Introduction: Welcome to the Grey

Abstract

The introduction situates the book at the crossroads of Critical Military Studies, Feminist Security Studies, and Critical Terrorism Studies. It pays particular attention to hierarchies and poses the question of how the West, primarily, got to such a polarised moment, one pitted between the ‘baddie’ terrorist and the ‘goodie’ counter-terrorist. All three sub-disciplines lead us to some understanding of the binaries within the War on Terror. Yet, each of them contributes something different; helping us to recognise the intersection of gender, race, and heteronormativity, thereby moving beyond dichotomy into a more complex understanding of terrorism. This chapter therefore lays out an intersectional discourse analysis of ‘asking the other question,’ which interrogates how gender, race, heteronormativity, class, etc., all intersect in marginalising individuals, here those labelled as ‘terrorists.’