The reproduction of American identities in Somalia through terrorism and ethnicity

ABSTRACT

In this article, we aim to discuss how manifestations of American identities have been reproduced in Somalia by diverse US diplomacy actors in the 2000s. Following a knowledge/power nexus, we argue that Orientalist discourses establish alterity politics in global South countries by managing and controlling post-colonial bodies. We explore different expressions of the American self’s reflection by comparisons to Somalia in discourses on terrorism and ethnicity. To do this, we understand American identity based on the notions of Americanity and Puritanism. This article contributes to debates on identity/difference among foreign policy, critical security, and terrorism studies by combining academic, journalistic, and political sources as expressions of US discourse.

KEYWORDS:

• US diplomacy
• Somalia
• terrorism
• racial matrix
• ethnicity

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Stefano Guzzini and Thiago Rodrigues for their comments and suggestions for earlier versions of the article. We also thank the anonymous reviewers of Critical Studies on Security.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. François Nel and Coral Milburn-Curtis, ‘World Press Trends 2019’ (World Association of News Publishers, Frankfurt, Germany, 2019). https://anri.org.ru/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WAN-IFRA_WPT_2019.pdf (accessed November 17, 2022).

2. In an interview, Jacques Derrida offers a meaningful discussion about the events happening in the US on the 11 th of September, 2001. For him, one should underline questions on the role of the language mobilised by the various American political actors, given how the ‘9/11’ was named as a supposedly universal calendar. Thus, it becomes necessary to discuss the assumptions about the compulsion of repetition (rhetorical, magical, poetic) phenomenon regarding this event. Especially concerning the use of ‘9/11’ and other linguistic shortcuts, when the repetition compulsion could mean, translate or betray something, notably because English exercises an injunction power where the language is predominant. Analyzing the event using the ‘September 11’ spelling is an attempt to consider the wide domination of the Anglo-American language, seen as a language inseparable from the political discourses that dominate inter alia international institutions, diplomacy, and the media. See Borradori (2003, 85–87).

3. We emphasise how the beginning of the Second World War must also be recognised as an international phenomenon. Therefore, we chose to understand the beginning of the conflict with the Japanese invasion of China instead of the traditional framework of the war in Europe.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro [E_17/2022].

Notes on contributors

Pablo Victor Fontes

Pablo Victor Fontes holds a Ph.D. International Relations at Institute of International Relations at PUC-Rio (2022). He is the Coordinator of the Laboratory of Media, Culture Studies and International Relations (LEMCRI/UFRJ) and a member of Associação Brasileira de Relações Internacionais (ABRI), the Brazilian Association of Political Science (ABCP), the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) and the International Studies Association (ISA). Topics of interest include: Critical Security Studies, Humanitarian Issues, Development Critical Studies, Post-Colonialism/Decolonial, Media, Aesthetics, Culture, US Foreign Policy, and Critical Theory of International Relations.

Victoria Motta de Lamare França

Victoria Motta de Lamare França is pursuing a PhD in International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID). She is a Research Assistant at the Centre on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding (CCDP). Her areas of research interest lie in the Politics of Translation, UN Peace Operations, and Security Sector Reform.