ABSTRACT

The so-called ‘war against terrorism’ has brought into sharp focus the implications for liberal democratic polities of practices that take place at what might be called the ‘limit space’ between legality and illegality; legal in that such practices are instantiated and legitimized by the sovereign authority of the state, and illegal in that they are deemed to be the exception to the rule, resulting from what are perceived to be exceptional circumstances formative of necessities responsive to emergency conditions. The discourse of emergency that has dominated global politics since the events of 11 September 2001 is suggestive of imminent danger construed both in terms of the immediacy of particular acts of violence perpetrated against civilian populations and, more seriously, in terms of an existential threat existing and ongoing in the midst of society. That the element of ‘danger’ can have such diverse and yet related meanings itself bears testimony to the highly charged atmosphere that surrounds the subject of terrorism and Western responses thereof.