If I was the 'terrorist'

When speaking about 'terrorism' as the absolute form of otherness, it is inevitable to consider to whom it is other, who defines terrorism and upon which systems of value. In other words, it is necessary to look at who is the self in the equation. Terrorism is the other for an imagined notion of self (imagined community) that can be called 'western', that is if we follow the division expressed in media language in general. The 'western' is what media describes as western. The example of terrorism is useful because of the explicitness and the prior treatment of this issue in both academic and journalistic domains. It thus offers an explicit example of the possibility of applying the Lacanian paradigm on group identities.

My aim is to look at this paradigm in the opposite way: to look at the 'terrorist' as the self. And here terrorist is used metaphorically to designate any notion of otherness expressed by dominant political forces be it colonial powers or the [democratic] 'West'.

During the 50s and 60s, President Nasser of Egypt was portrayed in the 'West' as a ruthless dictator that threatens the international interests in the middle east and sometimes the world. In the 'Arab world', however, he was being hailed as the savior of the Arabs, the one that will bring back the lost glory [of the real]. Nasser, for his Arab followers, was the one who would fulfill the desire of the Arab nation.

How the myth of Nasser was formed in the minds of Arabs, and how his narrative of identity was articulated and received can be read on two levels. First, as the emergence of a discourse in a specific moment of history, as a discontinuity that can be understood by using a Foucauldian methodology (more details later) of historical analysis and what it entails on the different levels of analysis: genealogy, archaeology and strategy. In other words, it is an investigation of the conditions under which this specific discourse surfaced in this specific time. Second, on the level of discursive strategies of the narrative itself, by looking at how it articulates myths of identity and constructs the 'national Thing'. In other words, in the second level the lacanian paradigm of identity formation can be applied in order to elucidate the mechanisms by which self and other are defined and how these give form to the imagined community's image of itself [or how it represents itself].

The decline of Nasser's narrative and the discourse of Arab nationalism was followed by the present rise of a new discourse: Political Islam, or what is - to come back to the notion of terrorism - called by the 'western' (other from the standpoint of the terrorists themselves): Islamic fundamentalism or, simply, terrorism. In Foucauldian terms, this historical moment could be read as a discontinuity, as the emergence of a new dominant system of values and therefore could be subjected to a similar two leveled analysis: tracing the discontinuity and analyzing the mechanisms of identity formation of this new imagined self.

Following the methodological work of Foucault on the Archeology of knowledge and the study of discourse formations, my investigation of two moments of modern Arab history questions why these specific discourses were dominant at these moments of history and not others (39). [Using Zizek's political reading of Lacan, I will then look at the strategies used by these discourses to articulate and sustain the image of the group's identity in relation to the notions of self, other and desire as a force that moves a nation - 'enjoy your nation as yourself'.]

How can the conditions of formation of the Arab national narrative be traced in a genealogy of a discourse of identity carrying a system of power/knowledge and values that shaped different levels of social order in the post-colonial Arab nation-states? and how can one describe the emergence of this discourse as a discontinuity that pertains to specific changes in the balance of power within and outside the Arab territories? Another important aspect of the research is tracing the emergence of a different discourse - or system - some decades later that represents another discontinuity within the same dynamics of resistance against an exterior dominant other: Political Islam (in two distinct articulations: Hezbollah and Al Qaeda). The question posed is whether the two discourses - or three - pertain to the same system of knowledge and power or if a rupture occurred in the transition from Arab nationalism as the dominant political identity in the psyche of Arab peoples, to Islam as a political propeller for the rejection of the imperial other. These discourses rely on similar objectives, namely opposing the domination of an external other (political, cultural, and economical) and are mechanisms of resistance to an alien discourse of the imperialist other. Foucault's methods of analysis can offer another perspective on the formation of a global phenomena, 'islamic terrorism' and its strategies of domination and resistance, away from pure political readings, historical continuities, and anthropological investigations. The analysis must therefore elucidate the meaning of key terms in these discourses such as terrorism, Islam, Umma, 'Arab world', and others, along with a consistent investigation of the conditions of emergence of each discourse.

