Communication and (Un)Inspired Terror: Toward a Theory of Phatic Violence

Abstract

Terrorism has long been theorized as a communicative act. Absent in the array of theories is an adequate consideration of violence committed by third parties (e.g., lone wolves), individuals with no clear link to any group. Often, this complex mediated phenomenon is reduced to the “inspired” reproduction/transmission of a message. For a more nuanced understanding, I develop a theory of phatic violence centered on relation/mediation rather than information/intentionality. The violence of the ambiguous third party, in the first instance, produces a phatic exigency through which bonds might be created or sustained. Any subsequent communion (or its denial) with a group is the result of a mediated ritual process, one that is structured by and regenerates the bonds of antipathy that define the war on terror. Forefronting antipathy in phatic communication enables new understandings of dispersed violence and the horror of the war on terror.