According to conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Boroditsky 2000), the experience of space determines the way in which we conceive reality. Analogously, the city conceived as a space encourages the exchange of ideas, knowledge and ideologies, and therefore provides a pattern for phenomena to occur. However, this space has also been the focus of urban geopolitics of hate crimes (Ivandic et al. 2019), such as those associated with terrorism and terrorist attacks (Lefebvre 1991; Beall 2007). This is poignantly true in the case of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS / ISIL / IS / Daesh) (Rasulo 2018), whose online mediatized representations of hate crimes occur mostly in the city, used as a powerful lever of action to disseminate hate and contempt for the stigmatized ‘Other’ (Brown 2017; Wodak 2015). By inciting primal and strong emotional concepts such as fear, threat, horrorism and violence (Cavarero 2009), Jihadist hate is fueled by an intense passion that is sacrificial, in the sense that it drives the lone-wolves to their own death, as proven by suicide killers (Rasulo 2017). These wounded errant souls (Nathan 2017), scarred by rejection or non-recognition, take to the city streets, and to their destruction, to obtain revenge and reverse their feelings of shame. Thus, the metaphor of the city in terrorist online products is resemiotized as a nurturing space for Jihadist hate narratives (Prior and Hengst 2010), which this study specifically intends to explore. In particular, by analyzing a collection of 300 images of city settings extracted from 264 articles collected from Dabiq and Rumiyah digital magazines, and 5 YouTube videos, the study aims to provide evidence that these violence-ridden narratives depict cities as the custodians of the Jihad hate seed, and as unconstrained signature spaces whose citizens breach any inviolable moral values, and legitimize criminal hate acts against humanity. The methodological framework used to analyze the data draws heavily on the meaning-making resources afforded by the social semiotic approach to Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001; O’Halloran 2008; Kress 2010; Van Leeuwen 2008, 2013) integrated by Visual Rhetoric Theory (Panther and Radden 1999; Foss 2004).
‘To the Streets’. Deploying the City as the Object of Hate in Terrorist Discourse
Rasulo, M.
2020
Abstract
According to conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Boroditsky 2000), the experience of space determines the way in which we conceive reality. Analogously, the city conceived as a space encourages the exchange of ideas, knowledge and ideologies, and therefore provides a pattern for phenomena to occur. However, this space has also been the focus of urban geopolitics of hate crimes (Ivandic et al. 2019), such as those associated with terrorism and terrorist attacks (Lefebvre 1991; Beall 2007). This is poignantly true in the case of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS / ISIL / IS / Daesh) (Rasulo 2018), whose online mediatized representations of hate crimes occur mostly in the city, used as a powerful lever of action to disseminate hate and contempt for the stigmatized ‘Other’ (Brown 2017; Wodak 2015). By inciting primal and strong emotional concepts such as fear, threat, horrorism and violence (Cavarero 2009), Jihadist hate is fueled by an intense passion that is sacrificial, in the sense that it drives the lone-wolves to their own death, as proven by suicide killers (Rasulo 2017). These wounded errant souls (Nathan 2017), scarred by rejection or non-recognition, take to the city streets, and to their destruction, to obtain revenge and reverse their feelings of shame. Thus, the metaphor of the city in terrorist online products is resemiotized as a nurturing space for Jihadist hate narratives (Prior and Hengst 2010), which this study specifically intends to explore. In particular, by analyzing a collection of 300 images of city settings extracted from 264 articles collected from Dabiq and Rumiyah digital magazines, and 5 YouTube videos, the study aims to provide evidence that these violence-ridden narratives depict cities as the custodians of the Jihad hate seed, and as unconstrained signature spaces whose citizens breach any inviolable moral values, and legitimize criminal hate acts against humanity. The methodological framework used to analyze the data draws heavily on the meaning-making resources afforded by the social semiotic approach to Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001; O’Halloran 2008; Kress 2010; Van Leeuwen 2008, 2013) integrated by Visual Rhetoric Theory (Panther and Radden 1999; Foss 2004).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
