The communication of horrorism: a typology of ISIS online death videos

ABSTRACT

In this article, the authors theorize the communicative logic of ISIS online death videos—from the burning and shooting of individual hostages to mass battleground executions. Drawing on Adriana Cavarero’s reflections on contemporary violence, they demonstrate how ISIS’ digital spectacles of the annihilated body confront Western viewers with horror— or rather with different “regimes of horrorism” (grotesque, abject and sublime horror). These spectacles of horror, the authors argue, mix Western with Islamic aesthetic practices and secular with religious moral claims so as to challenge dominant hierarchies of grievability (who is worthy of our grief) and norms of subjectivity. In so doing, the authors conclude, ISIS introduces into global spaces of publicity a “spectacular thanatopolitics”—a novel form of thanatopolitics that brings the spectacle of the savaged body, banished from display since the 19th century, back to the public stage, thereby turning the pursuit of death into the new norm of heroic subjectivity.

KEYWORDS:

• ISIS
• spectacle
• death
• horrorism
• recontextualization
• thanatopolitics

Notes on contributors

Lilie Chouliaraki is Professor of Media and Communications at the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Her research focuses largely on mediated suffering (disaster news, aid and humanitarianism, migration and war) and relevant publications include four books “Discourse in Late Modernity” (1999), “The Spectatorship of Suffering” (2006), “The Soft Power of War” (ed., 2008) and ICA award-winning “The Ironic Spectator. Solidarity in the Age of Post-humanitarianism” (2013).

Angelos Kissas is PhD candidate (ESRC Scholarship) in the Dept. of Media and Communications at LSE. His research interest lies in transformations of ideology under conditions of mediatized politics. He has published his work in the Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies and the Journal of Political Ideologies.

ORCID

Angelos Kissas http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0289-0495

Notes

1. Cameron D. (2014, September 1) “PM statement on European Council and tackling extremism”. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-statement-on-european-council-and-tackling-extremism; Obama B. (2014, September 24) “Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City”, Public Papers. Retrieved from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/24/remarks-president-obama-address-united-nations-general-assembly. See also The Editorial Board, New York Times (2014, October 2). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/opinion/the-fundamental-horror-of-isis.html; Boyle, M. (2014, August 23) ‘The problem with “evil”’. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/opinion/the-moral-hazard-of-calling-isis-a-cancer.html

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/business/media/with-videos-of-killings-isis-hones-social-media-as-a-weapon.html?mcubz=0&_r=0

3. “ISIS and the spectacle of terrorism. Resisting mainstream workstations of fear” (2014, October 7). Retrieved from https://philosophersforchange.org/2014/10/07/isis-and-the-spectacle-of-terrorism-resisting-mainstream-workstations-of-fear/ (accessed June 15^th, 2017)

4. The video is available on different websites; indicatively see here: http://heavy.com/news/2017/01/isis-islamic-state-amaq-news-the-cross-of-the-shield-turkey-turkish-soldiers-burned-to-death-execution-wilayat-halab-aleppo-syria-english-translation-subtitles-video/

5. This video is available online at: http://heavy.com/news/2016/01/new-isis-islamic-state-news-pictures-videos-united-kingdom-english-england-invade-imbecile-execute-spies-full-uncensored-youtube/

6. This video is available online at: http://heavy.com/news/2016/12/new-isis-islamic-state-amaq-news-agency-wilayat-al-khayr-deir-ez-zor-syria-syrian-arab-army-saa-pkk-peshmerga-ypg-russia-forces-war-executions-footage-full-uncensored-mp4-video-english-subtitles/

7. For the fluid boundaries of the categories religious/secular and Western/non-Western used throughout the analysis, see also Asad, Brown, Butler, and Mahmood (2009).

8. Critique is here understood, in Wendy Brown’s terms, as “polemical rejection” (2009, p. 9).