‘The Face of Evil’: The Discourse on ISIS and the Visual Complexities in the ISIS Beheading Videos
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/politik.v19i4.27636Resumé
This article deals with ISIS’s beheading videos of Western victims from 2014 and inscribes itself into an emerging body of literature on visuality in IR. The paper contends that the image of ISIS beheadings has been mobilized in a Western political discourse that classifies ISIS as evil, and has hereby helped shape the conditions under which international politics operate. The article offers a Nietzsche-inspired critique of the value judgment of evil in the Western discourse and, in extension, seeks to nuance the assessment of ISIS through a ‘re-reading’ of the beheading image. For this purpose, the article proposes to expand Lene Hansen’s concept of inter-iconicity to capture how an icon’s meaning is produced in relation to other icons and, in this light, explores the inter-iconic relations between the image of ISIS beheadings, on the one hand, and the decapitations of the French Revolution and the image of the ‘body politic’, on the other. The inter-iconic reading draws out alternative meanings of the image of ISIS beheadings that counter the classification of ISIS as evil, thereby expanding the conditions for political speech and action regarding ISIS and opening up space for a broader critique of politically motivated violence.Referencer
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O’Loughlin, B 2011, ’Images as Weapons of War: Representation, Mediation and Interpretation’, in Review of International Studies, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 71–91.
Sage, A 2004, ’Many Dead, but He Meant Well’, in New Statesman, vol. 17, no. 833, pp. 21-22.
Singer, MG 2004, ’The Concept of Evil’, Philosophy, vol. 79, no. 308, pp. 185–214.
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Vuori, JA 2010, ’A Timely Prophet? The Doomsday Clock as a Visualization of Securitization Moves with a Global Referent Object’, Security Dialogue, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 255–277.
Williams, M 2003, ’Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics’, in International Studies Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 511–531.
Winter, C; Green L, and Rinvolucri B 2015, ’Isis Has a Strategy. Let’s Not Be Part of It’, The Guardian, Video. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2015/nov/18/paris-attacks-isis-has-a-strategy-lets-not-be-part-of-it-video [Accessed 30 October 2016]
Zelizer, B 2010, About to Die, Oxford University Press, New York.
Alfaro, MJM 1996, ’Intertextuality: Origins and Development of the Concept’, Atlantis, vol. 18, n. ½, pp. 268–85.
Andre, V 2015, ’Violent Jihad and Beheadings in the Land of Al Fatoni Darussalam’, in Religions, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 1203–1216.
Arasse, D 1989, The Guillotine and the Terror, Penguin Books, London.
Bleiker, R 2014, ’Visual Assemblages: From Causality to Conditions of Possibility’, in M Acuto and Curtis, ed., Reassembling International Theory, Palgrave, New York.
Boyle, MJ 2014, ’The Problem With Evil: The Moral Hazard of Calling ISIS a ‘Cancer’’ The New York Times.
Butler, J 2010, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, Paperback Edition, Verso, London.
Campbell, D 1998, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Campbell, D 2003, ’Cultural Governance and Pictorial Resistance: Reflections on the Imagining of War’, Review of International Studies, vol. 29, pp. 57–73.
Campbell, D 2007, ’Geopolitics and Visuality: Sighting the Darfur Conflict’, Political Geography, vol. 26, pp. 357–82.
Campbell, LJ 2006, ’The Use of Beheadings by Fundamentalist Islam’, Global Crime, vol. 7, no. 3-4, pp. 583–614.
Cole, P 2006, The Myth of Evil, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
Dauphinée, E 2007, ’The Politics of the Body in Pain: Reading the Ethics of Imagery’, Security Dialogue, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 139–155.
Foucault, M 1978, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction, Translated by R Hurley, Pantheon Books, New York.
Foucault, M 1995, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Translated by A Sheridan, Second Vintage Books Edition, Vintage Books, New York.
Freeman, C 2014, ’Peter Kassig ‘Killed by Gunshot before He Was Decapitated’’, The Telegraph. Available at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11293023/Peter-Kassig-killed-by-gunshot-before-he-was-decapitated.html [Accessed 7 January 2016].
