Digital/Commercial Visibility: The Politics of DAESH Recruitment Videos

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Monument Building
Room: 
Popper room
Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - 11:00am
Add to Calendar
Date: 
Tuesday, April 5, 2016 - 11:00am to 12:30pm

The Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations is pleased to host Professor Anna Leander as the keynote speaker of the 2016 Annual Doctoral Conference. The public lecture is open to the participants of the conference, and to all registered audience.

Title:

Digital/Commercial Visibility: The Politics of DAESH Recruitment Videos

 Abstract

This article engages the theorization of digital politics through an argument about the DAESH recruitment videos directed at Westerners. This situated theorizing demonstrates the centrality of the digital and the commercial for the politics of the recruitment videos. More specifically, the article argues that current theorizations of the politics of Islamic radicalization videos can be advanced by integrating insights from visual theory (regimes of visibility), new materialism (the place of digital practices) and theorizations of neo-liberal government (the centrality of the commercial). Integrating these insights makes it possible to advance also interpretations of how the videos work. It makes it possible to highlight that the digital/commercial is pivotal to the combinatorial form of visibility of the videos, to their circulation through the enrolment of entrepreneurial political subjectivities and to the infrastructuring of their visibility. This theoretically informed situated argument has significant political implications. It sheds new light on the politics of DAESH recruitment videos locating it disturbingly close to Western politics. In so doing, however, it also points towards possibilities of political engagement.

Paper

Professor Leander's paper about the subject is available in pdf upon request sent to ds@ceu.edu. The lecture is open to the public, but is tied to registration at the following form: http://goo.gl/forms/2e0t0KeOJZ. Registered audience is requested to send their names, institutional affiliation, and the names of panels that they wish to attend.

For more information about the Annual Doctoral Conference, please visit https://pds.ceu.edu/adc-2016.