People became captive in a language trap

Danger of False Clarities NIRA WICKRAMASINGHE

Economic and Political Weekly June 10, 2006

Terrorism as a modern concept acquired a paradigmatic status in the late 1980s. The moment is important, when our very modernity or hypermodernity produced a specific type of violence he special effects of which –“terrorism” – were thought to be an integral part. Terrorism entered the discourses of states, infiltrated constitutions, spawned special regulations and imposed itself as a dominant prism through which the people were invited to read their world. People became then captive in a language trap when they accepted the legitimacy of terror, terrorism, terrorist, words that in reality mask rather than unveil what they try to describe, and “provide an alias for what remains hidden” to borrow de Certeau’s expression.