Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 35

Spectres of Fear : Jihadism as the Global Bogeyman
Abstract
This article examines jihadists , who are presently engaged in a <( w a r of terror ” against the West and the Muslim world . Using Marina Warner ' s idea of the “ bogeyman , ” I contend that jihadists are constructed by global audiences as phantasmagoric entities — ambiguous , hyperbolic , and monstrous . Jihadists evoke the indeterminacy of modernity which has shattered the modernist belief of the “ existential safety of larger totalities ” ( Bauman 1999:39 ) assured by western governments .
I examine some of the historical influences which inform and contour present day jihadists ' liminal features . I then explore aspects of Australian social imaginary post-September 11 , 2001 , which has manifested fear of the Muslim Other via increasingly nationalist discourses over the potential violation of national space by “ undesirable persons ” who are imagined to embody a counter will .
Marina Warner has been at the forefront in examining the significance of fairytales and myth becoming western constructions of Otherness . In this respect , Warner ’ s book , No Go the Bogeyman , addresses attitudes of scariness as the “ defining flavour of the modem sensibility ( 1998:4 ). For Warner , fairy tales and myths underpin the pan-human fixation with alterity . Alterity ( in the form of monsters , ghouls , ogres , cannibals , and ghosts ) mirrors the human concern with ambivalence and the macabre . The interplay between alterity and myth is embodied in the figure of the bogeyman — the ultimate representation of Otherness . Warner ’ s treatment of the bogeyman is a sojourn into the “ dark side ” of the human personality where the grotesque is fused with witless delight . This sense of the bogeyman ’ s paradoxical nature is proffered throughout Warner ’ s narratives as an image of human ambivalence . For example , Warner writes :
Thus , the state of pleasurable fear has emerged in our own times as a common response to philosophy ’ s old command , “ Know thyself ’; the changing features of the bogeyman mirror the insecurities and aggression of those who see him ( 6 ).
In the contemporary period the themes of aggression and insecurity have increasingly informed the oeuvre of the western world in response to the escalation of Jihadism . Jihadism refers to a fundamentalist interpretation of