The Event of Terrorism: Ambiguous Categories and Public Spectacle

This article examines the ways in which executive authority and media organizations categorize the spectacle of public violence and disaster, with particular reference to an event (the Germanwings crash in 2015) where large-scale fatalities were purposely caused. On occasions when a perpetrator commits multiple killings (acting impersonally but with “malice aforethought,” and usually against civilian victims), the immediate question appears to be whether or not the incident should be classified as a terrorist attack. This is especially the case during periods when mass or individual assaults are prominent in the public domain. The article examines the problems inherent in the uses of unstable or contested linguistic definitions, which typify the family of terms that include both the act of terrorizing individuals, groups, and wider polities, and the supposedly political practice known as terrorism.