“Terror Geographies”: An analyhtical framework for the study of terror

Abstract

There is a consensus today that the so-called ‘war on terror’ has redefined political and diplomatic international relations. But what terror is evoked here exactly? In this context I want to propose a conceptual-methodological framework for the study of terror and terrorism, which I have called ‘geographies of terror’. I propose this framework for two principal reasons: (1) to redirect contemporary geopolitical discourses on the ‘war on terror’ that define ‘terrorism’ in a restricted fashion as a terrorism against systems of the western neoliberal democratic state, while at the same time they hide ‘other terrorisms’, including those orchestrated by these very neoliberal democratic states; and (2) as a methodological tool for the systematic study of the impact of terror on local populations.