Empire’s rhetoric of the terrorist enemy wavers between singular and plural under U.S. influence

Evidence

Hardt and Negri also lament the lack of conceptual clarity-and the discursive misplacement of the enemy-when it comes to “the current enemy of Empire.” This enemy, however, is legion, and the rhetoric of Empir(}—the rhetoric of “Empire”-rhat describes the problem oscillates uncontrollably between singular and plural. (Under U.S. dictation, what is set in motion is “a process of armed containment and/or repression of the current enemy of Empire. These enemies are most often called terrorist, a crude conceptual and terminological reduction that is rooted in a police mentality,” 37.) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 814

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The global Arab terrorist image was produced by empire crisis and counterinsurgency with Israel — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 203