ABSTRACT
The chapter highlights ways in which critical terrorism studies (CTS) can make use of research into popular culture and world politics to expand its research agenda. Rather than merely seeing popular culture as a mirror of world politics, it is important to understand its artefacts as crucial interlocutors of discourses that shape the world we live in. This opens academic research to a more interdisciplinary approach, arguing that political and historical events are always part of a bigger process of negotiation and interpretation. As I point out, popular culture has always occupied an important space for politics, but since September 11, 2001, this role seems evermore amplified. In a similar vein, CTS has always insisted on a more thorough reading of terrorism and counterterrorism as discursive constructions and the war on terror as well as 9/11 as based on notions of fantasy and fiction. CTS sees the world as a complex system through which themes of security and terrorism are circulating at fast speed while having to be explored with caution. This is the point where CTS and popular culture become excellent partners to tackle how we can know about terrorists and terrorism. Ultimately, the chapter concludes that thinking about CTS and popular culture together opens a variety of new and exciting pathways for future research.
