Governing through counterterrorism in the Arab world

Since September 11, 2001, the fight against terrorism has been at the heart of global governance. Attacks perpetrated in Europe during the 2010s reinforced this trend, pushing to the fore both an assortment of “deradicalization” initiatives as well as larger paradigms for “countering” or “preventing” a phenomenon rechristened as “violent extremism”. While showing strong intra-European disparities, the diversity of these terms and policy interventions reflects both a semantic imprecision around the notion of radicalization and the emergence of a de-radicalization market within the wider counter-terrorism industry. For researchers, these notions are not self-evident and their omnipresent use reflects forms of political instrumentalization, especially in the Arab world. The ambition of this conference is thus to bring historical and sociological dimensions back into the debate on counter-terrorism (CT) by critically assessing the circulation and reappropriation of CT measures, discourses and practices. Panels will focus on the different narratives produced by governments, the media and experts, and their practices. The conference will facilitate the emergence of comparative perspectives by looking at similar practices in Western contexts and also in China. Finally, a roundtable discussion at the end of the conference will bring experts and practitioners into the debate and see how far it is possible to bridge the realm of critical theory on CT with the one of practice.