Books by Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet
Between 1983 and 1987, mercenaries adopting the pseudonym GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Libera... more Between 1983 and 1987, mercenaries adopting the pseudonym GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación, Antiterrorist Liberation Group) paid by the Spanish treasury and relying upon national intelligence support were at war with the Basque militant group ETA (Euskadi (e)Ta Askatasuna, Basque Country and Freedom). Over four years, their campaign of extrajudicial assassinations spanned the French-Spanish border. Nearly thirty people were killed in a campaign comprised of torture, kidnapping, bombing and the assassination of suspected ETA activists and Basque refugees.
This establishment of unofficial counterterrorist squads by a Spanish Government was a blatant detour from legality. It was also a rare case in Europe where no less than fourteen high-ranking Spanish police officers and senior government officials, including the Minister of Interior himself, were eventually arrested and condemned for counter-terrorism wrongdoings and illiberal practices. Thirty years later, this campaign of intimidation, coercion and targeted killings continues to grip Spain. The GAL affair was not only a serious example of a major departure from accepted liberal democratic constitutional principles of law and order, but also a brutal campaign that postponed by decades the possibility of a political solution for the Basque conflict.
Counter-terror by proxy uncovers why and how a democratic government in a liberal society turned to a 'dirty war' and went down the route of illegal and extrajudicial killing actions. It offers a fuller examination of the long-term implications of the use of unorthodox counter-terrorist strategies in a liberal democracy.
Rowman & Littlefield, 2017
From the threats posed by austerity and the fears around global migration to the unsettled notion... more From the threats posed by austerity and the fears around global migration to the unsettled notion of resistance, our political world is permeated with anxieties. But what does this mean for our everyday lived political experience? Do governments provoke or encourage a sense of anxiety as a form of control and power? How do citizens react to, comply with, or resist, this sense of anxiety?
Routledge, 2016
Speaking about the international, identifying its specificity, has commonly depended on multiple ... more Speaking about the international, identifying its specificity, has commonly depended on multiple fragmentations: levels of analysis to distinguish the internal from the international, and particular individuals from both; disciplinary boundaries that differentiate international relations from anthropology (confined to localized peoples of marginal interest), and from both sociology and politics (confined to the domestic life of nations and states); distinctions between theoretical and empirical research, between politics and economics, and between scholars willing to face up to political realities and those who prefer to imagine something better. Scholars in other fields encounter related distinctions, but studies of the international always seem to rely on the sharpest of cuts both to identify what the international is and what counts as a legitimate way of studying it. International political sociology is one (but only one) attempt to avoid these fragmentations.
Book Chapters by Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet
Politiques de lutte contre la radicalisation, 2022
Extraordinary Rendition: Addressing the challenges of Accountability, 2018
The US led programme of extraordinary rendition created profound challenges for the international... more The US led programme of extraordinary rendition created profound challenges for the international system of human rights protection and rule of law.
Security and Mobility: Between Authority and Imagination, 2017
S INCE THE BEGINNING of the twenty-fi rst century, across the social sciences and humanities ther... more S INCE THE BEGINNING of the twenty-fi rst century, across the social sciences and humanities there has been a widespread and increasing interest in issues of mobility. In many respects, what is referred to as the 'new mobilities paradigm' is an endeavour that critical security scholars should engage with even further. This book is one step down this road. In further pursuit of this, I take a step back and refl ect more broadly on the intersections, actual and potential, between the literatures on mobilities and critical security studies.
Emmy Eklundh, Andreja Zevnik, Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet (eds), Politics of Anxiety, London/New York, Rowan & Littlefield, 2017
Should counter-radicalisation and de-radicalisation policies be thought of as a new strategic for... more Should counter-radicalisation and de-radicalisation policies be thought of as a new strategic formation in the penal field, and suspicion be considered as a new technique of government ? Tempting though it would be to speak of a ‘normalization of suspicion’, what is pinpointed here is the deleterious influence of a spreading wariness on how we are collectively induced to understand ordinary action or inaction, and the dissemination of distrust that these policies produce.
