Citation

Morris RC. Interv. Int. J. Postcolon. Stud. 2004; 6(3): 401-423.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/1369801042000280041

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper is considers the use deployment of images and the discourse of noise in the War on Terror. I argue that the deployment of imagery, often in lieu of language, rests on particular developments in the mass media, and on the emergence of what Paul Virilio has termed 'technical fundamentalism' (2002a: 53). Technical fundamentalism is then considered in relation to and as a counterpart to terrorism, as a contrasting mode of valorizing technique which is nonetheless distinguished by its image politics and by its conceptualization of signification in general. Comparing the photographic ideology of images that dominates Western image politics with approaches that recognize in images a capacity to explode outward and to be read as signs of a future repetition, I suggest that the War on Terror is being carried out from the US within a framework which is stereotypically fetishistic. This framework is one in which an imaginary investment in images obstructs social relations based in fully symbolic, which is to say, linguistic practice. I argue further that the symptoms of this fetishization can be seen not only in a general proliferation of images and in their differential mobilization, but in the emergence of a discourse of 'noise' and in the representation of the speech of others as being either mere noise or the signs of a meaninglessly violent intention. Equally important, it is associated with the rise of narcissistic politics writ large: a demand for mirroring on the part of one's interlocutors and an incapacity to imagine real otherness, the consequences of which can be seen, on the one hand, in refusals to negotiate in the pursuit of peace and, on the other, in the elevation of suicide to a political mode.