Pierre Azou is a doctoral student in French studies at Princeton University, in the United States. He is preparing a thesis on the figure of the terrorist in contemporary novels and essays.
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“A Russian Bataclan”
: the analogy, if not the formula itself, has clearly established itself, from the
Journal du Dimanche
to Le
Figaro
via
Le Parisien
, and even the British
Guardian
.
Evidence of horror and compassion, which did not wait for the Islamic State's claim to be expressed: that a concert hall was struck again, that the number of victims was roughly equivalent , It's enough.
However, if we leave the emotional register to enter the political level, just as quickly as the obvious, uncertainty sets in.
Because politics, said Carl Schmitt, is about identifying the enemy, and therefore, when it comes to a crime like terrorism, attributing responsibility.
However, not only did Ukraine and Russia immediately accuse each other, but they continue to do so even after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack - which many doubt, moreover, on social networks.
Just like, despite the wave of Islamist terrorist attacks since 2001, there are still people who believe that the September 11 attacks were ordered by George Bush.
In the perception of a terrorist attack, the “obviousness” of the identification of the attack (“It’s like the Bataclan!”) would therefore go hand in hand with the “uncertainty” of the identity of the terrorist ( "Who is responsible ?").
And even, we can assume, it feeds it.
Because, ultimately, if nothing distinguishes one attack from another in its unfolding, nothing allows us to distinguish true from false in its analysis.
The more attacks are repeated and resemble each other, the more we are tempted to assimilate them to one another, and the more diffuse responsibility becomes, the easier it is to dismiss it or attribute it indiscriminately (which comes to the same thing).
In terrorism, violence is exercised indirectly from belligerents to non-belligerents, and finds its end in the representation of this violence by the enemy, which must arouse terror in him.
Pierre Azou
Jean Baudrillard gave us an analysis of this apparent paradox in 1981 in
Simulacra and Simulations
.
Regarding the terrorism of his time, he cited the same questions as those we find today on social networks regarding the Moscow attack:
“Such a bomb attack (…) was it the work of left-wing extremists, or far-right provocation, or centrist staging to discredit all terrorist extremes, or even police scenario and blackmail of public security?
And he concluded:
“All this is true at the same time, and the search for proof, even the objectivity of the facts, does not stop this vertigo of interpretation”
.
For what ?
Because with terrorism we are entering a
“logic of simulation”
, which
“no longer has anything to do with a logic of facts and an order of reasons”
.
Simulation, in fact, is for Jean Baudrillard
“the precession of the model (…) on the slightest fact: the models are there first, their circulation (…) constitutes the true magnetic field of the event”
.
To simplify, it is a reversal of the reality/representation relationship: representation does not follow reality, it precedes it.
Thus we move from conventional war to terrorism.
In conventional war, violence is exercised directly between belligerents, and finds its end in the reality of the conflict: soldiers kill other soldiers to conquer the territory that these soldiers are defending.
In terrorism, violence is exercised indirectly from belligerents to non-belligerents, and finds its end in the representation of this violence by the enemy, which must arouse terror in him: terrorists kill civilians to obtain something that these civilians cannot offer them - and even, when it comes to Islamist terrorism, that no one can offer them, since it is nothing less than the annihilation of the West.
Where wars differ and evolve depending on context and circumstances, terrorist attacks tend to resemble each other because the mechanisms of fear experience little variation.
Pierre Azou
From then on, the attacks can only be repeated indefinitely, without achieving anything other than establishing a “climate” of terror: they function, says Jean Baudrillard,
“like a set of signs dedicated to their sole recurrence of signs, and not no longer at all to their “real” end
.
Where wars differ and evolve according to context, circumstances, they tend to resemble each other because the mechanisms of fear experience little variation - other than an escalation in horror, because repetition breeds habit, and habit is not conducive to fear;
variations are therefore made in intensity because they cannot be done in nature.
Furthermore, since the representation of attacks which should arouse terror is provided by the media, and since terrorists of course take this media response into account when planning their next attack, "reality" becomes more and more distant. as a referent: the attacks
“are inscribed in advance in the ritual deciphering and orchestration of the media, anticipated in their staging and their possible consequences”
.
They therefore tend to conform to it to obtain the expected response, that is to say terror.
To say that the Moscow attack is a “Russian Bataclan” is to say that it was constructed, and was publicized, according to the same model, around the same “magnetic field” to use the expression cited above. top: nothing surprising, then.
What is more significant is that this attack hits a country already at war, and that, in this encounter, it is the logic of “simulation” which seems to prevail: “extension of the domain of terrorism”.
Even though Russia and Ukraine are fighting a very conventional war - soldiers fighting soldiers to control territories - even though the attack was claimed by a third party , the two countries continue to pass the responsibility on each other, in an infinite game of mirrors.
But this too, Jean Baudrillard had foreseen.
The fact that the attacks are simulated
“does not make them harmless;
on the contrary, indefinitely refracted by each other, they are uncontrollable by an order which can only be exercised on the real and the rational, on causes and ends
.
If the war between Russia and Ukraine has ever been in the domain of the real and rational, if it has ever been dictated by precise causes with a view to precise ends, at least we can now seriously doubt that it is. Again.
However, the further it moves away from this domain to enter that of “simulation”, the closer it gets to us, since simulation knows no boundaries.
The “Russian Bataclan” could well announce a “French Moscow”.