Islamic State Biopolitics and Media Governmentality

<p>This book analyses the Islamic State’s (IS) media and governance strategy from a critical media and cultural studies perspective.</p><p>It deploys Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage and Foucault’s theories of <i>dispositif </i>(dispositive apparatus) and biopower to understand the ways in which IS governed its subjects during the tenure of its so-called ‘caliphate’. This theoretical triangulation is used to situate the group as more than just a terrorist organisation but rather as a more amorphous force with proclivities toward governance. The analysis of globally fluid and conjunctive terrorist strategies executed through media governance and conduct as part of and produced by IS’s <i>dispositif</i> manifests in the group’s epistemology discourse and social ontology. To analyse these processes the book deploys a <i>dispositif</i> analysis of official IS administrative documents media produced by the group’s English-language media wing (al-Hayat Media Center) and IS Twitter activity including the use of nonhuman bots. In doing so it seeks to reveal the resonance between IS’s media and governmental discourses develop <i>dispositif </i>theory and to argue for more context-specific formulations of biopolitics.</p><p>This book will be of much interest to students of Critical Terrorism Studies social theory media theory and International Relations.</p>