Aestheticising Terrorism: Alternative Approaches to 11 September

Abstract

This paper highlights the methodological difficulties of ascribing causation to events which are to some extent “irrational” and demanding of different forms of understanding — such as those provided in Romantic literature, or poetry, or art. It may be that the scientific urge to systematise diverts analytical attention from debates over values, and from existential complexities in the connections between (say) poverty and violent acts of (imagined) retribution. Official language also proffers distorting metaphors, sanitises facts and impedes the possibility of combating terrorism. “Non‐analytical methods” may be essential to analysis.