State Martyr

The Film of the Islamic State

The film of the so-called Islamic State is part of the still relatively opaque history of radical Sunni Islamist video propaganda, a field in which it is simultaneously its strongest exponent. Through its imports of aesthetics in the age of digitalization and the concurrent de-professionalization of film, this violent propaganda film has interestingly drawn attention for its seeming likeness to Hollywood film, an odd comparison that the Islamic State itself opposes through its own filmic antagonisms to commercial cinema. In an intermittent attempt at attacking cinematic illusionism, it has made increasing use of cinematic devices in order to communicate its violent and anti-humanist ideology – and has thereby entered a state of filmic self-contradiction. This book analyzes and uncovers the mechanisms and dynamics of ideological communication in the Islamic State’s videos through a combined historical and neoformalist approach, making them predictable for future researchers.

State Violence and Legal Accountability

This book pursues a critical perspective on the phenomenon of state violence and its legal unaccountability. Focusing on the role of myths, assumptions and ghosts that surround the meaning of the state and performance of state violence, this book details a fresh perspective on that violence and its legal unaccountability. It asks: How does our understanding of the state reflect on the political demands and legal processes of accountability? To pursue this question, the book traces the political and legal aftermath of the police killing of a 14-year-old boy, Berkin Elvan, during the nationwide Gezi protests of the summer of 2013 in Turkey. Countering imaginaries of the state clash between the state officer’s attempt to attribute personal responsibility to Elvan for his own death and public demands for state accountability. Meanwhile, the prolonged legal process ensures that subjects who seek accountability find themselves in a long and exhausting legal battle which dominates their lives and transforms their subjectivity. As the Elvan family continues to wait for accountability and justice, this book suggests that waiting and suspense are key elements of legal performance in trials concerning state violence. As such, and unlike the usual reading of legal violence, which focuses on judgement, the book explores how this violence – and its implications for an understanding of justice and accountability – is bound to the very act of waiting. This critical interdisciplinary study of state violence and its legal handling will appeal to scholars and students from a wider range of disciplines including law, criminology, politics, sociology and political and legal philosophy.

The Martyr Age in the United States of America