Genealogy, Terrorism, and the "Relays" of Thought

Abstract

Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson’s Genealogies of Terrorism is an attempt to “loosen the grip of habitual frameworks of thought” vis-a-vis terrorism and genealogy.1 In the aftermath of so many violent events in our world, debates about the meaning of terrorism follow predictable arcs and strategies. Generally, we think that we know terrorism when we see it, or, if there is confusion, we think that we can define terrorism via descriptive, classificatory, or normative analyses. However, “unquestioned and implicit assumptions about what we already recognize as terrorism” shape our perceptions and definitions.2 To navigate this impasse, Erlenbusch-Anderson uses Foucault’s method of genealogy to excavate the material and discursive conditions of terrorism and to contextualize different modes of understanding it today. In the process, she also disrupts some habitual patterns of genealogical thought, especially the tendency to mobilize genealogies toward normative ends. Very often, normative theorists treat genealogies as the material on which they work, abstracting the theorist from their discursive and material conditions and implying a distinction between theory and practice. Erlenbusch-Anderson concludes Genealogies of Terrorism by considering how theory can serve “as a relay among a plurality of concrete practices of resistance and transformation.”3 What it means to be a “relay” is a fascinating question in Genealogies of Terrorism. How should genealogists avoid foisting prescriptive or speculative theories on others? How should genealogists “derive norms from the practices of those who are fighting”?4 In loosening the rigidity of our thought, Erlenbusch-Anderson spurs the multiplication of alternative archives and genealogies. Through what relays do these genealogies promise “alternative futures [...] for those of us who [...] look for new ways of thinking and knowing”?5 Erlenbusch-Anderson’s genealogy focuses on a French lineage of the concept of terrorism, beginning with its emergence during the French Revolution. Challenging the