Description
This paper explores the impact of terrorist lists within the context of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) through the critical lens of abjection theory. The core argument presented here is that the GWOT was underpinned and legitimised by a politics of abjection, in which the introduction and implementation of an assortment of terrorist lists played a key role in this occurring. Through drawing upon abjection theory to analyse the various terrorist lists which emerged after 9/11, this paper illustrates how they were crucial in constructing and rendering Muslim civilians and non-state combatants as abject beings.
This paper begins by analytically framing the immediate surge of terrorist lists post-9/11 as a reflexive, abject response, which constructed Muslims as the ‘abject other’ to justify their securitisation and policing. The paper then explores how terrorist lists facilitated the construction of abject spaces, notably Guantanamo Bay, where the suspension of conventional legal rights alongside the obfuscation of political status would strip those detained of their subjectivity. Finally, this paper demonstrates how consequentially, terrorist lists legitimised the dehumanisation of suspected terrorists and enabled the indefinite continuation of the GWOT by transforming it into a perpetual conflict against the abject other.
