Colonial Logics and Everyday Violence: Counterterrorism in Britain and Egypt

00:00:08: Why is it, how are these states can use this framing and simultaneously put large numbers of communities under regular surveillance?

00:00:14: And deem that to be necessary.

00:00:19: Part my research has come out with actually more practical activists based solidarity work.

00:00:28: I feel like the global south always known terrorism as a colonial construct.

00:00:33: Maybe we're getting where the west also knows.

00:00:36: now The book and the work around it departs from a place of outrage, also refuse all that violence.

00:01:00: also known as GIA at Durham University in the UK.

00:01:03: My name is Judith Koch, I'm a Career Development Fellow and an IPE.

00:01:07: here at GIA Today we're joined by Dr Alice Vinden to discuss her new book Counterterrorism & Colonialism Everyday Violence In Britain And Egypt published by Routledge in twenty-twenty five.

00:01:18: In this book Alice traces the colonial roots of contemporary counter-terrorism showing how practices of surveillance, suspicion and state violence have been shaped by histories.

00:01:30: Dr.

00:01:31: Alice Vinden is an assistant professor in the School of Government and International Affairs here at Schier, her research sits at the intersection of international politics feminist and post-colonial theory critical terrorism studies and socio legal scholarship with a particular focus on Britain & Egypt.

00:01:53: Alice has published widely in leading journals including Global Studies Quarterly Critical Studies On Terrorism Cambridge Review Of International Affairs And Feminist Review.

00:02:03: In addition to her new book, she has co-edited methodologies and critical terrorism studies gaps in interdisciplinary perspectives further contributing two debates on research methods and decolonial approaches within the field.

00:02:16: Alice welcome

00:02:18: Thank you for having me on this podcast.

00:02:21: So your book brings together feminist, post-colonial and socio legal approaches to reframe how we understand counterterrorism as a continuation of colonial governance?

00:02:32: Could you tell us how this idea first took shape?

00:02:35: And if there was a particular moment or encounter that sparked your interest in linking the two sides of Britain and Egypt?

00:02:42: Yeah absolutely so... This book has kind moments, I guess.

00:02:49: Partly obviously the wider moment of global war and terror is kind of main framing in a sense but for me personally it was coming out after uprisings in the region.

00:03:08: And following that, The Counter-Revolution and Military Coup in Egypt saw their kind of heightened use of counterterrorism powers as a means to justify mass arrest and detention.

00:03:20: so at the time I... Following you know few years following that i was part of forms of solidarity work with Middle Eastern activists but also Solidarity Work With Local UK Based Migrant Support Work for asylum seekers in the UK.

00:03:36: So I think part of my research has come out with actually that, you know more practical activist based solidarity work where i was seeing how this kind of counter-terrorism rhetoric is being or has been and what's still being mobilised across different sites globally but simultaneously.

00:03:56: the kind of hypocrisy in that narrative where the Egyptian use of terrorism laws was seen as a kind of exceptional excessive use, whereas when it's used or was being used in Britain.

00:04:09: It has been framed through this idea of necessity and there is a liberal justification for it.

00:04:16: so I think at the time what made me think about why?

00:04:21: How can these states use framing and simultaneously put like large numbers of communities under regular surveillance, and deem that to be necessary.

00:04:32: How is it?

00:04:32: That becomes normal And you know what I think.

00:04:34: this obviously something not strange for us still today right It's something we've seen continuously.

00:04:41: This term terrorism carries a lot weight with it's ambiguous and flexible, and can be stretched to apply to massive swathes of populations like we've seen in Gaza for instance.

00:04:54: Yeah so I guess...I guess for me was kind of trying to work out what this sort of liberal framing means um and trying to understand that-trying to understand the various forms of hypocrisy that i saw underpinning that ,and also just try to understand regular normal form of violence, I guess how i understood it.

00:05:17: And sort of fundamentally.