Emotion, Politics and War, 2015
There are so many images moving around and again in the world that we 5 believe we possess them b... more There are so many images moving around and again in the world that we 5 believe we possess them because we saw them … 6 (Panh 2013: 12) 7 The common understanding of war is strongly influenced by cogent but 8 codified visual narratives: be it heroism and triumphalism when the American 9 flag was raised on Iwo Jima [Rosenthal 1945] 1 ; be it the distress of a shell-10 shocked GI lost in the middle of the Vietnam war [McCullin 1968]; be it the 11 genuine pain of a weeping soldier seated in a helicopter and grieving for a 12 fallen comrade in Iraq [Turnley 1991]; or be it civilian suffering caught in a 13 close-up portrait of a women burned by napalm [Avedon 1971]. Landscapes 14 of ruins and desolate battlefields [Fenton, 1855; Hoffman 1945], derelict and 15 deserted barracks of the Cold War [Roemers 2010] and close-up portrayals of 16 the wounded all testify to the destructive force of war, and to photography's 17 power to preserve such events for future generations. Scenes of imminent or 18 instant death are common in war, but so are moments of tranquillity, parti-19 cular wartime intimacy [Hetherington 2008] and joy [Velder 1973], or mad-20 ness [Greene 1995] and humiliation [Abu Ghraib 2003; Bouju 2003], which, 21 fixed on paper and disseminated, reach the public eye. From pictures taken by 22 professional photographers, via creative [Greene 1995; Blenkinsop 2001; 23 Asburn 2002; Roemers 2010] and artistic use of war imagery [Loesch 1991; 24 Lhuisset 2010], to pictures taken by ordinary civilians and service personnel, 25 the context, content, format and intentions behind the images produced, 26 edited, framed and distributed are multiple and sometimes contradictory.
Mapping Transatlantic Security Relations – The EU, Canada and the War on Terror, 2010
This book examines how legal, political, and rights discourses, security policies and practices m... more This book examines how legal, political, and rights discourses, security policies and practices migrate and translate across the North Atlantic.
Handbook of New Security Studies, Burgess, Peter (Ed.), Routledge, 2009
This chapter deals with the issue of security technologies, and the relationship between security... more This chapter deals with the issue of security technologies, and the relationship between security and technology. We start by examining how the question of technology has become a stake for contemporary security studies, discussing in particular the so-called 'critical approaches' to security (CASE Collective 2006). We suggest that while the uses and effects of technological systems are increasingly scrutinized by security studies scholars, little work has been done on the practice of technology itself with regard to security. In the process, seemingly crucial issues, such as the role played by the private (industrial and commercial) technological sector in contemporary security practices, are left unattended -whereas such issues have been convincingly addressed for a long time in criminology for instance. The second part of the chapter then provides an overview of some of the insights that have been elaborated by scholars of the history and sociology of technology: we argue that these offer pertinent elements for understanding the relationship between security and technology. Accordingly, the last part of the chapter discusses the question of security technologies in relation to the argument, made by some journalists and commentators (e.g. Hayes 2006; Mac Donald 2006; Mills 2004; O'Harrow 2005), that transformations in the contemporary (in)security doxa as well as in existing and anticipated technological systems are leading to the constitution of a 'security-industrial complex' on the model of the notion of 'military-industrial complex' hammered out during the Cold War to frame the relationship between governments, security agencies and the industries of defence.
Terror, Insecurity and Liberty, 2009
IN, Leman-Langlois, S. & J.-P. Brodeur (eds.), Terrorisme et Antiterrorisme au Canada, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2009
Articles by Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet
International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP), 2018
The accounting for and explanation of radical, revolting and sometimes disgusting actions, whethe... more The accounting for and explanation of radical, revolting and sometimes disgusting actions, whether perpetrated by men or women, should come with an even more interesting question about male and female social conformity. Is not the ultimate question actually why very few men and women rebel? Obedience to authority and social conformity is not uncharted territory but by venturing in that direction, the renewed feminist approaches to political violence and terrorism studies could gain further momentum and strike again.
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Books by Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet
This establishment of unofficial counterterrorist squads by a Spanish Government was a blatant detour from legality. It was also a rare case in Europe where no less than fourteen high-ranking Spanish police officers and senior government officials, including the Minister of Interior himself, were eventually arrested and condemned for counter-terrorism wrongdoings and illiberal practices. Thirty years later, this campaign of intimidation, coercion and targeted killings continues to grip Spain. The GAL affair was not only a serious example of a major departure from accepted liberal democratic constitutional principles of law and order, but also a brutal campaign that postponed by decades the possibility of a political solution for the Basque conflict.
Counter-terror by proxy uncovers why and how a democratic government in a liberal society turned to a 'dirty war' and went down the route of illegal and extrajudicial killing actions. It offers a fuller examination of the long-term implications of the use of unorthodox counter-terrorist strategies in a liberal democracy.
Book Chapters by Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet
Articles by Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet
This establishment of unofficial counterterrorist squads by a Spanish Government was a blatant detour from legality. It was also a rare case in Europe where no less than fourteen high-ranking Spanish police officers and senior government officials, including the Minister of Interior himself, were eventually arrested and condemned for counter-terrorism wrongdoings and illiberal practices. Thirty years later, this campaign of intimidation, coercion and targeted killings continues to grip Spain. The GAL affair was not only a serious example of a major departure from accepted liberal democratic constitutional principles of law and order, but also a brutal campaign that postponed by decades the possibility of a political solution for the Basque conflict.
Counter-terror by proxy uncovers why and how a democratic government in a liberal society turned to a 'dirty war' and went down the route of illegal and extrajudicial killing actions. It offers a fuller examination of the long-term implications of the use of unorthodox counter-terrorist strategies in a liberal democracy.