Quiz: What is Terrorism?

Mary Patten // 03.03.2008 //
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My interest in the question "what is terrorism?" is autobiographical, artistic, theoretical, interpretive, and always pedagogical and political.

In response to the silencing, suppression, and repression of critical thought in the u.s.a. after September 11, 2001, i developed a class called "terrorism: a media history." The class begins with an intensive investigation of key words, images, and public feelings to investigate the visual, linguistic, and political lexicons of "terrorism" in contemporary life.

In this project, i use some of the tools i've developed in the class - the form of a question, the format of a quiz using both words and images, cognitive/affective and visual mapping of names, concepts, pictures, and emotions, and the genre of the list - to open up a space for thinking beyond the political language of fear.

i'm also including a selected bibliography and filmography for further investigation and research. i'm not motivated to finally define and decide what terrorism "is," but desire to contribute to more and more openings of knowledge, feeling, and political praxis in face of so many terribly over-determined and closed-down frames, with disastrous results in contemporary life today.


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