Friedland, P 2012, Seeing Justice Done, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Friis, SM 2015, ’‘Beyond Anything We Have Ever Seen’: Beheading Videos and the Visibility of Violence in the War against ISIS’, International Affairs, vol. 91, no. 4, pp. 725–746.
Furnish, TR 2005, ’Beheading in the Name of Islam’, Middle East Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 51-57.
Garcia, EV 2002, ’A Kantian Theory of Evil’, Monist, vol. 85 no. 2, pp. 194–209.
Hansen, L 2011, ’Theorizing the Image for Security Studies: Visual Securitization and the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis’, European Journal of International Relations, vol., 17, no.1, pp. 51–74.
Hansen, L 2015, ’How Images Make World Politics: International Icons and the Case of Abu Ghraib’, Review of International Studies, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 263–288.
Harvey, AD 1999, ’The Body Politic: Anatomy of a Metaphor’, in The Contemporary Review, vol. 275, no. 1603, pp. 85–93.
Jane, R 2005, Losing Our Heads: Beheadings in Literature and Culture, New York University Press, New York.
Jones, H 2005, ’Terrorist Beheadings: Cultural and Strategic Implications.’ Carlisle Paper, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College. Available at: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ssi/terr_beheadings.pdf [Accessed 13 January 2016]
Kerry, J 2014, ’Murder of James Folly,’ US Department of State, Press Statement. Available at: http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/08/230772.htm [Accessed 30 October 2016]
Lentini, P and Bakashmar M 2007, ’Jihadist Beheading: A Convergence of Technology, Theology, and Teleology?’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 303-325.
LoGiurato, B 2014, ’DAVID CAMERON: ‘The Murder Of David Haines Is An Act Of Pure Evil’’, Business Insider. Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/david-haines-murder-by-isis-pure-evil-cameron-2014-9 [Accessed 13 January 2016]
McInnis, KJ 2016, ’Coalition Contributions to Countering the Islamic State’, CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service, Available at:
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44135.pdf [Accessed 30 October 2016]
McNulty, TJ 1993, ’Television’s Impact on Executive Decisionmaking and Diplomacy’, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 67–83.
Möller, F 2007, ’Photographic Interventions in Post-9/11 Security Policy’, in Security Dialogue, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 179–196.
Nietzsche, F 1998, On the Genealogy of Morality, Translated by M Clark and AJ Swensen, Hackett, Indianopolis/Cambridge.
O’Loughlin, B 2011, ’Images as Weapons of War: Representation, Mediation and Interpretation’, in Review of International Studies, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 71–91.
Sage, A 2004, ’Many Dead, but He Meant Well’, in New Statesman, vol. 17, no. 833, pp. 21-22.
Singer, MG 2004, ’The Concept of Evil’, Philosophy, vol. 79, no. 308, pp. 185–214.
The White House 2014, ’Statement by the President on the Death of Abdul-Rahman Kassig’, Whitehouse.gov. Available at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/embeds/footer [Accessed 16 April 2014].
Trofimov, Y 2015, ’Islamic State’s Scariest Success: Attracting Western Newcomers’, Wall Street Journal. Available at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-states-scariest-success-attracting-western-newcomers-1424932279 [Accessed 20 April 2015]
Vuori, JA 2010, ’A Timely Prophet? The Doomsday Clock as a Visualization of Securitization Moves with a Global Referent Object’, Security Dialogue, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 255–277.
Williams, M 2003, ’Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics’, in International Studies Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 511–531.
Winter, C; Green L, and Rinvolucri B 2015, ’Isis Has a Strategy. Let’s Not Be Part of It’, The Guardian, Video. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2015/nov/18/paris-attacks-isis-has-a-strategy-lets-not-be-part-of-it-video [Accessed 30 October 2016]
Zelizer, B 2010, About to Die, Oxford University Press, New York.
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2016-12-02
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Patruss, K. (2016). ‘The Face of Evil’: The Discourse on ISIS and the Visual Complexities in the ISIS Beheading Videos. Politik, 19(4). https://doi.org/10.7146/politik.v19i4.27636
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