Theorising Terrorism, Part II
| Published date | 01 June 2011 |
| Author | Colin Wight |
| Date | 01 June 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117811404451 |
| Subject Matter | Replies |
Article
International Relations
25(2) 267–271
© The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117811404451
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Corresponding author:
Colin Wight, University of Sidney, Australia.
Email: colin.wight@sydney.edu.au
Theorising Terrorism, Part II:
A Reply to Dani Nedal
Colin Wight
I am grateful to the editors for giving me the opportunity to respond to Dani Nedal’s
reply to my piece on terrorism.1 Nedal describes his intervention as ‘merely friendly
critiques and caveats to drive the discussion forward’.2 In that spirit I will attempt a
measured response in the hope of generating further discussion on what is an important
set of issues surrounding terrorism, and in particular, the concept of ‘state terrorism’.
Three things concern Nedal: my rejection of state terrorism; the distinction between ter-
rorists and freedom fighters; and, my treatment of the relationship between individuals
and groups. I will deal with them each in turn, before briefly restating my position and
providing an account of why I believe academic research into terrorism and state reac-
tions to terrorism can both benefit by rejecting the concept of ‘state terrorism’. My rea-
sons are both conceptual and strategic.
First, I was surprised to see Nedal claim that I had overlooked ‘the fact that in many
contemporary societies, there is no absolute consensus as to where authority and legiti-
macy are located’.3 I was surprised at this claim because the fundamental point of my
argument about the structural relationship between terrorism and the state was predicated
on the idea that ‘the history of the development of the state can be understood as a long
process of appropriation and accumulation (of territory, peoples and resources) achieved
through the use of violence, a process that had winners and losers’ (emphasis added).4
Moreover, I went on to claim that the success of the modern state project blinds us to this
history and hence ‘we accept states as the dominant and legitimate form of political
organisation’. And indeed we do, but once we situate this blindness within the violent
history of state development we can see that ‘terrorism and other forms of non-state
violence can be interpreted as reactions to this process and the claim of state legiti-
macy’.5 So the possibility of a lack of consensus on the legitimacy of any state is not only
accepted in my account, but is structurally written into it.
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