In his new book Paroles Armées (forthcoming in English translation), Philippe-Joseph Salazar, a professor of rhetoric at Cape Town University sets out to deconstruct the persuasive power of the Caliphate (otherwise known as ISIS). In the war it wages against the West, words have emerged as ‘new weapons’ (p.7). Salazar deploys his rhetorical expertise to shed light on our fundamental linguistic deficiency and how we are losing this war of words.
By Audrey Borowski
Book Review:
Paroles Armées, Comprendre et combattre la propagande terroriste.
Philippe-Joseph Salazar, Lemieux editeur. 262 pages. (Armed Words:
Understanding and Fighting Terrorist Propaganda)
In his new
book Paroles Armées (forthcoming in English translation),
Philippe-Joseph Salazar, a professor of rhetoric at Cape Town University sets
out to de-construct the persuasive power of the Caliphate (otherwise known as
ISIS). In the war it wages against the West, words have emerged as ‘new
weapons’ (p.7). Salazar deploys his rhetorical expertise to shed light on our
fundamental linguistic deficiency and how we are losing this war of words.
Confronted
with a new reality that seems inconceivable to us, our reactions have mainly
oscillated between horror and derision. The Islamic State has abruptly foisted
upon us a bloody gruesomeness we are no longer able to contemplate. And yet, by
refusing to name clearly and distinctly the terms of the conflict in order to
emerge from our linguistic panic and take control of reality, the terms of the
conflict inevitably elude us.
The book
argues that nearly seventy years of relative peace in the Western world, and
especially in Europe, have eroded our linguistic strength. Against ISIS’s
mastery of rhetoric, our language inexorably emerges as weak and ineffective,
stuck as it in petty debates over whether it should be designated as ‘Daesh’ or
‘Daech’. It has lost its persuasive power of the republic in arms and its
revolutionary potential.
In the midst
of late modernity, barbaric violence has suddenly reappeared on our screens.
With its continuous stream of beheadings and bloody gruesomeness, ISIS has
shattered our sanitized and managerial views of politics and war. It has marked
a radical break from our modern political concepts and restored politics to its
evil and sacrificial dimensions. Crucially, it has conjured a worldview Western
audiences had thought long departed, one which pits believers and unbelievers
in absolute confrontation and capable of rallying young people the world over.
In Al Qaeda’s
metaphysics of terror, terrorism was primarily envisaged as an ethical act,
designed to prompt an epiphany, conversion and paradoxically, as an
extraordinary way of binding believers and unbelievers. With ISIS, the question
of territory has been relocated to the forefront. Terror henceforth serves to
“purify” the Levant of non-Islamic elements and in an interesting twist, even
to gain those territories outside of it, which it claims as already essentially
belong to it.
Its subversion
does not stop there. Even the Internet, our postmodern and secular tool of
choice, has been turned against us and placed in the active and resolute
defence of God.
Salazar
laments the poverty of our own ‘discursive community’. Not only does it leave
us linguistically unarmed, it also leaves us open to linguistic subversion. In
our linguistic panic, we have let ISIS control the terms of the debate and even
take hold within our own discursive community (p. 66).
As a
rhetorician, Salazar lays particular emphasis on the importance of naming with
precision; ultimately those in power are those in charge of language. A new
rhetoric has abruptly resurfaced which in turn requires us to redraw our own
‘mental map’ and its matching glossary (p. 56).
We need to be
able to name clearly and distinctly the terms of the debate and act accordingly
and resolutely. On one hand, governments claim to be at war with ISIS; on the
other, they fail to translate words into action, as in the case of the female
police officer who passed on confidential information to the kosher supermarket
murderers and yet as a penalty, was only removed from her duties.
Long gone are
the days of
Saint-Just’s call to arms: “No liberty for the enemies of liberty”; our
language is no longer able to galvanize the crowds or inspire throngs of young
people to defend ideals.
Our passion
for dialogue and self-expression, one could argue, pertain more to
gesticulation and management than to action and are no match for the ISIS’s
revolutionary invectives. In the belief that ‘brutality must be purged in the
social rhetoric of crisis management’ (p.195), we respond with marches, flowers
and slogans such as ‘I am Charlie’ or ‘Pray for Paris’. But the book shows
convincingly that our stance falls lamentably short.
