The Terrorist and the Collaborator

Abstract

In a culture saturated with media images of terrorism, it is all too easy to conflate identities with representation. This article explores some of the sense made by terrorist figures such as master criminals, serial killers, bushrangers and the shuhada. It suggests the complexity of such cultural tropes by indicating some of the ways in which they are deployed and thought within the specific experiences of the authors. The piece takes the form of a free-flowing dialogue that disrupts the identities of the speakers. There is a sense in which terror is evoked directly in images: skyscrapers falling, the rubble of what was once a nightclub, explosions, bodies, the faces of grief — or, if these are not simple images of terror, they only require simple stories to become them. This piece takes the form of a free-flowing ‘dialogue’ in which the speakers — the terrorist and the collaborator — are deliberately not identified.

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