Exceptionalism and the Politics of Counter-Terrorism: by Andrew W. Neal

By Andrew W. Neal

This publication is an research and critique of the recommendations of ‘exception’ and ‘exceptionalism’ within the context of the politics of liberty and safeguard within the so-called ‘War on Terror’. because the destruction of the area exchange Centre on September eleventh 2001, a impressive transformation has happened in political discourse and perform. Politicians and commentators have often made the argument that the foundations of the sport have replaced, that this can be a new type of struggle, and that remarkable instances require unheard of measures. lower than this discourse of exceptionalism, an array of measures were positioned into perform, akin to detention with no trial, ‘extraordinary rendition’, derogations from human rights legislations, sanction or connivance in torture, the curtailment of civil liberties, and competitive warfare opposed to overseas legislations. Situating exceptionalism in the post-9/11 controversy concerning the courting among liberty and defense, this booklet argues that the matter of exceptionalism emerges from the bounds and paradoxes of liberal democracy itself. it's a remark and critique of either modern practices of exceptionalism and the serious debate that has shaped in reaction. via a close evaluate of the most important theoretical contributions to the controversy, this e-book develops exceptionalism as a severe device. It additionally engages with the matter of exceptionalism as a discursive declare, as a method, as an idea, as a theoretical challenge and as a convention. this is often the 1st ebook to trap the significance of the exceptionalism debate in one quantity, and may be of a lot curiosity to scholars of severe safeguard reports, political philosophy, IR thought and sociology.

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Additional info for Exceptionalism and the Politics of Counter-Terrorism: Liberty, Security and the War on Terror (Routledge Studies in Liberty and Security)

Example text

A restrictive account of liberty is not an obstacle to liberty, but a ‘product’ of liberty. The aim is not so much to establish a determinate relation between the philosophical tradition of liberty and its contemporary fate, but to demonstrate why arguments about necessary compromises and suspensions of liberty work so powerfully. The initial conclusion would be that the principle of sovereign exceptionalism is immanent to the logic of the concept of liberty in the case of both canonical accounts discussed here.

What is fascinating is how each deals with the contradictions in the concept. The previous chapter argued that the contemporary liberty/security discourse displays a symptomatic dualism whereby two contradictory positions are held at the same time: liberty must be defended both by security practices and from security practices, without destroying liberty in the process. Hobbes and Kant deal with these contradictions in a rigorous and uncompromising way. Beginning from precepts about what must be – theologically, metaphysically, existentially and rationally – they derive political 36 Freedom and liberty in classic political theory accounts of what, consequentially, freedom must be.

The problematization of violence in its many forms is central to all of this. This study has so far taken journalistic, sociological, legal, political and allegorical accounts of contemporary violent 28 The liberty/security discourse and the problem of the exception practices as its starting point, and has gone on to critique the weaknesses, silences, contradictions and even complicity of these common responses with regard to these practices. But whether violence is an ever-present feature of human life is not the question that needs asking.

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Exceptionalism and the Politics of Counter-Terrorism: by Andrew W. Neal
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