Islamic State, Biopolitics and Media Governmentality

This book analyses the Islamic States (IS) media and governance strategy from a critical media and cultural studies perspective. It deploys Deleuze and Guattaris concept of assemblage and Foucaults theories of dispositif (dispositive, apparatus) and biopower to understand the ways in which IS governed its subjects during the tenure of its so-called caliphate. This theoretical triangulation is used to situate the group as more than just a terrorist organisation, but rather as a more amorphous force with proclivities toward governance. The analysis of globally fluid and conjunctive terrorist strategies executed through media, governance and conduct, as part of and produced by ISs dispositif, manifests in the groups epistemology, discourse and social ontology. To analyse these processes, the book deploys a dispositif analysis of official IS administrative documents, media produced by the groups English-language media wing (al-Hayat Media Center), and IS Twitter activity, including the use of nonhuman bots. In doing so, it seeks to reveal the resonance between ISs media and governmental discourses, develop dispositif theory, and to argue for more context-specific formulations of biopolitics. This book will be of much interest to students of Critical Terrorism Studies, social theory, media theory and International Relations.