ABSTRACT
In his First Treatise of Government from 1698, John Locke describes terror as the forcible means of the judge. His power is ‘a Terror to Evil Doers’.2 This small fragment illustrates some important points for the following investigation. First, it connects terror to the state; and second, it describes a violence done for a (higher) purpose. The following ‘archive of terrors’ (Chapters 5-7) is more archival than theoretical, meaning it aims more to document than to theorize the material and discursive processes, setting a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence.3 The concept of terror serves this purpose well, seeing that terror is one of the most efficient and used contemporary descriptions of both non-state political violence and non-liberal state violence. The notoriously difficult enterprise of providing a generally accepted, universal definition of terror or terrorism will not be attempted, nor do I believe it worth the effort trying to develop one.4
