Rhetoric, Fantasy, and the War on Terror

Drawing on psychoanalytic and semiotic perspectives, this book examines discourses mediating the global War on Terror, including governmental speeches, legal documents, print and broadcast journalism, and military memoirs.

The book argues that these discourses motivate, and are motivated by, a myth of imminent harm that purportedly justifies a series of "preemptive" measures such as war, torture, and targeted killing, as well as an array of intrusive domestic security procedures such as pro...