The performativity of terrorism: subversive experimentalist techniques in Pornography (2007) by Simon Stephens

Abstract

Although terrorism has a complex genealogy as a political concept, contemporary discussions on new terrorism use a reductionist discourse on the legitimacy of violence. In this article, I discuss the performativity of terrorism - its repetitive, citational, and necessarily discursive composition within the established social system - in the context of Pornography (2007) by Simon Stephens. I argue that subversion of conventional playwriting techniques in Pornography reveals the complex social and political dynamics that continually refigure terrorism as the counter-image of war.