Description
The unprecedented intensification of terrorism and counterterrorism in Africa post-9/11 has attracted a variety of conceptual perspectives and methods. Albeit initially neglected, the political economy of terrorism and counterterrorism has received recent heightened attention. I build on this incipient thematic attention to how both politics and economics interrelate to impact on (in)security, to critically disentangle this complex political economy. To do this, I discipline Michel Foucault’s ‘[neo]liberal governmentality’ with Charles Mills’ ‘Racial Contract’, by not only theorising ‘with Foucault beyond Foucault’, but radically theorising ‘with Foucault’ contra ‘Foucault’ (Dillon and Reid, 2009: 36) through a Foucauldian-Millsian interlocution. In doing so, I contend that the political economy of (counter)terrorism in Africa must be understood within peculiar (post)colonial governmentalities within specific societies that experience both phenomena. Through racializing and decolonising (neo)liberal governmentality, I unpack entangled African and European histories which have constituted a peculiar postcolonial political economy with conditions of possibility for (non)violent counter-conducts, which mobilise, and produce various forms of (counter)terrorist interventions. This approach, I argue, allows for an analysis of both historical and contemporary power relations as well as broader mechanisms and practices that shape the political economy of violence more broadly and (counter)terrorism, more specifically.
