The Magical Realism of Danish Counter Terrorism Policy, the Hunt for Witches and How to resist it

Abstract

This article explores what perception of the terror threat legitimized the ongoing imprisonment of 6 Danish women and their 19 children in the Kurdish led imprisonment camps Al-Hol and Al-Roj in Syria. It argues that by framing the terror threat as an incomprehensible threat, the state successfully instills fear that can only be handled by exceptional measures. The article reads Danish counter terrorism policy as a text of magical realism to identify how the War on Terror speaks to an in-betweenness of realism and supernatural in the performance of threat. The framework enables scholars to point out states’ unreasonable security claims, and thereby resist counter terrorism policy.