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.