Joseba Zulaika – författare

In counterterrorism circles, the standard response to questions about the possibility of future attacks is a terse one-liner worthy of Jack Bauer: 'Not if, but when'. This mantra supposedly conveys a realistic approach to the problem, but, as Joseba Zulaika argues in "Terrorism", it functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy by distorting reality to fit their own worldview, the architects of the war on terror prompt the behavior they seek to prevent - a twisted logic that has already played out horrifically in Iraq. In short, Zulaika contends, counterterrorism has become pivotal in promoting terrorism. Exploring the blind spots of counterterrorist doctrine, Zulaika takes readers on a remarkable intellectual journey. He contrasts the psychological insight of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" with "The 9/11 Commission Report", plumbs the mindset of terrorists in works by Oriana Fallaci and Jean Genet, maps the continuities between the cold war and the fight against terrorism, and analyzes the case of a Basque terrorist who tried to return to civilian life.Zulaika's argument is powerful, inventive, and rich with insights and ideas that provide a new and sophisticated perspective on the war on terror.

Terror and Taboo is about the mythology of terrorism; it is an exploration of the ways we talk about terrorism. It offers incontestable evidence to support the idea that we give power to terrorism by the way we write and talk about it. According to Zulaika and Douglass, we make terrorism worse by the way we represent it in the media and in everyday conversation. Through their examination of terrorism, they propose to remove the taboos surrounding terrorism. Terror and Taboo is full of examples to ground the authors premise, ranging from specific examples, such as tendency to talk more about where Timothy McVeigh shopped for weapons than about the international traffic in arms by legitimate nations, to more theoretical interpretations that will be familiar to readers of cultural studies books.

In this intimate and innovative work, terror expert Joseba Zulaika examines drone warfare as manhunting carried out via satellite. Using Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas as his center of study, he interviews drone operators as well as resisters to the war economy of the region to expose the layers of fantasy on which counterterrorism and its self-sustaining logic are grounded. Hellfire from Paradise Ranch exposes the terror and warfare of drone killings that dominate our modern military. It unveils the trauma drone operators experience, in part due to their visual intimacy with their victims, and explores the resistance to drone killings in the same apocalyptic Nevada desert where nuclear testing, pacifist militancy, and Shoshone tradition overlap.Stunning and absorbing, Zulaika offers a richly detailed account of how we continue to manufacture, deconstruct, and perpetuate terror.

This book captures the complexity and humanity of one of the most agonizing of contemporary problems—that of terrorist violence. Basque Violence is in fact a pioneering attempt to give a fully contextualized, cultural account of the endemic conflict engaging Basque villagers both as protagonists and as spectators. The author focuses on his native village of Itziar in the province of Guipúzcoa, and many of the Basque activists he discusses are friends from his youth. They are now lionized by the villagers despite the fact that their actions have become increasingly problematic for the villagers themselves. Far from being the work of a “terrorism expert” seeking counter-insurgency solutions or concentrating on the usual search for the causes and consequences of violence, this study attempts instead to understand the conscious and unconscious presuppositions of the violence. The author becomes the narrator of a drama of Homeric proportions in which ordinary men are forced into acts of heroism and errors of tragic consequence.

Covers Basque physical anthropology, archaeology, language and sociolinguistics, and identity formation.