Terrorism, state of exception and human rights: a look towards the perverted economic face of the ?declared war'
| Autor | Rosa Maria Zaia Borges |
| Ocupação do Autor | Doctor in Law at Universidade de São Paulo (USP/Brazil) |
| Páginas | 2886-2902 |
2886 • XXVI World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy
Rosa Maria Zaia Borges1
He´s a slave. But maybe a free spirit.
He´s a slave. Does that do him any harm?
Ask someone who is not.
One is a slave of pleasure, other, of avarice, other, of ambition,
all of fear.
(SÊNECA, 2008)
Abstract: The paper titled “Terrorism, State of Exception and Human Rights: a
look towards the perverse economic face of the ‘declared war’” focus on the 2001
SeptembertheventsTheintentionistheprovoke reectionsaboutwhatwe
callslaveryoffearinwhichweareorwehavebeenimmersespeciallysince
2001. Visiting authors like Noam Chomsky, Giorgio Agamben, Howard Becker,
andalsoGeorgeOrwellthispaperstartsreectingthepossibletranslationsof
the “September 11th”; right after it tries to discuss what it can and cannot be
consideredterrorismsothat inthenal topiccreatetheconditionsofpos-
sibility to discuss the State of Exception as the justifying mask of a “weapons
economywithgreencardtoperpetuatethedierencesbetweenrichandpour
sovereignties.
Keywords: Terrorism – State of Exception – Human Rights
The date: 2001 September 11th. The place: the city of New York.
1
Doctor in Law at Universidade de São Paulo (USP/Brazil). Professor at the Faculty of
Law at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS/Brazil).
Working Group: War and international Law • 2887
The image: the Twin Towers being destroyed by a plane. The sounds:
explosion; collapse; shouts, from inside and outside, those of desper-
ate, these expressing the necessity of verbalizing what was seen; later
discovered records from victims who were trying contact with family
and friends from inside the building. The name: there wasn’t, there isn’t,
since then we could only call it as a date “September 11th”2. Cruelty.
DisgraceSomethingthatchangedthecourseofhistorySomethingthat
was never seen(?).
The act curtain of this paper is to demonstrate that this happen-
ing with senses and exceptional circumstances that was the “September
11th”. The purpose istoprovokereectionsaboutwhatwecallslavery
of fear” in which we are (or we were put in) immerse specially since
2001, to create the conditions of possibility to bring into discussion the
State of Exception as a justifying mask of an institutionalized politics
turned to an “weapons economy”, with green card to perpetuate the
dierencesbetweenrichandpoursovereignties
Thereforeatthisrstmomentthereexiveprovocationcouldnt
be any other but that one around what the “September 11th” was. Is it
possible to translate/digest this event? Is it possible to transform “the
date” in something with proper name and characteristics?
Baudrillard (2003, p.8) categorized the “September 11th” as the
happening that ended the “strike of happenings”. On the other hand,
Chomskydened it as a historical event not because of the atrocities
themselvesbutbecauseofthetargetItisthersttimetherstserious
caseinwhichoneoftheoccidentalpowerswasitselfaackedinaway
itgenerallyaacksothers3.
From these elaborations, it is possible to say that there are some
2
For semantics reasons, and why not saying for rhetorical ones, in the lack of a proper
name, every time the “September 11th” has to be referred it will always be put between
quotation marks in this text.
3
To illustrate his argument, Chomsky, ironically, reinforces that Europe has centuries
of atrocities conduction around the world and it was never attacked: “[...] there were
some smaller attacks, but Abyssinia didn’t invade Italy, for example”. To continue his
argumentation, the author brings to memory that in Latin America, as well as in other
place, the atrocities were hardly condemned, but always followed by some comment that
established a link of familiarity with the situation. In this sense, he cites the example of
a Panamanian journalist who compares the “September 11th” to the bombing against
to El Chorillo neighborhood, in 1989, an intervention called “Operation Faire Cause”,
commanded by George Bush, in which around three thousand people were killed.
(CHOMSKY, 2003, p. 118). See also: (CHOMSKY, 2002); (CHOMSKY, 2002b).
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