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Relation as Operations of Experiences

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The Faceless Terrorist

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Abstract

Grasping the experience of another person is the main challenge of existential anthropology, as it is necessarily accomplished through social rather than intellectual activity. With this proposition, Michael Jackson introduces another dimension to the anthropology of experience, as developed by Victor Turner. The enquiry into experience focuses on the relationality itself. Approaching terrorism through experience rather than sociological behaviour has required dissolving the concepts’ conceptual contours and linking their expressions (whether written, in media, or speech) to experiences.

In this final chapter, I will not provide a synthesis or conclusion, as there is no conclusion in experience, but instead link the subjects of the chapters through a final set of examples. I pick up three larger issues that cut across the chapters. These issues are, first, the relation between knowledge, writing, and speech as a way of understanding intra-societal issues by paying attention to oratory. Second, the role of studying critical events in social anthropology in order to unfold relational complexity. And third, jihad as choice rather than excuse, and the consequences this has for the study of activism in social anthropology.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For Glissant, opacity is the right not to be understood, a right that ranks higher than the right to be different (Glissant 2010, 111–120). Enquiry is an act of aggression, as it constructs the other as an object of knowledge. “In the first place, the colonizer’s power obviously depends to a large extent on surveillance. He cannot control what he cannot see” (Britton 1999, 21 on Glissant).

  2. 2.

    Among the participants are: Iskandar Kurbonov, who was the President’s right-hand man; Komil Bekzoda, a philosopher working at the Academy of Science; Mahmad Shakuri, another philosopher and a descendant of an intellectual family from Bukhara; the Turajonzoda brothers, Ibrohim Usmon, Shamsiddin Dustov, and many others.

  3. 3.

    “Perekrestok: Tsentral’noaziatskii Sled v Dzhikhade v Sirii” [Перекресток: Центральноазиатский След В Джихаде В Сирии] (2013). Youtube.com, December 12, 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGIWoMpIOL4&feature=youtube_gdata_player.

  4. 4.

    The vast majority of research on Muslim activism uses a sociological approach, inasmuch as it looks at causal relationships (the cause–effect) of events (e.g., Rashid 2002; Khosrokhavar 2005, 2015; Roy 2006). A good example is the article by Noorhaidi Hasan (2010) entitled “The Drama of Jihad: The Emergence of Salafi Youth in Indonesia.” These studies are important contributions to the understanding of youth activities, as are the works referenced above.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Anthropology, Karl Jaspers Center for Advanced Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg, Germany

    Sophie Roche

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Roche, S. (2019). Relation as Operations of Experiences. In: The Faceless Terrorist. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03843-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03843-4_9

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