"This is London": Cosmopolitan nationalism and the discourse of resilience in the case of the 7/7 terrorist attacks

Rhetoric and Public Affairs

Volumn 14, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 427-464

  Bean, Hamilton ^a   Keränen, Lisa ^a   Durfy, Margaret ^b  

^a Department of Communication ^*  (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 80054073831     PISSN: 10948392     EISSN: 15345238     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/rap.2011.0018     Document Type: Review

References (140)

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5. "Prince Charles Visits Victims of London Bombings, Praises Britons' Resilience," July 8, 2005, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-110861363.html (accessed May 2011).
6. We are indebted to Benedict Anderson's notion of imagined community as articulated in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991). For other studies concerning nationalism, terrorism, and identity
7. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage Publications, 1995)
8. Ernst Haas, "What Is Nationalism and Why Should We Study It?" International Organization 40 (1986): 707-44
9. Lisa Keranen and Virginia Sanprie, "'Oxygen of Publicity' and 'Lifeblood of Liberty': Communication Scholarship on Mass Media Coverage of Terrorism for the Twenty-First Century," Communication Yearbook 32, ed. Christine S. Beck (New York: Routledge, 2008): 231-75.
10. The 2010 Moscow subway bombing provides a vivid contrast: None of the newspapers or counterterrorism blogscited in this study depicted the victims of the 2010 Moscow subway bombing as "resilient." In fact, Philip P. Pan, a Washington Post reporter, instead stated, "The militants have proven resilient, staging a string of assassinations, bombings and suicide attacks in the last year." See "Russia Braces for Terrorism's Return as 38 Die in Subway Bombings," Washington Post, March 30, 2010, http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/29/AR2010032900007.html (accessed May 2011).
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14. Kate Nash, The Cultural Politics of Human Rights: Comparing the US and UK (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
15. Billig, Banal Nationalism, 2.
16. Here, we might consider how the absence of a discourse of resilience as depicted within mainstream media accounts influenced Russian leaders' rhetorical responses to the 2010 Moscow subway bombings. President Dmitry Medvedev told police and security forces to use "more cruel" measures to fight the "scum" responsible for terrorist attacks. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed to "drag out of the sewer" the masterminds behind the attacks. Arsen Mollayev, "Medvedev: 'More Cruel' Tactics in Terror Fight," MSNBC, April 1, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36131753/ (accessed May 2011)
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19. "Discourse" is a term used in different ways by different scholars and thus is not easily characterized. Here, we use the term to refer to "bodies of talk and text which constitute a particular practice as popular, important and widely applicable," from Markus Perckmann and Andre Spicer, "How Are Management Fashions Institutionalized? The Role of Institutional Work," Human Relations 61 (2008): 811-44, 812. Similarly, sociolinguists Jaworski and Coupland state: "Discourse is language use relative to social, political and cultural formations-it is language reflecting social order but also language shaping social order, and shaping individuals' interactions with society.
20. Nikolas Coupland and Adam Jaworski, eds., The Discourse Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006), 3.
21. Although not developed in this essay, we believe that resilience functions as an ideograph. See Michael Calvin McGee, "The 'Ideograph': A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology," Quarterly Journal of Speech 66 (1980): 1-16. For a treatment of ideographs and terrorism more specifically
22. see Bethami Dobkin, Tales of Terror: Television News and the Construction of the Terrorist Th reat (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992).
23. Concerning resilience, see Jon Coaffee and David Wood, "Security is Coming Home: Rethinking Scale and Constructing Resilience in the Global Urban Response to Terrorist Risk," International Relations 20 (2006): 503-17; as well as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's recent promotion of "resilience" in "Secretary Napolitano Emphasizes Shared Responsibility for Readiness and Resilience" (September 29, 2009), http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr-1254252562667.shtm (accessed May 2011). Additionally, the White House established an Office of Resilience in 2009.
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25. Security Analysis and Risk Management Association (SARMA) Conference Committee, "Only Five Days Left for Early-Bird Registration!" Email from SARMA Conference Committee to Hamilton Bean and forwarded to Lisa Keranen, September 3, 2010
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124. See the White House Office of the Press Secretary, "Remarks by the President at the Pentagon Memorial"; Napolitano, "Secretary Napolitano Emphasizes Shared Responsibility"; and Napolitano, "A Resilient Nation," The White House Blog, April 15, 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ blog/2010/04/15/preview-a-resilient-nation (accessed May 2011).
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139. Giuliani, "The Resilient Society," n.p.
140. McCreight, "Resilience as a Goal," 2.