Fantasias of terrorism

An introduction to this special issue of the Journal for Cultural Research, this essay explains how terrorism may be said to equate to a “fantasia”, and how this fantasia has operated in different times and places. It also takes a close look at the popular fantasia promoted by the entertainment industry today, beginning with representations of the enemies of James Bond. In popular culture, terrorism is a spectre (along the lines of Ian Fleming’s SPECTRE) bent on the destruction of society, and yet it is also a sign of disorder at the heart of the very society which it attacks. Jacques Derrida’s comments on 9/11, using the metaphor of an auto-immune disorder, are pertinent. Film and television fantasias of terrorism offer critiques of the modern world order, but they offer the wrong critique.