Emotions and affect in terrorism research: Epistemological shift and ways ahead

ABSTRACT

From the perspective of emotion and affect research, a double paradox structures the study of terrorism. The first paradox consists in assuming terrorist violence’s clear psychological impact without unpacking its affective workings. The second relates to the presumption of organisations’ strategically rational turn to terrorist violence, thereby emptying accounts of non-state actors’ motivations of complex, intersubjective emotional dynamics. The article argues that an epistemological shift is necessary in terrorism research to question the relationship between emotions/affects and knowledge/power. Drawing on concepts and theoretical engagements from emotion and affect research in global politics, the article interrogates how emotions/affects inform political agency and how researchers may explore their complex, diffuse, and partly contradictory sociopolitical effects. The article illustrates the value of such theoretical engagements by turning to two examples, in which the performance of (non-state) collective emotions, on one side, and the state politics of emotion, on the other, highlight the ambiguous political effects of emotions/affects.

KEYWORDS:

• Terrorism research
• collective emotions
• affective investments
• epistemological shift
• political agency
• politics of emotion
• governance of emotions
• performativity
• dissonance
• terrorist and counterterrorist violence

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Lee Jarvis and the anonymous reviewers; the article has grown much thanks to their constructive comments. For insightful comments and helpful suggestions, I would like to thank Janusz Biene, Anna Geis, Eric Sangar, and Ulrich Schneckener, as well as the participants in the workshops where earlier versions were presented, including the 2019 BISA Annual Convention in London and the 2017 conference of the German Political Science Association’s IR section in Bremen. The errors remaining are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In the following, I use the term “the emotional” as umbrella for various phenomena comprising but not limited to emotions, affects, feelings, and moods, while I use the terms affect(s) and emotion(s) to address specific phenomena. Distinctions between some of these terms are discussed further down.

2. Research in psychology and the neurosciences (Damasio 1994; Pham 2007) and political science (McDermott 2004; Mercer 2005) stress the multiple ways in which emotion and rationality interact and impact on decisions, attitudes, and behaviours.

3. An affective community – or “emotional community” (Koschut 2014) – can be defined as a community “welded together, at least temporarily, by shared emotional understandings of tragedy” (Hutchison 2016, 4). Such communities can emerge below or beyond the nation-state and “create collective forms of agency” (Eroukhmanoff 2019a, 175).

4. Beyond that, affect research displays across disciplines a large variety of ways of thinking about practice and embodiment.

5. Contra an overly cognitive perspective on emotion, I support the view that emotions are both “biological impulses of the body” and “cognitive constructions of the mind” (Ross 2006, 199). If emotions were pure cognitions, i.e. merely evaluative, computers could have emotions as well; the bodily dimension of emotions is thus an essential characteristic.

6. For Butler, there need not be an actively speaking subject nor a discrete act of enunciation (2019, 150).

7. Translated extract (41:05–41:56) from a video by Mohamed Mahmood entitled Abu Usama Al-Gharib – Das Urteil über das Unterstützen der Kuffar gegen die Muslime (“Verdict of Abu Usama Al-Gahrib on supporting the kuffar against the Muslims”), published online May 2013.

8. Translated quotes from the text Ein Aufruf um die muslimischen Frauen in den Gefängnissen der Kreuzzügler zu unterstützen (“A call to support the Muslim women held in the prisons of the crusaders”), written by Mohamed Mahmood and published online 16 November 2011. In a preaching video by prominent member Hasan Keskin, entitled Wie lange soll dieses erniedrigte Leben noch weitergehen? (“How long should this life of humiliation go on?”), published online January 2013, there are similar references to the “blindness of the hearts”.

9. Shari’ah Islamic magazine, volume 1 issue 3, published September 2003 on al-Muhajiroun’s website.

10. Ibid; also in the video by Mohamed Mahmood entitled “Wa Islamah!” (“Oh Islam!”), published online 18 May 2012.

11. “Bush’s whores practise their freedom in Iraq”, article published 11 May 2004 on al-Muhajiroun’s website.

12. Translated quote from a video by Hasan Keskin, entitled “Liebe und Hass für Allah” (“Love and Hate for Allah”), published online October 2012.

13. “Letter to the Ulema”, written by The Muslim Youth Forum in conjunction with and published by al-Muhajiroun on its website, 12 December 2002.

14. See video by Keskin, October 2012, and the article “Whoever denies that terrorism is a part of Islam is Kafir”, published by al-Muhajiroun on 7 August 2004.

15. State governance of emotions in the context of terrorist violence also displays variations. Examples from France or New Zealand in similar contexts would present yet other pictures.

16. The creation of a fund was announced by the regional government of Hesse in August 2020. The planned 600,000 euros are to be allocated to the creation of (new) contact points to provide trauma counselling to survivors and of projects promoting civic education and democracy in general. It has been criticised for neglecting the work of extant counselling centres specialised in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim violence and for failing to focus on democracy promotion initiatives that specifically address the far-right.

Additional information

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Maéva Clément

Maéva Clément is Lecturer at the University of Osnabrück. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Goethe-University Frankfurt. Her research centres on political violence, international political theory, emotions in world politics, and non-state agency. She has published in Global Discourse and Political Psychology, co-edited the volume Researching Emotions in International Relations (2018, Palgrave), and the volume Armed Non-State Actors and the Politics of Recognition (2021, Manchester University Press).