The state, terrorism, and national security discourse: Forging the state in a time of terror, in the face of fear

This dissertation explores and interrogates how terrorism is consistently brought into the political and controlled by the power structure, specifically the ways in which national security discourse is used to create a specific knowledge structure and the ways in which discursive practices represent the mobilization of power. In addressing the role of terrorism in the national security state, this dissertation argues that the state employs a highly contextualized national security discourse---a discourse that creates notions of terrorism. A review of presidential rhetoric over the past thirty years reveals that the national security discourse has maintained a specific ideological hegemony that upholds the State as the only legitimate authority in the production and deployment of violence while vilifying all other political uses of violence. The examination of U.S. foreign policy over the past thirty years, allows the exploration of how terrorism has been constructed within a context of national security. Based on this perception, I have formulated a notion of how national security discourse is a site of practice for the State as it interprets, manipulates, and controls terrorism through discourse's constituting and appropriating functions. This control is based on developing the contextualized images of terrorism and terrorists that focuses on the act of terrorism, the actor (terrorist), maintenance of definitional variations, application of meaning and use of moral authority. All of this is done in the name of the State.