This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Engels, J. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Floating Bombs Encircling Our Shores: Post-9/11 Rhetorics of Piracy and Terrorism

Pennsylvania State University

This essay considers the relationship between piracy, terrorism, and post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy as it is outlined in the National Security Strategy of the United States (NSSUS). The NSSUS's discursive formation undertakes two noteworthy rhetorical maneuvers: It confuses piracy with terrorism, thereby shifting focus away from piracy as theft toward the threat of terrorism at sea, or "floating bombs," and it nationalizes terrorism, thereby making terrorists subject to retaliation by the U.S. military. Because post-9/11 distinctions between terrorists, those who pursue violence for political ends, and pirates, those who pursue violence for profiteering ends, have become increasingly difficult to substantiate in the American social imaginary, the collapse of these two categories signifies a final conflation of state power and economic power into one homogenizing, all-consuming force called empire. At the same time, piracy has become a formidable form of global capitalism sharing many characteristics with the doctrines enumerated by the NSSUS.

Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, Vol. 7, No. 3, 326-349 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1532708606288645


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?