ABSTRACT
The facts of the bombings in London on 7 July are well known: four bombs; 56 people killed; around 700 injured. But such facts take on meaning when they are placed in discourse, when they are interpreted, mediated and constructed; used by someone and for some purpose. This paper looks to examine one way in which the events were discursively constructed: the way the terrorism was made ‘foreign’. Despite the attacks being carried out by Britons, in Britain and primarily on Britons, two months after the event, Prime Minister Tony Blair stressed that ‘[t]he terrorist attacks in Britain on 7 July have their origins in an ideology born thousands of miles from our shores’ (Blair 2005a). Inspired by the work of Jacques Derrida, this chapter asks how the London bombings were made ‘foreign’, to what end, and it explores the unintended consequences of such a construction.
