Título: | ELUDING SECURITY: THE UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY AND THE PERSISTENCE OF WARS ON TERRORS | ||||||||||||
Autor: |
YESA PORTELA ORMOND |
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Colaborador(es): |
ROBERTO VILCHEZ YAMATO - Orientador |
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Catalogação: | 22/AGO/2024 | Língua(s): | ENGLISH - UNITED STATES |
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Tipo: | TEXT | Subtipo: | THESIS | ||||||||||
Notas: |
[pt] Todos os dados constantes dos documentos são de inteira responsabilidade de seus autores. Os dados utilizados nas descrições dos documentos estão em conformidade com os sistemas da administração da PUC-Rio. [en] All data contained in the documents are the sole responsibility of the authors. The data used in the descriptions of the documents are in conformity with the systems of the administration of PUC-Rio. |
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Referência(s): |
[pt] https://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/projetosEspeciais/ETDs/consultas/conteudo.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=67691&idi=1 [en] https://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/projetosEspeciais/ETDs/consultas/conteudo.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=67691&idi=2 |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.17771/PUCRio.acad.67691 | ||||||||||||
Resumo: | |||||||||||||
The starting point of this dissertation lies in the question: What is it about the
War on Terror that provides a persistent narrative that remains structuring the
terms of the U.S. foreign policy during the 21st century? Regarding this research
problem, a twofold argument is formulated: First, I argue that the War on Terror
is an opaque, blurred figure in the U.S. foreign policy; a structure with a center that
has no natural site and that keeps being re-fulfilled, re-written and re-signified; a
groundless ground; a specter-to-come that haunts and eludes US foreign policy
and security. I insist that this opaque, blurred figure benefits from the images of
enemies whose faces, characteristics, and territories are only provisionally
identified; from the impossibility of indefinitely defining what terror and
terrorists mean and are; and from the entanglement of these signifiers – i.e.,
these specters –, over the U.S. history, with those of Indigenous Peoples, the
Black enslaved population, the poor white servants (Irish, Scottish, Germans),
Suffragists, Latin immigrants, drug dealers, Muslims, Arabs,
antifascists, white supremacists, and so on. Second, I argue that the U.S. War
on Terror has been eluding security not only because terrorism and terrorists
are elusive, but because security is, itself, elusive. This way, this dissertation
proposes that instead of a War on Terror, we must, even if provisionally, refer to
Wars on Terrors that have been eluding U.S. security. To illustrate this
argument, I undertake an extensive analysis of the U.S. Wars on Terrors, with
help of the Derridean deconstructive reading, associated with the contributions of
Reinhart Koselleck. This way, I pay special attention to the U.S. foreign policy and
to how its Wars on Terrors have been continuously waged against multiple
constitutive outside(r)s of the USA. Also, I direct special –but not exclusive – focus
to the Wars on Terrors of the 21st century and to the images of Arabs, Middle
Easterners, and Muslims as essentially terrorists; im/migrants, asylum seekers,
and refugees as ‘terrorists in the making’; and the entanglement of “antifascists
and white supremacists as domestic terrorists. After this extensive work, I make
two suggestions: first, I insist on the importance of interpreting interpretations more
than we interpret things and that instead taking abstractions for granted we must be
attentive to how they are both productive and violent. Second, I suggest that
(in)security, terrorism, and terrorists are constitutive outside(r)s of the U.S.
Wars on Terrors, and that, in so being, closure of this persistent, elusive scenario
becomes impossible without shaking the apparently well built, tenacious grounds
of the United States itself.
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