00:05:18: its therefore that the book and work around it departs from a place about rage also refusal of that violence?

00:05:27: Thank you.

00:05:28: so your research draws on interviews conducted in politically emotionally charged contexts.

00:05:34: what were practical challenges doing this kind?

00:05:38: fieldwork navigating questions safety access representation.

00:05:43: And how have these perspectives perhaps also shaped your understanding of everyday violence in counter-terrorism governance?

00:05:50: Yeah, so I guess and i'll come onto this a little bit because obviously the book is sort of draws through historical contemporary case study.

00:06:01: So I'm kind of trying to draw different temporalities together in order to understand patterns of colonial truth making.

00:06:12: partly I looked you know focused a lot on archival work but as you said, i also conducted interviews primarily with Egyptian migrants to the UK people who many of whom were had been activists in Egypt so obviously had some form of risk attached to them kind of returning to egypt.

00:06:31: But simultaneously felt something akin to regular surveillance when they were in the uk.

00:06:37: And I guess to give you an example of how this kind of featured or how this worked, so one of the people I interviewed she was a Muslim Egyptian woman.

00:06:46: She was seeking asylum in in Britain and simultaneously she had, so she was seeking asylum partly because her family was linked to Muslim Brotherhood which is a prescribed group in Egypt but simultaneously in the UK.

00:07:01: She'd been sort of subject transnational in a sense, so her movements In Egypt and the UK And across these spaces kind of were shaped by Continuous forms of surveillance.

00:07:22: Interestingly she told me that The main surveillance She feels is actually in Britain.

00:07:28: I think what was in terms Of doing the interviews with Her and others.

00:07:32: What i really picked up on Is That you know The actual experience of being interviewed Felt.

00:07:39: What I worried about was that it might feel like it was replicating something, Like an asylum interview because i noticed when I Was talking to her That she was very nervous and a number of people.

00:07:48: I spoke To were nervous to speak About this kind Of thing with me Because of course It brings up various issues in terms of risk Especially I suppose for those particular People who are seeking asylum In the UK.

00:08:01: so I think the thing that it brought home to me was actually how in some ways research can replicate a lot of these security mechanisms and how we need to be as researchers really, really aware of their forms of hierarchy.

00:08:20: And potentially risk are embedded into interviews that we do like, without meaning to kind of replicate some of these same structures.

00:08:35: So that was something I think really...I realised when doing the interviews i had prepared for in some form because i wanted not to centre this question of counter-terrorism but instead centre people's everyday experiences just off the city cities of Cairo and London which is how i'd reframed it you know to kind of avoid these really, really tricky questions.

00:09:04: But again like it's I think just... It did bring home for me how important is continue to really critically interrogate what we mean in terms.

00:09:16: Why would you research, I suppose as well?

00:09:18: Do we always need to interview people who do this kind of work.

00:09:22: And finally just some point out that what i'll talk about a little bit more in the second is maybe mitigate potentially or to enhance their interview.

00:09:34: for my participants... ...I brought some of the archival work they had done into interviews with them so it could give an indirect way their experiences, but also so that they to give them a part of their own history I guess in the sense or you know too kind of like provide a new layer for them something that they potentially might be interested in.

00:09:57: Yeah which did work some circumstances and then others it actually didn't work that well though.

00:10:02: yeah thanks for sharing this with us!

00:10:04: And yes as you've just said you use archives and you extensively work with colonial archives.

00:10:09: reading.

00:10:13: How did you navigate the ethical and also epistemological challenges of working with archives that themselves actually produce, reproduce imperial logics and omissions?

00:10:24: If we think about how archives themselves are not neutral but active signs of power silence and selective memory.

00:10:33: Yeah absolutely!

00:10:34: And I think that's really kind-of key focus in a sense question about truth narratives, the question of colonial production and how these truths are mobilised around security regimes I guess.

00:10:50: And how they legitimise the deployment forms of law making on emergency.

