Abstract
Drawing on recent research into Australian community perspectives on radicalisation, extremism and terrorism, this essay adopts a critical terrorism studies approach in considering the orientation and engagement strategies of counter-terror narratives in multicultural societies. Paul Gilroy’s work on multicultures and conviviality (After empire: melancholia or convivial culture? Routledge, London/New York, 2004; Crit Q 48(4):27–45, 2006) is used as a key lens through which to think through issues surrounding counter-terror narrative discourses, their impacts and their aftermaths: which are heard, which aren’t and what stories have yet to be told. What do counter-terror narratives’ current trajectories and limits tell us about countering violent extremist futures?
History, in the human sense, is a language net cast backwards.
George Steiner (1975)
This chapter was first published in Critical Studies on Terrorism (Routledge/Taylor & Francis), appearing in its online format in July 2014. Please see www.tandfonline.com.
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Notes
- 1.
Peter Lentini (2009: 1) defines “neo-jihadism” as “a distinct late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century form of ideological expression, subculture, and militancy that combines novel understandings and interpretations of Islamic theology and jurisprudence, with other non-Islamic forms of social organization and interaction”.
- 2.
I am indebted to Joshua Roose for bringing this point to my attention.
- 3.
Again, I am indebted to Joshua Roose for directing me to this source.
- 4.
Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria. Victoria is an Australian state and home to the nation’s second largest capital city of Melbourne.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Dr Joshua Roose at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University, for commenting on an earlier draft of this article.
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Grossman, M. (2015). Disenchantments: Counter-Terror Narratives and Conviviality. In: Mansouri, F. (eds) Cultural, Religious and Political Contestations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_5
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