ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt at beginning to problematize the concept of response in the context of ‘responses’ to terrorism. Using the work of Emmanuel Levinas, this chapter investigates what response might mean or entail. In it I highlight the relationship between response and responsibility and explore the links between the way in which we conceptualize the other, otherness or difference and the possibilities for thinking about response. The chapter draws on Levinas’s approach of distinguishing alterity from difference and uses this to highlight the potential problems with thinking in terms of difference, particularly with respect to the possibility of response and responsibility. I suggest that this thinking in terms of difference is one of the ontopolitical underpinnings of how we often approach response. That is, that difference, rather than alterity (which will be covered in more detail below) acts as one of the fundaments about the necessities and possibilities of human being that is often invoked in the way we think about response.
