Waging terror: The geopolitics of the real

H. Jones, Stephen; B. Clarke, David

Abstract

Against the background of the broad intellectual response to the events of 9/11, the paper examines the complicity of the media in the West's so-called War on Terror. Rejecting erroneous conceptions of a conspiratorial state control of the media (and consequent distortion of the picture of a given reality), the paper focuses primarily on the form of the media: its role in distorting the nature of reality itself. By elucidating problems with the kind of media analysis that portrays the media as a propaganda machine, the significance of the mediasphere itself is highlighted. The paper considers the media's role in promulgating the myth of antagonistic collective identities (‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’); in promoting a desire that subjugates the individual to the social formations that feed off it; in sustaining a range of fundamentalisms; and in characterizing terrorism as Evil incarnate. The paper thus offers a sympathetic reassessment of Baudrillard's consistent attempt to engage with the geopolitics of the real, measured against a contrasting range of responses from Badiou, Latour, Žižek, and others.

Citation

H. Jones, S., & B. Clarke, D. (2006). Waging terror: The geopolitics of the real. Political Geography, 25(3), 298-314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2005.12.009

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Feb 17, 2006
• Publication Date: 2006-03
• Deposit Date: Oct 13, 2023
• Journal: Political Geography
• Print ISSN: 0962-6298
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 298-314
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2005.12.009