The performativity of terrorism: subversive experimentalist techniques in Pornography (2007) by Simon Stephens

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although terrorism has a complex genealogy as a political concept, contemporary discussions on “new terrorism” use a reductionist discourse on the legitimacy of violence. In this article, I discuss the “performativity” of terrorism – its repetitive, citational, and necessarily discursive composition within the established social system – in the context of Pornography (2007) by Simon Stephens. I argue that subversion of conventional playwriting techniques in Pornography reveals the complex social and political dynamics that continually refigure terrorism as the counter-image of war.