Abstract
One of the images broadcast on the Internet in the aftermath of 9/11 was that of a face peering through the fumes and ashes, rising like sacrificial smoke from the twin towers. This, we were ominously informed, was the visage of Bin Laden: the enemy who was there and not there. The face of an unspeakable, inexplicable, unlocateable terror which was now suddenly, mysteriously, crossing our radar screens. Here was the epitome of all those impure substances that infiltrate our being: nicotine, drugs, alcohol, the AIDS virus; or more ominously still, the anthrax powder filtering through buildings and letter boxes. Like planes slicing through air-conditioned offices of a New York high rise. Like terrorists impersonating law-abiding neighbours next door. This horror of horrors was threatening to invade the very borders of the nation, the frontiers of the state, the precincts of our cities, the walls of our homes, the skin of our bodies — spiralling into the core of our being. This was one particular phantasmagoria of terror in the wake of 9/11.
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Notes
Samuel Huntington later published a full-length book on the subject entitled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (2001), where he expanded on his prediction that twenty-first-century global conflict would not be waged between nation-states but between general ‘civilizations’ defined by shared cultures, values and religions, and transgressing the boundaries of sovereign nations. Of the eight major civilizations, Huntington predicts that the most violent clash will occur between the Christian West and the Muslim nations of the East stretching from Africa and the Middle East as far as Indonesia. While I do not deny that this scenario may indeed be the preferred view of Bin Laden and certain generals in the Pentagon, I would support Said’s argument that we should do everything to combat such monolithic models of schismatic thinking to the extent that they deny the complex realities of difference, diversity and dissent within every civilization, no matter how hegemonic or totalizing it may presume to be.
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© 2010 Richard Kearney
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Kearney, R. (2010). Thinking after Terror: An Interreligious Challenge. In: Cheliotis, L.K. (eds) Roots, Rites and Sites of Resistance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230298040_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230298040_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-30301-4
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