A. Oliverio, THE STATE OF INJUSTICE - THE POLITICS OF TERRORISM AND THE PRODUCTIONOF ORDER, International journal of comparative sociology, 38(1-2), 1997, pp. 48-63
The construct of terrorism, as it is used in contemporary research and
media texts, emerges from 18th- and 19th-century orthodox assumptions
of man, nation-state, and political sovereignty. In this paper, terro
rism is examined as a discursive process in the art of statecraft from
a sociological, comparative perspective. The discursive processes of
two ostensible cultures of terrorism are compared: the United States a
nd Italy. The analysis reveals the inextricable link between terrorism
, statecraft, and the production of domination, injustice, and social
order. It is a practice that privileges rhetorical language over direc
t experience. The value of analyzing terrorism as the product of a his
torically produced political discourse rather than as an essential hum
an expression is that it has the potential to be replaced by a more he
uristic construct.