The Figure of the Terrorist in Literature and Visual Culture

## Contains thirteen original essays and an expansive introduction, including contributions by some of the foremost scholars in the field * Goes beyond the US-centrism of post-9/11 discourse and covers a broad geographical scope, including India, Sri Lanka, Burma, the UK, France, and Germany * Offers up-to-date discussions of key films and texts, as well as pioneering analyses of works that have been largely overlooked in scholarship * Brings together research from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including literary criticism, film and television studies, cultural anthropology, critical terrorism studies, postcolonial studies, and gender studies The contemporary preoccupation with terrorism is marked by a curious paradox: whereas the topic has been ubiquitous in public discourse since the late twentieth century, the voices of terrorists themselves are usually silenced. Is the terrorist “the quintessential proscribed or tabooed figure of our times”, as cultural anthropologists Joseba Zulaika and William A. Douglass have suggested? The present volume is the first to approach the tabooing of terrorists from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. Covering a broad geographical scope, it explores how different media forms (such as novels, fiction and non-fiction films, or comic books) frame and make sense of the figure of the terrorist: do they reinforce the terrorism taboo, or do they find ways of circumventing it? Each contribution asks how factors such as ideological agenda, religious identity, ethnicity, and gender impact the way the perpetrators of political violence are conceived in different historical moments and cultural contexts. Contents List of Figures Notes on Contributors 1. Introduction: The Figure of the Terrorist in Literature and Visual Culture PART ONE HISTORICISING THE FIGURE OF THE TERRORIST: CROSS-MEDIA PERSPECTIVES 2. The Psychology of Post-War Revolutionary Terrorism in Muriel Spark’s The Only Problem and Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist 3. Sympathy for the Devil? The Changing Face of the IRA in American Superhero Comics 4. Terrorists and Hooligans: Re-politicising a De-politicised Figure in Contemporary Representations of British Football Culture 5. Screening Railway Terrorists: Light Modernity, Invisible Threats and the Aesthetics of Concealment in The 15:17 to Paris and Bodyguard 6. ‘Nothing Terroristic About Him’: The Figure of the Terrorist in Karan Mahajan’s The Association of Small Bombs PART TWO GENDER, IDENTITY AND TERRORISM 7. Militancy, Maternity and Masquerade in Santosh Sivan’s The Terrorist 8. The Female Counter-Strike: Terrorising Patriarchy in Hindi Cinema 9. Contrasting Terrorist Figures: Far-Right Extremists and Jihadists in Contemporary French Cinema 10. ‘I Was a Big Girl. I Could Pack My Bags and Leave’: ISIS and Female Emancipation in Tabish Khair’s Just Another Jihadi Jane PART THREE INTIMATE ENEMIES: FEELING FOR THE TERRORIST? 11. Circumventing the Condemnation Imperative: The Figure of the Female Suicide Bomber in Akin and El Akkad 12. Discomfort and Documentary Film: The Figure of the White Extremist in Deeyah Khan’s White Right 13. Intimate Conflicts: Rebels, Heroes and Disfigured Terrorists in Burmese Anglophone Literature Afterword Index