roachboy

ok, so maybe i will play here for a minute:

consider the shift in context from the "what should 'we" do about terrorism?" thread to this (disengenously titled, but no matter) "a semantic exercize"...

in the previous thread, the frame established a sequences of usages:

the category "terrorist" was implicitly taken as adequate as a descriptor for:

1. particular types of actions in themselves

2. the actors/agents who carry out this type of action

[[at this level, the relation involved is circular: if the action is "terrorism" then the agent is a "terrorist"]]

there are also level shifts:

3. as a term that designates a particular kind of agent in the world

[[that is, as a term that designates not only the agents directly involved in a given act at the moment that act happens, but which is amaenable to generalization--in this case, adequate as a descriptor of the agents or potential agents who would carry out or are seen as potentially carrying out a type of action classed "terrorism"----or any other action--because the definition has now moved from situational to substantive. notice that the logic has changed here from induction to deduction as well--induction would derive the classification of the agent from the classification of a particular action: deduction would derive the classification of an action from the prior classification of the agent]]

so

4.as a term that would designate any action carried out by agents described/understood as "terrorist"

[[consequence of shifting from situational to substantive attribution--i am not being totally consistent terminologically, but you get the idea)]]

5. a category that---therefore----would function to orient strategic thinking coherently....[[which you can already see, if you think about, is a real problem logically from the sequences of meanings outlined above--this says nothing about the ideological content of those meanings--but for the moment, you dont need that level of critique to see the problem]]

6. as a direct object in a question involving action, presumably---so the question directs people to assume coherence, assme strategy and to derive scenarios concerning types of action.

by the time you get to 6, i would think that the problems of coherence strategically, that is of orienting action, should be obvious.
the usage simply tracks the possible usages of a noun "terrorism"--we get to watch it migrate from the result of an induction to an orientation for deduction.

at least the other thread had the advantage of posing the whoel range of problems with the usage of this term in the present ideological context. most of what i see the right doing is skipping across these various levels of meaning without seeming to be aware that they are doing it.


the other dimension of the posts i put up in the other thread had to do with the ideological content/meanings bundled together under the aegis of this signifier in this sorry time period. to really see what is at issue in this, you'd have to add information about the--very problematic--contents given to this signifier--most germaine in this context is the ways in which the term "terrorist" is used to strip away any possibility of thinking in terms of motives/causes--along with that vanishes any hope of thinking in specific ways about the adversary, if you like. there is a fairly detailed outline of this level of problems in the other thread.



the op tries to counter these critiques by shifting the register in which the category "terrorist" is to be approached.

in this case, all the op does is to present a list of actions from the past and poses a descriptive question.
that is, what do these actions have in common?

presumably the hope was to restabilize the term by reverting to the first two levels that were implicit in the other thread's framing question (what should "we" do about "terrorism"?)

as such, the op is geared toward a simple recapitulation of the process of generalization i outlined above.

so it is without interest.

that you have not thought carefully about the problem you pose, powerclown, does not make it less a problem.

but it must be a pain in the ass to find yourself trying to defend the usage of
such weak, vague terminology---particularly terminology that has been demonstrated as worthless across the actions that this administration has undertaken framed by it.
you might wonder if it is worth the effort.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite