its Coxian foundations, in a Coxian manner possibly exposing itself to
the naturalistic fallacy charge. Its use of the pearl-fishing method (see Toros &
Gunning, 2009: 88; Booth, 2007: 39, 492), where useful argumentative and
theoretical devices are appropriated from diverse literatures, has I argue
resulted in the inappropriate transition of emancipatory commitment without the
philosophical context that made it intelligible. Without regard for the philosophical
grounding of emancipatory commitment within Horkheimers philosophy of history,
scholars appear to fall prey to the naturalistic fallacy. While the pearl-fishing method
can often be acceptable academic practice, here it has led it is argued to logical
errors in the formulation of emancipation within international relations.