ISIS Archives - Public Seminar

Feature

Reading and Misreading ISIS

An excerpt from Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou’s latest book

March 26, 2018 • by Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

On March 29th, 2018, Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou will give a talk entitled "Conceptualizing the Islamic State" in the Sociology Lecture Series of The New School. The talk will begin at 6:00 p.m. in the Wolff Conference room (D1103) of Albert and Vera List Academic Center (6 East 16th Street, the 11th Floor.) Q&A What prompted you ...

Feature

Remember the Bastille

Terror, Terrorism, and Jihadist Capitalism

July 18, 2017 • by Liz Scheer

Introduction: Terror and Terrorism On Friday, June 19th, a man rammed into a police car on the Champs Elysses. Though the driver died before he could carry out further violence, it was evident that his intention was to commit a larger-scale attack; inside the incinerated vehicle, investigators found explosives, ammunition, and ...

Feature

Hanged at Sunrise

The Impossible Ethics of the “Homeland”

May 31, 2017 • by Lisa Aslanian

Nicholas Brody, one of the central characters of the popular and critically acclaimed drama Homeland, is a third generation United States Marine. Called Brody by his friends, Brody’s entire character is created around and through the interrelated issues of drones, torture and jihad. As the drama unfolds, Brody becomes a ...

Education

What Hannah Arendt Really Wants

Reclaiming Space for the Vita Activa

May 5, 2017 • by Nuri Can Akin

There is an obvious reason why people in the U.S. have started to read George Orwell, Sinclair Lewis, Vaclav Havel, and Hannah Arendt again.[1] I must admit I share their concern: From the very first actions of the Trump administration, it became clear that the country has taken an authoritarian ...

Uncategorized

ISIS Slaughters, Iranians Get Punished

A threat to democratic efforts in Iran

December 16, 2015 • by Rezvaneh Ganji

Last Tuesday, December 8, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill, supported by the White House, which, if signed into law this week, would punish Iranians for crimes they have never committed. Moreover, it would provoke the hardliners in Iran, only a few months after ...

Uncategorized

D.I.Y. Terrorism, and ISIS and Osama Bin Laden on the Gray Zone

December 6, 2015 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

As I was rushing from one meeting to another this past Wednesday, my distressed office neighbor and good friend, Robin Wagner Pacifici, told me about the latest senseless mass murder in the U.S., the San Bernardino massacre. I responded with a tasteless joke, asking whether the terrorist again was a ...

Uncategorized

The Mastery of Non-Mastery

A report and reflections from Kobane

August 7, 2015 • by Michael Taussig

As I write, the plug is being pulled on the steady-state.

Violence and tragedy take revenge on humanity through routinization. Sooner or later we become immune.

But is there a reverse process, such as Freud writes about in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where the ...

Uncategorized

When the Far Enemy becomes Near

Reflections on the Charlie Hebdo killings

January 10, 2015 • by Benoit Challand

The heinous killing of 12 journalists and staff from Charlie Hebdo needs to be interpreted with at least two different focal lenses. There is a French (or French-European) dimension, but there is also an international dimension of these killings, one that connects the spread of ISIS with the strategy of the two ...