Of lack and national desire

In lacan the process of self formation, self being an illusion of the subject's unity, is modeled through a constant exposure to notions of otherness. The other shapes the self on its image or in opposition to it. Self is therefore a sum of others that is unable to be conscious of its multiplicity and fragmented essence. The other in this paradigm is no other than the self's own projection (a mirror image). The other exists only within the self, even though it is by becoming conscious of the exterior (the world of others) that the self enters the symbolic order. The hate or admiration directed to the other thus pertain to emotions directed to the self's own mirror image in its Danaides-like effort to fulfill its desire (and the fundamental Lack which nourishes the desire) to regain the original state of fullness and completeness that was lost with the entry into language and the symbolic order: the Real (the neo-natal state of nature of a child before it achieves the sense of separation between itself and the world of others - the Symbolic).

As Lacan so fatally proclaimed "the Real is impossible", but it is this real that constantly drives and motivates the everlasting desire for jouissance (or enjoyment as Zizek calls it). The enjoyment depends therefore on an a priori notion of Lack that can never be fulfilled (in Freud the notion of lack appears in his description of castration).

Enjoyment is seen as having existed in the prior time of fullness, or the real (a state indescribable through language) but subsequently stolen by the hated other, thus transforming the other into the reason of the non-fulfillment of the self's desire. This strategy of the subject can be formulated as follows: it is not that desire can never be fulfilled (again), but it cannot be fulfilled because of the other; the real is not impossible but it is the other that is preventing the access to it. Thus, an eternal circle of desire and lack motivates the strategies of enjoyment.

What if we were now to transpose this paradigm of an individual's self formation to a political order of group identity formation? What if the group was to become the self? If we were to rethink Benedict Anderson's notion of 'Imagined communities' as an illusion of a common image of selfhood shared by a group, it would be possible to see in this description the Lacanian illusion of unity upon which the self's very existence depends. The community's fantasy - like that of the individual Lacanian subject - is that it is one unified entity. (in Tarrying with the Negative, Zizek offers a constructive critic of Anderson's theory and argues that nationalism does possess a certain real kernel that is the very idea of it: the national 'Thing' exists as long as the community believes in its existence).

If the group is the self, then other groups are the others. In Zizek's political reading of Lacan, nationalism - and the nation - have the role of organizing the community's enjoyment; the nation has to fulfill its desire for the real. The community already takes the attributes of the 'enjoyment-seeking self'. In the case of ethnic or, as I will argue, political tensions, the possession of the national Thing is always at stake. The other is accused of stealing our enjoyment, and the hate directed to the other for an excess of enjoyment or a peculiar and perverse enjoyment are part of a desire to re-gain the state of fullness [of the nation] before the destructive intrusion of the other (and the entry of the nation into the symbolic order).

At this point some clarifications are due. The other is accused of stealing our enjoyment and depriving 'us' from a 'state of nature' (the Real) when the nation was able to satisfy its desire (or more pertinently when desire did not exist since there was no Lack, and desire is a consequence of lack, a desire to fill the lack). The other becomes the perpetrator of this un-fulfill-able lack. National myths always invoke a better past - a mythological past that is inaccessible in its 'true' or 'real' form since it can only be described through language (a golden age only accessible through fantasy - nationalist fiction can offer a pertinent illustration). This mythical past of the nation, the state of nature and completeness of the national Thing, is the real, lost once we enter into the symbolic order and become subjected to the limits of language (the world of others). The lurking idea of a lacanian real in national myths appears in narratives of a lost past - lost because of the intrusion of the other by stealing 'our' enjoyment. The other is to blame. However this past does not refer to a past time as much as it refers to a promise of future, to the very essence of desire as a desire to fulfill a lack (lack entails past), or to restage a past - that has never really existed - in a constantly escaping present. In other words, the desire can only be fulfilled in the future, and therefore can never be fulfilled.

