Unknown knowns: the subjugated knowledge of terrorism studies

Abstract

This article employs Foucault's concept of ‘subjugated knowledges’ to explore forms of knowledge which provide explanations of the nature, causes and solutions to terrorism and political violence, but which have been suppressed and silenced within the terrorism studies field. Subjugated knowledges include historical knowledges that are present within the functional and systemic ensemble of terrorism studies itself, but which have been masked by more dominant forms of knowledge, as well as knowledges outside of the field that have been disqualified and excluded as naïve, inferior or below the required level of scientificity. This article analyses some of the primary mechanisms and processes by which knowledge subjugation takes place in terrorism studies and the consequences of such suppressions and exclusions. It argues that the presence of subjugated knowledge means that the field exists in a highly unstable condition where certain forms of knowledge are simultaneously known and unknown and where eruptions of subjugated knowledge periodically destabilise the dominant discourse. Among others, the rise of critical terrorism studies represents such an eruption in the field. The article concludes by suggesting that one of the key future tasks of critical terrorism studies must be to liberate a range of potentially important subjugated knowledges and that Bourdieu's concept of the ‘collective intellectual’ provides a potentially important model for undertaking this difficult task.

Keywords:

• subjugated knowledge
• Foucault
• peace studies
• terrorism studies

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented at the following conference: ‘A Decade of Terrorism and Counterterrorism since 9/11: Taking Stock and New Directions in Research and Policy’, BISA Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group (CSTWG) Annual Conference, 8–11 September 2011, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. The author is very grateful for helpful comments from the conference delegates, the editors of this special issue and two anonymous reviewers. All remaining errors belong to the author.

Notes

1. I employ the term ‘unknown’ to mean that certain knowledge claims rooted in theoretical or empirical research remain unacknowledged in the scholarship or texts of the field. Such work is neither mentioned nor systematically engaged with, and if it is mentioned, it is dismissed as inappropriate, naïve or irrelevant. By contrast, what is ‘known’ is acknowledged, engaged with and referenced, and therefore, legitimised. In many cases, it is also acted upon in terms of the formation of public policy.

2. The playful allusion to Donald Rumsfeld's famous aphorism from February 2002 is a deliberate attempt to subvert the knowledge paradigm that he sought to insert into the counterterrorism field.

3. In this article, I employ Foucault's concept in a largely methodological manner as a useful tool for exploring a particular puzzle that currently exists within the terrorism field. It does not necessarily signal the adoption of a broader post-structuralist ontology for the deconstruction of all forms of power and resistance in the world today.

4. Of course, Foucault's concept does apply not only to the terrorism studies field but to science and politics more generally. This article focuses solely on the terrorism studies field while recognising that its knowledge subjugation processes are embedded within, and part of, a much broader set of hegemonic processes inherent to contemporary society.

5. The conceptual move from Foucault to Bourdieu is not intended to elide the ontological differences between them, merely to suggest that Bourdieu's concept of the ‘collective intellectual’ provides an additional and perhaps more developed and pragmatic strategic framework for knowledge de-subjugation action than Foucault's original genealogical method.