00:10:56: but when we're thinking voice or production of colonial texts were working with one particular and one particular form of truth.

00:11:08: So the way that I approached engaging with these archives, um...I suppose i might kind of just give you a sense of a couple of different methods I use to engage with this idea about truth-making which range from critical reading along the grain of the archive – which is akin to sort of the work that Ann Stoller does through to feminist critical fabulation.

00:11:32: so they're I suppose the first method that i um used in terms of, the first sort of discursive method that have been using is to kind of read.

00:11:46: I suppose right?

00:11:46: Read it between the lines of what's being said and these texts.

00:11:49: Right as I said Anstola work has really kinda just been unbelievably generative on this field.

00:11:56: She shows when we think about not simply claims that are being made within the text, but actually what a kind of the profusion of archival texts means.

00:12:09: So for instance when we're thinking about colonial archives and in my example from The Colonial Occupation Of Egypt What We See Is That They Are Kind Of Full To The Brim Of Notes Laws Letters all kind of frustrated about, that show that the colonial administrators are kinda frustrated with their inability to completely control Egypt or they're anxious about losing control over Egypt.

00:12:37: And so what we start to see is there alongside this kind of profusion of laws and letters extremist identities, right?

00:12:51: So we start to kind of think about how the production ideas of extremism and dangerousness sit together with this idea of colonial security and anxieties around colonial sovereignty.

00:13:06: in a sense.

00:13:08: It's an interesting way as a structure, shows us and the forms of I suppose emotionality and anxiety that like underpin colonial governance.

00:13:20: in that sense right.

00:13:22: So yeah i think we can read quite a lot in terms of archival representations and the structure of the archive in terms if sort of the desires of colonial administrators.

00:13:31: they kind of worry about the loss of empire propel the need to continuously publish new laws and new mechanisms, kind of fix freedoms in a sense.

00:13:51: So this was like one mechanism that I used to read The Production Of The Emergency i guess in colonial Egypt but also been thinking about then reading alongside the Colonial Archive this idea of colonial truth by drawing upon actually Egyptian anti-colonial truth making itself.

00:14:21: So, this is where I came to thinking about more speculative and critical ideas about fabulation from sort of feminist and decolonial perspectives.

00:14:31: so what does it do?

00:14:33: This draws on the work by Sadia Hartman that pushes against colonial truth making in a new, kind of different way from Anstler's work.

00:14:43: So what this works does is it almost exposes the colonial truth through presenting possible alternative stories.

00:14:57: so I suppose that tries to do the elements of story making.

00:15:05: It's a form, really kind of literary theory in a sense and ask questions about what could have happened in these spaces where we don't see alternative voices.

00:15:18: so to give you an example this second chapter of my book pushes against The Colonial Truth by reading the story of a special tribunal and a massacre from two different perspectives.

00:15:29: So, From The Perspective Of The British Colonial Authority And Also At The Same Time Using An Egyptian Play.

00:15:40: What's Really Interesting When We Read These Two Accounts Of The Same Massacre Together Is That we See How The Boundary Between Legal Truths And Legal Fictions Like really becomes blurred.

00:15:56: and the kind of evidence for this trial, it was called the special tribunal at Dineshway.

00:16:03: What truth-making even means is up for question I suppose in that sense.

00:16:08: so we start to kinda question ideas around rational evidence.

00:16:11: We question ideas about who gets to claim epistemic authority all these types things And also simultaneously see Egyptian nationalist imaginaries what forms of security may have been produced at this time as well.

00:16:30: So, um... This was kind another method.

00:16:34: I guess that I used to try and push past but maybe potentially also reimagine forms of truth-making around extremism and criminality.

00:16:48: Thank you so much.

00:16:50: Your book engages with influential post-colonial and critical theory debates, including members account of the colony as a space for ultimate lawlessness.

00:16:59: And Agamben's work on exceptionalism in counterterrorism.

