Second Annual International Interdisciplinary Conference

Interrogating Terror

Wednesday 12 - Friday 14 September 2007

Key Note Speakers: Suvendi Perera, Craig Murray, Duncan Campbell

Call for papers

Where once it was the “Cold War” whose ideological demands and material determinations shaped the structures, priorities and directions of all our lives, today it is the “War on Terrorism”. “The End of History”, the death of ideology and the triumph of the liberal order, heralded in the aftermath of 1989, have been replaced by the ideology of neo-liberal governance. That ideology and its material demands today constitute the reality of everyday life - and death - of more and more people around the world.

This conference interrogates the basic idea which makes that possible: the notion of terror. First, it will analyse this notion and those that surround it: ideas such as “terrorism”, “fundamentalism”, “democracy”, “human rights” and “freedom”. Second, it will investigate the material and historical realities concerned: the Middle East; economic inequality; oil; and the marketisation of life and death.

Contributions are invited around the following and associated themes:

• The Novel after 9/11
• Terror as ideological war
• Torture and the American Empire
• Iraq and Afghanistan
• The politics of oil
• Populism and the politics of terror
• Iran, nuclear politics and “the west”
• The psychology of terror
• The terror of poverty
• Rethinking 9/11
• The language of the “war on terror”
• Theorising terror
• The economics of the “war on terror”
• Religion and terror
• Guerrilla warfare and postcolonial politics
• Human rights, terror and the nation-state
• Fundamentalisms
• Rethinking protest
• Palestine and Israel
• The politics of life
• Historicising terror

Conference organisers: Bob Brecher and Mark Devenney

Abstracts (300 words)

Please send to Nicola Clewer [nicolaclewer.hughes@ukonline.co.uk]

Please note that this call for papers is now closed.