States of Terror : History, Theory, Literature / David Simpson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Simpson, David, Author.

Series:

Chicago scholarship online.

Chicago scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Terror in literature.

Violence in literature.

Terror (The English word).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (285 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

How have we come to depend so greatly on the words terror and terrorism to describe broad categories of violence? David Simpson offers here a philology of terror, tracking the concept's long, complicated history across literature, philosophy, political science, and theology-from Plato to NATO. Introducing the concept of the "fear-terror cluster," Simpson is able to capture the wide range of terms that we have used to express extreme emotional states over the centuries-from anxiety, awe, and concern to dread, fear, and horror. He shows that the choices we make among such words to describe shades of feeling have seriously shaped the attribution of motives, causes, and effects of the word "terror" today, particularly when violence is deployed by or against the state. At a time when terror-talk is widely and damagingly exploited by politicians and the media, this book unpacks the slippery rhetoric of terror and will prove a vital resource across humanistic and social sciences disciplines.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 Weighing Our Words

2 What Do We Talk about When We Talk about Terror?

3 Putting Terror into the Fear of God

4 From Terror to the Terror

5 Terror against the State

6 Being in Terror, Being as Terror

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Feb 2020)

ISBN:

9780226600369

022660036X

OCLC:

1083096858