Nationalism, Terrorism, Patriotism : A Speculative Ethnography of War

This book examines the intersecting forces of nationalism, terrorism, and patriotism that normalize an acceptance of the global war on terror as essential to maintaining freedom and democracy as defined by white nation-states. Readers are introduced to speculative ethnography: an experimental methodology that bends time and space through the practice of avant-garde poetics. This study conceptualizes terrorism as a place of colonial encounters between soldiers, insurgents, civilians, and leaders of nation-states. The tactics of suicide bombings employed by the Tamil nationalist movement, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, are juxtaposed with drone strikes in asymmetric warfare where violence becomes a means of dialogue. Each chapter weaves seemingly disparate narratives from multiple experiences and sites of war, inviting readers to witness the condition of getting lost in that willful attachment to killing and being killed in service of patriotic pride and national belonging. Acknowledgments Contents List of Figures 1 Prologue 2 A Speculative Ethnography of War I A Willful Method II A Speculative Ethnography of War III Journey to a Place Called Terrorism IV Suicide and Sacrifice V Subjugation & Sovereignty 3 Another Brick in the Wall: The Cultural Value of Terrorism The Cultural Value of Terrorism Ecologies of War The Cultural Value of Neoliberalism: The Wall 4 Goodbye Blue Sky: The Ethical Demands of Suicide Bombing Being-In-Common with Precarity and Dispossession Being-In-Common with Responsiveness and Responsibility 5 Comfortably Numb: Abjection & Anarchy Suicide Silence Identity Anarchy Suicide-Silence-Identity-Anarchy 6 Run Like Hell: Mullivaikkal Mullivaikkal 7 A Great Day for Freedom: Life Under Occupation I A Country Awakened to Danger II Justice Will Be Done III This Is a War that We Have to Win Life Under Occupation Life Under Occupation Under Life Occupation Under Life Life Bibliography Index