00:17:03: How do these ideas shape your thinking?

00:17:06: Where do you depart from them and argue that counter terrorism is not simply outside the law but part of its everyday and administrative and unequal operation.

00:17:18: I guess I mean, of course ideas around the colony and of counter-terrorism as you know... ...the pinnacle of lawlessness.

00:17:29: Of dehumanisation And being a state of exception have been really central and critical to framings of counter terrorism.

00:17:37: Our understandings for instance about how detainees in Guantanamo Bay Have been able to be treated in way that they've been where the liberal states is fine with leaving them without legal counsel, because it has this claim to necessity and its claim to the exception.

00:17:57: But where my work sort of differs from these framings is trying to read really the violence of liberalism and the centrality of violence too lawmaking which I think is what a framing or the exception can kind risk avoiding in many ways.

00:18:19: So what I've done, and this work is to centre sort of legal historical and also feminist work that grounds the production of the emergency within every day.

00:18:29: so... In so doing we see that this idea of what's produced indeed through liberal mechanisms right?

00:18:43: I guess just to kind of give an example, when we look like what i was sort talking about in terms of archival reading the colonial archive and reading the way which the colonial archives shows that ideas around criminality have been co-produced at the same time as idea you know.

00:19:08: When we see colonial administrators worrying What we start to see here is what legal scholars such as Nassar Hussein who I've used in my work, tend to be a colonial rule of law.

00:19:24: So instead of seeing the situation where we have the metropolis applying kind of an abounded rule and colonies applying forms of emergency law actually a almost hierarchical form of the rule-of-law within colonial spaces, right?

00:19:44: Where we have racialized hierarchical alternative mechanisms for treatment for colonised societies which are reproduced in the scope of law.

00:19:54: So rather than thinking about these as being produced outside... We start to think that the rule is much more flexible and ambiguous And less bounded then the liberal ideal.

00:20:07: I guess what I found, when i've been looking into the way that emergency developed in Egypt is to give an example of this.

00:20:19: The term martial law was used in Egypt so ostensibly it's a term used to regulate military troops.

00:20:32: but interestingly we look at how colonial administrators use In Egypt, it was much more akin to a kind of administrative civil form of regulation that could sit in the background and almost help the colonial authorities to informants of expansionism.

00:20:52: So we allowed them greater access to their country etc.

00:21:00: It's really interesting to think about that kind of framing of martial law, not so much as a draconian tool but as akin to... Not quite rule-of-law framing.

00:21:12: But the rule for the colonies' framing helped normalise hierarchical forms of treatment I guess for Egyptians at that time.

00:21:25: within this liberal framing right?

00:21:27: So it's again.

00:21:28: you're trying think about how hierarchies are replicated within the structure of liberalism.

00:21:35: Thank you so much, I think we've already touched upon this throughout.

00:21:38: but let's talk a bit more about your method right?

00:21:41: You use the phrase decolonial counter mapping to describe your methodological approach.

00:21:46: could you unpack for our listeners what that means in practice?

00:21:50: how did these methods inform both archival work and interviews... And what does it offer you analytically?

00:21:56: other qualitative methods might not?

00:21:58: The

00:21:59: counter mapping was was really kind of one method that I used.

00:22:10: It was one way to read the archive alongside other mechanisms, and this particular method I suppose the colonial past and their contemporary in a sense.

00:22:29: So what, i'm not trying to like claim that there is a linear continuous pass between The Past And The Present but instead think about patterns of truth-making patterns Of hierarchy and potentially also epistemic erasure That underpin Like the idea.

00:22:56: think about how these are routine eyes and tied into the everyday, so produced from every day spaces.

00:23:02: So one of things that I mentioned this before.

00:23:04: speaking to my participants...I wanted obviously provide them with a space where they could tell me more generally or experiencing forms of security, forms of surveillance in both Britain and the UK to kind of understand movement between two spaces but also simultaneously thinking about time frames.