Of Madness and Terror: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Through his analysis of the history of Madness, Foucault's madman represents the necessary negative according to which the attributes of the reasonable man can be defined in a given society or better yet in a given system of power. As long as normality can only be defined in opposition to its pathological disorder, the madman becomes the only proof of the reasonable man's sanity. The madman's identity - as mad - is thus imposed on him by a superstructure, be it psychoanalysis, psychiatry or other institutions that have the power and authority to judge who is a madman in different moments of history ( Michel Foucault, Histoire de la Folie a l'Age Classique).

Madness becomes a necessity for any notion of normality. The madman functions as a Lacanian other, a negative image that helps sustain an illusion of unity and an image of the self consistent with the demands of the dominant system of power/knowledge. The political value of madness in society mirrors another 'pathological disorder': terrorism.

The mechanisms through which the terrorist identity (as the negative image of the non-terrorist) gets formed are similar to those of the madman's both in terms of there subjection to the dominant discourse (medical in the case of madness, and perhaps political/cultural in the case of terrorism) and in terms of their role as proof of the self's sanity or normality in accordance with the dominant system of values. The terrorist becomes a 'constitutive other' (Slavoj Zizek, Parralax View 258).

Like madness, terrorism is always negative otherness; the self is never terrorist, nor must it be mad. Following Zizek, and his reading of Lacan, nationalism, and it would be possible to extend the definition to include any form of identification to a group, is a domain of eruption of enjoyment into the social field. The aim of the nation becomes a given community's organization of its enjoyment through myths of identity (national myths). The other - the terrorist in this case - is rejected for his excess of enjoyment ('he wants to steal our enjoyment. By ruining our way of life.') and/or for his access to a secret, perverse enjoyment. the terrorist could be the object of hate for either his excess of enjoyment, or his strange and inaccessible way in which he organizes his enjoyment (Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative 202-3).

However, the other is no other at all; he is an other that forms part of the self; otherness exists not in exteriority it is rather interior. The other is in me. The implication of this is that the hate expressed towards the other's enjoyment is nothing but the hate of the self's own enjoyment. But what if, as Lacan's notion of Lack so clearly implies, we have never possessed the enjoyment allegedly stolen by the other? The refusal to admit this traumatic fact constitutes a central pillar of any myth of group identity; enjoyment always exists in our past. Terrorism as the absolute otherness, and the absolute hate directed towards it, are the concealment of hate directed by the self to it's own enjoyment. The excessive and symptomatic use of the word terrorist to describe the absolute other thus pertains to a protective field - or a defense mechanism - preventing the self from recognizing its 'self' in the image of this hated other; an illusion that transforms the mirror the self is gazing at into a window it is looking through.

Painting: Rene Magritte, Le Faux Miroir

Of terror and courage: Brave Faye in Guantanamo

Perhaps us Arabs are unaware of the cultural differences in terms of terror. Perhaps courage as well is culture specific. Dignity, however, is certainly so.

One should pause in order to look closely to the British Marines episode. A story that quickly became an epic of [failed] heroism and honor amid a virtual war between the “West” and Iran.

The captured/liberated soldiers have been given the right to sell their story (as opposed perhaps to selling the story of the event itself). Faye Turney already did. She is now “Brave Faye Turney” in the pages of the Sun. Brave Faye’s story is surprisingly titled “My Terror”, as if this recurrent word – terror – and its derivatives – terrorism, terrorist – can be put aside when no human pieces are spread on a sidewalk in some city.

What terror did Brave Faye face during her 15 days of heroism? What extreme terror has she witnessed to be gratified with a headline on every internet news site? Certainly, one should presume, and perhaps even assume, that her terrifying experience has no equal neither in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Algeria, Egypt, Guantanamo, Abou Ghraib, nor in any of the morbid names media has rendered so infamous.

Brave Faye, a soldier but more importantly (or so it seems) a woman and better yet a mother (“with a career”), was brave enough to be captured by an Iranian patrol somewhere in Iraq or in Iran. Her first act of bravery (and here the notion of bravery has to be perhaps put into its cultural context, and subjected to debates in linguistic and perhaps in philology to define the concept behind the word) was to have been able to distinguish amid the tension of the moment when the Iranian boat was approaching hers, one of the Iranian soldiers “foaming at the mouth” for “he was so angry”. Brave Faye has many super-powers, and telescopic sight is not the best of them.

