Framing collective violence as war time: Temporality, circulation, resistance

Writing on the US war on terrorism, Judith Butler identified how discursive frames are produced and reproduced in ways that make certain forms of violence discernable as war. These frames that make war an intelligible form of political violence are not only spatial, but irreducibly temporal in nature. Their circulation–e.g., the framing of US counter-terror efforts as ‘war’ – enables some lives to be understood as grievable, while others lack political and normative value. These frames not only determine what is and is not a war, but whose deaths represent an unremarkable facet of peacetime. This article explores one instance where the circulation of these frames had the potential for rupture – the 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. First, it use the event’s liminal status as a ‘terrorist attack’ to make visible the frame(s) operating in the contemporary US political present to render certain acts of violence intelligible as political violence, terrorism, or war. Second, it explores the temporal dimension of these frames, showing how they function together within national security narratives to authorize certain forms of violence as exceptional. This article concludes by exploring the potential for ‘timing’ this violence differently as a means of political resistance.