00:23:28: Thinking about timelines how they read their own colonial past again.

00:23:34: this was another mechanism or way trying to interrogate truth that The Colonial Archive is telling us by asking my Egyptian participants too interrogate, you know the truths that are being produced.

00:23:47: So what I did was i brought a map-a British colonial map into my interviews.

00:23:54: this map um and you can see a picture of it in in my book.

00:23:58: It highlights areas of potential disturbance around the city of Cairo And obviously...I think there are a number ways we could understand What was being suggested here In terms of disturbance but generally There is some form of security framing being done here.

00:24:17: Some kind of truth-making around particular areas in the city that suggest these are potentially extremist populations, right?

00:24:26: And there's a lot to be said if you look at the map in terms like class and proximity to mosques understandings of Islam which work their way into this map.

00:24:41: I asked my participants to help me to both unravel what this meant by thinking about, What was being produced on the map but simultaneously To annotate them up with their own experiences of the city.

00:24:56: So one particular method This idea of counter mapping which has been done from predominantly decolonial approaches to geography.

00:25:06: Think that is a kind of epistemic approach where we're thinking about the map as re-inscribed power and knowledge, and reproduces idea of like Western or colonial truth claims.

00:25:21: And particularly in this case truth claims about extremism and extremist communities.

00:25:26: so when unpick and unravel but also allow participants or ask participants to engage with us in processes of not simply refusing, but kind of reimagining what these spaces might have looked like.

00:25:39: We get again something akin you know we're kind of potentially asking what could have been, what could've existed in these spaces?

00:25:51: What communities may have resisted and refused these forms of truth making but also simultaneously asking about um...in terms of the post-colonial Egyptian states.

00:26:04: Um..what form of security persists because there's you know Egypt as a post-colonial state that, as I mentioned at the beginning really often draws upon again these ideas of extremism in order to kind of quell uprisings how some of these forms for security may have worked their way into.

00:26:28: So it was a process that kind of helped me on a number of different levels, I think to interrogate colonial truths at the same time.

00:26:36: Think about post-colonial narratives for security and then thinking how people are continuously experiencing these forms of surveillance in an everyday sense.

00:26:50: I couldn't use this one method to write the whole book, like it's something that works alongside another number of other methods.

00:27:01: But it was something that allowed a particular kind of decolonial way of thinking about truth-making.

00:27:08: Thank you so much!

00:27:09: So your central arguments in The Book and we are moving more towards the current moment now is about the normalization of violence and moral hierarchies underpinning counterterrorism.

00:27:21: How do you see these logics operating in Britain's current counter-terrorism policies and what continuities with the colonial past feel most striking to you today?

00:27:30: Yeah, I mean so again... Again i'm not trying to kind of suggest that we can just replicate.

00:27:39: That there is an argument.

00:27:40: it isn't an argument of replication where we're seeing the same mechanisms repurposed but it's, I'm trying to instead kind of think about the patterns as i said.

00:27:51: So patterns of counter-terrorism being characterised by hierarchy ,by excess, by ambiguity and by the kind of epistemic erasure of local voice.

00:28:01: one way that we can see this...I think quite clearly is in the use of pre-criminal and preemptive terrorism laws because what these really rely upon or what these don't necessitate actually is an alternative voice.

00:28:21: Quite often, these preemptive and preparatory crimes allow for the state to intervene before material evidence has been gathered.

00:28:30: they also project a kind of moral particular ideas of morality that are connected to extremism.

00:28:38: so we'll start.

00:28:39: you know... We can see this sort countering violent extremism, sort of frameworks through the prevent duty for instance in the UK which has been highly criticised from many different perspectives.

00:28:54: And how these preemptive and precriminal tools are used as a form of governance right?

00:29:02: I would say that whilst quite often this is being framed or has been understood as something that is quite novel to the post-Nine Eleven landscape.

