The emergence of “extremism”: exposing the violent discourse and language of “radicalization”

Abstract

wealth of materials placed in the footnotes. Frédéric Lenoir’s film Le cri étouffé (2017), along with the documented fact collected from websites such as www.syriauntold.com, will shake the unconvinced to take Haj-Saleh’s theoretical grappling less as an intellectual luxury and more of an undertaking with life-or-death consequences. The first part simply ushers unprepared readers into the monster’s snares or Dante’s Inferno. For once galvanised, no reader can emerge seeing the world with his former anesthetised self. The second part is more technical but no less ambitious. Representation is presumed to open what otherwise will remain a closed temporality. The latter finds comfort in clichés and truisms. The author provides solid evidence as to how the Arabic language, through affinities with the patrimonial, has incarcerated authentic human experience. Indeed, it is the trust in representation where readers note Haj-Saleh’s penchant for the palliative. He notes a quagmire, but he fails to see it for what it is: a mode production. The Atrocious becomes an immanent logic whereby value (not just profit) can be extorted through the industrialisation of chaos. Forgoing the Hegelian law of necessity, the one that tips the balance of Assadism in transitioning from possibility to actuality, results in a narcissistic approach that blinds us to the obligation of reversing, never reforming that immanent logic.