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stevo: for what it's worth, i think you misunderstood which direction i was trying to go with this--i don't necessarily see an "essence" to "terrorism" that could be used to say anything meaningful about the attack(s) in london this morning. the whole idea of terrorism as a free-floating, context-independent variable is a particular construction, one that has been worked out and used endlessly by the bush administration and its far right allies to prop up this administration, to justify particular types of policies both domestically and internationally.
what i was trying to point to is the pounding that i see this particular construction of the notion of "terrorism" taking in webforum after webforum that i have been cruising through today--i think in part because this is bringing two very different political cultures (if you like) into contact with each other across these attacks--what is interesting is that bushdiscourse cannot control the debate, cannot even be seen to coherent frame the debate about these attacks. that is what i find interesting--the features of the administrations discourse of "the war on terror" is something that i only find interesting because it is repeated so much--i don't think it helps understand anything--but it does keep people afraid and dependent.
what i do see is lots of really pissy exchanges developing out of this inability to sound or be coherent about these attacks on the basis of the dominant conservative framing of the question.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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