00:29:14: For me, it's really reminiscent of a number of same frameworks and same patterns.

00:29:22: I've read into the kind of colonial nature of securitisation but they're done in new ways.

00:29:28: so there's this particular about neoliberal development.

00:29:37: pre-criminality in the sense that the idea of risk is now feels much, much more ambiguous and it's kind of sort of drawn through ideas um of threats to global capitalism potentially in a way we didn't quite see before or I did not quite see.

00:29:55: So where we're starting to see, you know the profusion of potential criminal identities.

00:30:00: that feels a lot more ambiguous and a lot kind of mobilized.

00:30:05: A lot easier to be mobilised I suppose In terms of The UK something obviously that's relevant That has been happening recently.

00:30:18: We can think about this sort of prescription for Palestine action but also use of cancer terrorism in terms limiting or curtailing freedoms of expression of protest.

00:30:26: I mean, this has been drawn into question by a number of different legal scholars who've noted that the criminal law itself provides sufficient powers to curtail criminal damage.

00:30:36: so why do we need a terrorism framing here?

00:30:40: Again it's something that allows for a framing.

00:30:43: violence kind of exceptional forms of violence in a sense and i think you know, is pretty terrifying and we again kind of see these resurgence... ...of the mobilisation in various ways.

00:31:06: Yeah so yeah I guess there are a number different ways that were seeing this being mobilised today not simply just in the UK but globally as well, but for me again it does just draw through some of these same patterns.

00:31:26: As I mentioned in terms of epistemic hierarchy and ambiguity.

00:31:30: really

00:31:31: Thank you.

00:31:32: so finally So you gesture towards resistance and refusal within the systems of violence.

00:31:39: Where do you see spaces if hope?

00:31:41: If you see any at all or possibilities whether women's scholarship activism.

00:31:46: Yeah,

00:31:49: I mean...I think that hope is quite a difficult question.

00:31:52: It was a pretty difficult term these days and maybe especially yeah And even in finishing this book it's been different moments to the moment we find ourselves in right?

00:32:03: Even a couple of years ago.

00:32:04: so things feel different.

00:32:08: Hope feels like a difficult thing personally To have currently but i do think there still something to be said about activist communities communities of scholars that continue to refuse this framing, right?

00:32:22: And I do think that there still remains.

00:32:24: Um...I mean in a sense i feel like you know the global south has always known that terrorism is a colonial construct and maybe we're getting to a point where The West also knows this now and people kind of worldwide are seeing how this this construct is being used to legitimize violence.

00:32:42: um..and We do still see the persistence like an ongoing refusal of the use this term in various communities and also as educators I guess, as well.

00:32:56: And academics doing teaching, you know there are various ways that people find to sort of reframe teaching.

00:33:04: To pursue decolonial feminist approaches and to kind of produce encourage students to think critically about the use of these terms right?

00:33:12: In terms of my own I suppose discipline or sub-discipline of critical terrorism studies like... There's an ongoing call for abolition actually of this term terrorism, which is something that's come out the work of various people including Rabia Khan over the past couple years.

00:33:32: And this kind of turn towards abolitionists and feminist approaches like notes And you know, the people are doing kind of great work to illustrate this and demonstrate it.

00:33:52: To continue thinking critically about how we can... I suppose not simply how we reframe or think past that term but actually our responsibility as researchers?

00:34:06: That probably goes back to your question at very beginning What does it mean to do this research?

00:34:13: Why are we doing this form of research, how can research be something that actually reifies forms of violence?

00:34:20: and actually thinking about research as part of a wider activist toolkit which I very much kind of believe in.

00:34:31: Yeah so i think i'll end there.

00:34:33: Thank you so much Alice!

00:34:34: This has been a wonderful and very very insightful conversation.

00:34:38: thank read the book.

00:34:41: Thank you, thanks so much!

00:34:43: Thanks for having me.