Reinventing political subjectivities: studying critical documentaries on the war on terror

Abstract

This paper casts a look on media aspects of the anti-war-on-terror struggle in western countries. A peculiar warfare, the “war on terror” that officially begun in 2001, is a low-density global warfare, fought in different internal and external fronts . Within a liberal, increasingly post-political social terrain, where social affairs are objects of expert management lacking public accountability and legitimacy, the role, status and the identity of the contemporary citizen is in decline. New media “affordances” offer critical possibilities for challenging hegemonic political discourses, and addressing political alternatives for a broad range of social problems; a re-invention of citizenship through the construct of a new (collective) political subject is central in the reinvention of democracy today. Discourse analysis, drawing reflexively on post-structuralist discourse theory and critical discourse analysis, is deployed in the study of counter-war-on-terror discourses in different documentaries critical to the “war on terror”. Analysis looks at different constructions of “us” and “them” in the context of counter-hegemonic discourses today. Identity is central in the engagement, participation and orientation of citizens today. Identity is central in organising a collective centre and in initiating subjectivity to fragmented liberal, postmodern individuals.

Keywords:

• politics
• neoliberalism
• documentary
• war on terror
• citizenship
• hegemony
• identity

Notes

1. This sample is part of a broader research on documentaries on the war on terror, studying the discursive struggle around this war, by the new left and the new right. The analysis was part of a broader PhD project (Mylonas 2009).

2. Such databases include www.freedocumentaries.org and http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/watch-online/

3. An important contribution of discourse theory concerns the reviving of political thought and political frontiers in postmodern social struggles. Dyrberg (2005), for instance, notes the colonisation of traditional political connotations, like “the people” or “the elites” today by the political right, and their transformation into new semantic entities. The non-essentialist position of post-structuralism maintains an open (Andersen 2003, 58), progressive political orientation, avoiding teleological accounts on a resolute future.

4. Several scholars (Dahlgren 2009; Mouffe 2004; Stavrakakis 2007) have referred to the imaginative aspect of politics, and the potential of imagination to cultivate new and alternative futures.

5. Although different models of discourse analysis have ontological differences on the scope of discourse, it is also noted that they offer multiple possibilities of combination (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 208), especially since discourse analytical models depart from democratic and critical premises (Carpentier and De Cleen 2007, 278).