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Título: ELUDING SECURITY: THE UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY AND THE PERSISTENCE OF WARS ON TERRORS
Autor: YESA PORTELA ORMOND
Colaborador(es): ROBERTO VILCHEZ YAMATO - Orientador
Catalogação: 22/AGO/2024 Língua(s): ENGLISH - UNITED STATES
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.
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
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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