The Brave soldiers courageously complied with their capturers, without doing anything cowardly like resisting arrest. One should keep in mind that these are soldiers not civilians, not young innocent people in their hometown going to party in the local nightclub – these are men and women whose jobs consist partly of killing other soldiers. In Iraq the job is mostly killing civilians, or to be more politically [in]-correct, insurgents. These insurgents vary in age and gender from unborn children to 90 years old elderly. Soldiers, as nice as they can get, carry deadly firearms, not only as a souvenir from army training camps but as weapons to kill. An innocent civilian, in contrast, carries no firearm and has no uniform and has a job that certainly does not include killing other people in its description. This is a structural difference that Faye is perhaps unaware of, as are most readers of the Sun.

Brave Faye was subjected to the terror of her mind (inflicted subliminally by the wicked Iranians) when she convinced herself that the fact of being a woman amid barbaric men means she will be raped. So she was brave enough to hide her gender. These beasts-of-men are certainly – at least Brave Faye believed so – rapists in uniform (the 1^st brigade of Iranian rapists was perhaps written in English somewhere very far, that only Brave Faye could see). This episode of terror Brave Faye was subjected to should alone provide her with a medal of honor, for prejudice, racism and stupid reflections during non-combat situations. She was not raped. However as she recalls, the Iranian soldiers, when they discovered she was a woman were so shocked for seeing such a strange creature that the only thing they could do was point at her and say in a repetitive manner “woman, woman…”. Of course neither the Sun nor Brave Faye explained whether they were speaking in English (so that Brave Faye can understand), or in Farsi (and with Brave Faye’s knowledge of Farsi we were able to know what their words meant).

The first episode of Brave Faye’s epic of courage ends with a highly cinematic moment (the folks in Hollywood will be happy to know that much of the screenplay has been courageously done by Faye herself). “Shortly before we got to land, they began to blindfold us. One of the last things I remember seeing before my eyes were covered was our White Ensign flapping in the wind. That reminded me that I must stay strong and remain defiant.”

The story of terror does not end at this point; more horrific episodes are recorded in the dark pages of human history when Faye’s life is concerned. She also recounted that she was forced to take of her uniform – and to get naked. She was also questioned, and the questioners threatened her with a trial (the horrific investigators were not smiling and giving her foot massage as human rights so clearly dictate) for spying. The questioning of Faye was not pleasant enough, perhaps brutal words were used perhaps even a bad English accent was terrifying her (physical torture can be visible through medical tests – in case of any evidence I strongly doubt that the British authorities would have concealed it from the public).

The Iranian television Al-Alam broadcasted a reply to the soldiers’ allegations, showing them dressed in casual clothes, eating burgers, and playing table tennis, chess, and watching a football game between Liverpool and Arsenal (the game took place on the 31^st of March, 4 days before the release of the soldiers). These “lodging” circumstances can be considered better than those of many millions of “liberated” Iraqis, occupied Palestinians, and not-yet-liberated Iranians.

And then one thinks of the terror. What does it mean? I wonder if prisoners from Guantanamo will have the chance to get a headline like ‘my terror’, and if so will the readership understand that they were the ones subjected to terror and not the opposite (my terror as the terror I inflicted on my torturer – by screaming), or if the prisoners of Abou Ghreib will be able to recount how they thought they will be raped, or how they were, how they were forced to take of their clothes and then subjected to appalling procedures of democracy.

Us Arabs know nothing about terror, we understand it incorrectly, we think terror comes with oppression, war, domination and lately democracy, that terror is an act of visible violence inflicted in the purpose of being visible and frightening. But we fail to understand that terror is an attribute that can only be used to identify an act – apparently any act – done by a dominated in defiance of a dominant (lately it is attributed to those who have beards or are considered – pertinently or not – Muslims).

Brave Faye’s interview with the Sun can be found here:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007160262,00.html

A detailed report of the Abou Ghareib prison scandal can be found here:

http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/