Release of the book Terrorism and the Arts. Practices and Critiques in Contemporary Cultural Production edited by Jonathan Harris.

The book assesses the key definitions, forms, contexts and impacts of terrorist activity on the arts in the modern era, using historical and contemporary perspectives. Its empirical case studies include theatre, literature, music, visual art, mass media, film and the mores of ‘ordinary life.’
While its immediate reflective context is Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, the book reviews a broader range of definitions and counter-definitions of ‘terrorism’, ‘state terrorism’ and ‘states of terror,’ examining uses of the terms through a series of comparative analyses.
Chapters focus on the intersection of these definitional questions with heuristic analysis of art forms, cultural activities and their socio-historical contexts.

Terrorism and the Arts. Practices and Critiques in Contemporary Cultural Production is edited by Jonathan Harris, within the framework of MoDe(s). Along with an introduction Figure / trauma / terror, Harris analyses the relation between contemporary artistic practices in the Middle East and the multiple states of terror in his chapter, “They make a desert and they call it peace”: states of terror and contemporary artistic response in the Middle East. 
The volume also includes the contribution Facing Franco’s terror: visual arts and the fate of memory by Paula Barreiro López, studying the uses of terror during the Francoism, the intersection with visual arts and the politics of memory in Spain.

Image: Bashir Makhoul, Skein 4 v.2 (detail), 2019.

Terrorism and the Arts. Practices and Critiques in Contemporary Cultural Production
Jonathan Harris (ed.)
London: Roudtledge, 2021
ISBN 9781138359222

Download the index.