Description
This paper explores what has previously been excluded from the study of counterterrorism: the political role and experience of emotions in deradicalisation. Deradicalisation, known as the cognitive (and sometimes grouped with the behavioural) process of disengagement from violent extremism, has become something of a buzzword, generating a global and fast-growing marketplace for experts, handbooks and programmes. No success recipe exists; scholars explain again and again the variance, complexity and difficulty in examining and evaluating deradicalisation processes. Not to mention some deradicalisation programmes’ (neocolonial) tendencies of ‘thought policing’. Yet, many scholars point to the importance of ‘emotional connections’, including trust, empathy and care, between practitioner and radical in these programmes (Bjørgo and Horgan, 2009; Horgan, 2009; Chernov Hwang, 2018; Dalgaard-Nielsen, 2013; Garfinkel, 2007). Unfortunately, the analysis stops here. Emotions are seemingly important in deradicalisation, but deeper analytical attention to emotions is missing. Emotions have, as a result, become something politically unproblematic or unpolitical. Drawing from feminist and poststructuralist thoughts, this paper offers an alternative framework to understand and examine deradicalisation: to re-imagine counterterrorism by exploring the politics of emotions. Incorporating the concepts and thinking associated with ‘emotional labour’ (Hochschild, 1983) and ‘ethics of care’ (Gilligan, 1982; Tronto, 1993), and applying narrative analysis to everyday experiences among practitioners and radicals, this paper not only uproots well-entrenched assumptions in previous literature on deradicalisation, more importantly, it aims to show that emotions are not only significant in this process but that they are political. This alternative framework invites new questions to the analysis of deradicalisation, such as: how are emotions practiced and/or managed and what are the effects? How is deradicalisation experienced (emotionally)? Where and when are emotions used/practiced/needed in deradicalisation? And whose or what emotional needs are accounted for or created? This paper argues that the lack of deeper analytical attention to emotions in the study of deradicalisation masks its social and political significance and obscures its oppressive structures (Tronto, 1993). In short, this paper differs from previous deradicalisation literature by taking the political role and experience of emotions seriously and, thus, contributing to a deeper understanding, and re-imagination, of counterterrorism.
Keywords: deradicalisation, counterterrorism, emotions, emotional labour, ethics of care, everyday experiences, narrative analysis.
