Abstract
Scarcely a week goes by without at least one terrorist related incident making the headlines. The subject of terrorism has, meanwhile, engendered a vast and growing expert literature. Much of this vast body of literature is pragmatic in nature, in the sense that the authors are concerned with developing policy proposals. They present and analyze the problem of terrorism and then promote what they think is the appropriate response to terrorists-a response that often involves changing the legal framework. The bulk of what I call "terrorism literature" is produced in the "West." For the most part, it is written from the perspective of terrorism as a threat to western liberal democracies. For purposes of this paper, I have limited my inquiry to such literature and to terrorism as a western phenomenon. I am interested in exploring the repetition of rhetorical structures in terrorism literature and their reproduction in media reports of terrorist incidents. The choice of focus was dictated by the belief that terrorism is not just an objective "something" out there to be located with a telescope and examined with a microscope, but that it is also, less obviously, a creation or by-product of western liberal democracies; that it is intimately linked with the self-image or self-understanding of western liberal democracies.
Recommended Citation
Porras, Illeana M.
(1994)
"On Terrorism: Reflections on
Violence and The Outlaw,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 1994:
No.
1, Article 5.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol1994/iss1/5