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Islamic State videos have often been associated with savage violence and beheadings. An in-depth scrutiny however reveals another striking feature: that female bodies are absent, blurred or mute. Examining a few Islamic State videos in depth, the article suggests that the invisibility of women in tandem with the ostentatious visibility of male bodies enable gendered and embodied spectators to indulge in homoerotic as well as heterosexual imaginaries. In contrast to studies on visual security and online radicalization which assert that images affect an audience, this article focuses on the interaction between video and audience and argues that spectators are not only rational and emotional but embodied and gendered as well. Islamic State videos do not only attract western foreign fighters through religious–ideological rhetoric or emotional impact but also through gendered forms of pleasure and desire that enable carnal imagination and identification. The article probes the analytical purchase of carnal aesthetics and spectatorship.

For more than a decade, 'radicalization' has been a keyword in our understanding of terrorism. From the outset, radicalization was conceived of as an intellectual process through which an individual would increasingly come under a spell of extremist ideas. This ideological understanding of radicalization still prevails. In a 2015 speech on extremism, British Prime Minister David Cameron, for instance, claimed that the 'root cause of the threat we face is the extremist ideology itself'. But the way we understand radicalization has specific consequences for the way we manage and fight the scourge of terrorism. Considering recent events, including the November 2015 Paris attacks, the present article sets out to reassess the above-mentioned intellectualist understanding of radicalization and come up with new suggestions as to how radicalization may be understood today. Initially, the article suggests that ideology is not necessarily a precondition for violence, but that a prior experience with violence is more often a precondition for engaging an extremist ideology. Such experience with violence can be both domestic and international, obtained in Europe or Syria and other conflict zones. In the second part of the article it is argued that although radicalization is often conceived of as an individual process, pathways towards terrorism are inherently social and political. Finally, the article argues that by stressing the importance of ideology and ideological processes, concepts of radicalization have abstracted away from another factor that is pivotal for understanding pathways towards terrorist violence: the skills and capacities of the body. (International Affairs (Oxford) / SWP)

Manni Crone skriver om de islamistiske grupper, som er blevet styrket pga. måneders forberedelse på udenlandsk intervention.

Manni Crone: Authenticity and critical linguistic community of Charles Taylor

Are we living in individualistic societies where authenticity and self-realization have become supreme values? Is it all we can dream about to realize ourselves? In this article I examine the modern roots of authenticity and argue with the Canadian communitarian Charles Taylor, that there exist ontological limits to individualism and the cult of the self. Against individualistic liberalists Taylor argues that the modern self unfolds in a preexisting moral community, but against the most conservative communitarians Taylor insists on authenticity and individualism as part of modern life. Modern authentic individuals do not just seek egocentric pleasure, but try to create a good life in dialogue with others. This dialogue unfolds in the "moral space" of modernity, which is not a homogeneous "community of values", but rather an open space in which individualistic values enter into conflict with values such as human rights and respect for the other.