Violences of/in critical terrorism studies

This article makes a case that CTS scholarship is always, necessarily, and specifically paradigmatically violent, even if one adopts CTS' critiques of "mainstream" terrorism studies and understands CTS scholars to be normatively well-intended. In making that case, this article goes over different violences of CTS scholarship which have important impacts in the field and in the "real world" from which the field often distinguishes itself: the (often unreflected) reification of "terrorism" discourses, the (often uncritical) engagement with P/CVE initiatives, the construction and perpetuation of gendered and racialised ideas of agency in "terrorism" and "counterterrorism," and the complex publication and citations practices in the field. The article then argues that the effects of these violences are made more intense by the violences involved with research reflexivity in the field, and even in this article. It concludes by discussing possible futures for a CTS, which acknowledges its own violences and looks to understand and even possibly redirect them.