Counter-Terrorism and the Counterfactual: Producing the ‘Radicalisation’ Discourse and the UK PREVENT Strategy

Abstract

This article interrogates the production of the ‘radicalisation’ discourse which underpins efforts to govern ‘terrorism’ pre-emptively through the UK's PREVENT strategy. British counter-terrorism currently relies upon the invention of ‘radicalisation’ and related knowledge about transitions to ‘terrorism’ to undertake governance of communities rendered suspicious. The article argues that such conceptions make terrorism knowable and governable through conceptions of risk. Radicalisation knowledge provides a counterfactual to terrorism—enabling governmental intervention in its supposed production. It makes the future actionable. However, while the deployment of ‘radicalisation’ functions to make terrorism pre-emptively governable and knowable, it also renders PREVENT unstable by simultaneously presenting ‘vulnerability indicators'for radicalisation as threats to the wider collective—these conducts are framed as both ‘at risk’ and ‘risky’, both vulnerable and dangerous. This instability speaks to ad hoc production of the radicalisation discourse by scholarly and policy-making communities for the governance of terrorism through radicalisation knowledge. This article analyses the production of the radicalisation discourse to explore its performance as a form of risk governance within British counter-terrorism.