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Depth in 21st Century Cells?: European Salafi Jihadi Terrorism and Psychoanalysis in the Luciferian Age

Abstract

The psychoanalytic interpretation of Salafi jihadism and terrorism, or the application of psychoanalytic categories to said issues, are not very common. Indeed the mobilisation of psychoanalysis in this context very often prompts accusations of orientalism and cultural imperialism. Both academic discourse and, to a lesser extent, policy, tend to ‘explain’, whether genuinely, strategically or tactically, or diplomatically, the emergence of “home grown” Salafism by pointing to social, welfare or educational deficits in the jihadists’ biographies. In this article we make an attempt to focus on psychoanalysis (or “depth psychology”, as it was sometimes called in a now bygone age) to shed light on the phenomenon. Taking cues from Jan Hendrik Van den Berg’s neo-Freudian and phenomenology inspired critique of classical psychoanalysis on the one hand, and Peter Sloterdijk’s recent work on bastardy on the other, we offer a reading of European home grown Salafi jihadist and terrorist inclination as reactions to failure, and as manifestations of a deep sense of inadequacy, in some of those who are unable to live up to what has become the predominant, imperative code in the cultural mainstream: to live one’s life in radical, complete and total sovereignty, undetermined and in absolute omnipotence. This code, and the exigencies which it imposes, we suggest, have become mainstream in the age which we have called Luciferian.

Acceptance Date Aug 10, 2018
Publication Date Oct 31, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal New Criminal Law Review
Print ISSN 1933-4192
Publisher University of California Press
Pages 592-614
DOI https://doi.org/10.1525/nclr.2018.21.4.592
Keywords Salafism, terrorism, psychoanalysis, Lucifer, Peter Sloterdijk, Jan Hendrik Van den Berg
Publisher URL https://doi.org/10.1525/nclr.2018.21.4.592

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