TERRORISM AND THE GLOBAL PUBLIC SPHERE

Resumo

This article is a report on my ongoing research concerning the transformation of the (inter)national public sphere into a global public sphere. It takes as it starting point the virtually shattering consequences that the 9/11 attacks may have for two of the discourses that can be posited as constitutive of the new global public sphere: international law and the discourse of ‘global’ intellectuals. The latter are not conceived under the liberal/enlightenment model, as the judges of society, but rather, as located in an equal footing to the citizens who, having been personally affected by globalization, are in the process of acquiring a cosmopolitan stance. However, this cosmopolitanism is ambivalent: it struggles between a withdrawal onto radical identity and the search for an alternative access to the universal. It is argued here that such a new global audience, for whom traditional legal & political narratives are insufficient, will decide the matter according to the logic of hegemony. This implies that inadequate tools of analysis and narratives (legal, political & otherwise) are in the process of being replaced by other more persuasive ones. Moreover, this question of ‘persuasion’ and hegemony is being worked out through the trans-national web of tele- technologies. It is concluded that new legal & political narratives must take this phenomenon as their starting point.