In fact, our
language serves less to probe or elucidate than to obscure and maintain the
status quo. It has not only lost its capacity for action, but serves to
cultivate a pernicious state of denial. We advance not only militarily, but
perhaps more importantly, linguistically disarmed. (p. 69) In an Orwellian
twist, it increasingly dispenses us from having to think. It serves all the
better to shield us from any real debate or reflection and to manage the
effects rather than grapple with the causes.
We dismiss
terrorists as either crazy or marginalized in the ill-conceived hope that they
will disappear as suddenly as it appeared. Those who join the ranks of ISIS can
only have been ‘brainwashed’, even when they can eloquently make their case.
The jihadist has been erected the new figure of delirium par excellence
and ISIS as the land of generalized insanity.
ISIS has also
profoundly challenged Western practice of war. Our managerial and sanitized
conception of warfare has given way to the public staging of an ethical face
off. Crucially, it has marked the return of partisan politics and the
unexpected resurgence of popular voluntarism, especially in the case of
home-grown terrorism. Its partisans now wage urban guerrilla warfare in the
name of a cause which surpasses them. It has ushered in a form of radical
hostility carried out in the name of God and intent on revolutionizing the
world. It is impervious to man-made codes and refutes the practice of war as we
have known it in the West since the Second World War. In the words of Carl
Schmitt, Politics has been reconfigured as the ‘proclamation of an
incommensurable exceptionality’.
One of the
most interesting aspects of Salazar’s study lies in his decoding of the
seduction that ISIS exerts. The latter offers an aesthetic vision that elicits
a powerful sensuous response. In their exotic novelty, its messages stupefy
their audience and operate a sensory conversion on a select few.
These messages
that ‘we perceive even if we do not conceive them’ stand out from the
materialistic and morally deficient chaos of our daily lives and ‘open up on
another world which seems removed from the repetitive, banal and mundane’ (p.
131). To some, they may offer strong values that ‘re-enchant the world’ and
appeal to educated young people in search of heroism and ‘ethical adhesion.’
As Salazar sums
up, ‘The Caliphate plays on quality. It plays on heroism, we play on
prevention. It plays on ideals, we play on the mundane… It plays on
transcendence, we play on the middle-class. It plays on value, we play on
values. We aim to give ourselves the means, the Caliphate gives itself the
ends.’ (p. 100)
Confronting
and possibly even engaging ISIS politically will require a linguistic upheaval
including the reactivation of past concepts. We need to plumb the depths of our
rhetorical past and rekindle our language’s idealistic and revolutionary spark.
Salazar’s
refreshingly clear take on ISIS’s persuasive power cuts through much of the
confusion and superficiality peddled by most accounts already in circulation.
Beneath our linguistic weakness he diagnoses our symbolic powerlessness. As he
clearly implies without however really stating it explicitly, the enemy is
merely holding up a mirror to our own our own civilizational malaise.
Salazar
deliberately avoids delving into whether we can realistically overcome it and
whether linguistic, as well as conceptual, epiphanies are actually possible at
this stage or in the future (and whether or not they are even desirable). His
gaze is primarily philosophical and philological rather than political,
pragmatic (or even religious), as well as Eurocentric with a strong focus on
France with its long tradition of intellectual and ideological activism. Still,
it is perhaps precisely this radically different angle on ISIS which sets it
apart from most of the existing literature and which makes it so original and
compelling: Salazar is the first to provide his reader with a sophisticated yet
eminently accessible account of what gives ISIS its linguistic edge.
About the
Author:
Audrey
Borowski is a doctoral student in the History of Ideas at the University of
London.
This book review was originally published at Oxford University's Political Blog on February 18, 2016 under Creative Commons License
Ratings:
Paroles Armées, Comprendre et combattre la propagande terroriste
Philippe-Joseph Salazar
978-2373440294
Audrey Borowski
Rating:
7.5 out of
10
Oxford University's Political Blog
