Liquid Terrorism: Altruistic Fundamentalism in the Context of Liquid Modernity

Abstract

Liquid life is the name that Zygmunt Bauman gives to the experience of life within ‘liquid modernity’ — a form of modernity in which social frameworks and institutions experience a process of accelerating liquefaction. On the basis of a narrative analysis of martyr videos recorded by the 7 July 2005 London bombers and eight men who stood trial in the United Kingdom for planning to bomb transatlantic airliners with home-made liquid explosives, a core set of altruistic motivations were found to emerge. Liquid modernity appears to have no space for martyrs who reject the instant survival-and-gratification consumerism for other longer term communal goals. Such a stance is incomprehensible and irrational for the liquid moderns. Fundamentalism rooted in a form of Durkheimian altruism provides confidence, trust and self-assurance to people who would otherwise be stripped of human dignity and humiliated in the face of consumer revelry.

Keywords

altruism Bauman Durkheim liquid modernity martyr suicide bomber

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