Tuesday, March 17, 2009

ABSTRACT: Placing blame: Making sense of Beslan (sciencedirect.com)

Gearóid Ó Tuathail

School of Public & International Affairs, Virginia Tech, Alexandria, VA 22314, USA

Available online 12 March 2009.

Abstract

The aftermaths of terrorist spectacles are intensely consequential moments in the making of geopolitical meaning. This paper develops a critical geopolitical account of the ways in which key actors involved in the terrorist incident at School Number 1 in Beslan North Ossetia constructed its meaning and justified their actions. The event is examined from three perspectives: the terrorist's Beslan, the Kremlin's Beslan and the contested meaning of Beslan among Ossetians and others in the North Caucasus. Multiple sources are utilized in the construction of the account: an English language archive of Russian reporting on the event, accounts of the siege, statements by key protagonists, elite interviews in North Ossetia, and the results of a survey question in North Ossetia and the North Caucasus on Beslan. The paper examines the construction of blame by the various actors and relates it to indiscriminate geographies, sweeping acts of abstraction whose homogenizing effects make (counter)terrorist violence possible.

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Article Outline

Historical geopolitical contextualization
The terrorist's Beslan
The Kremlin's Beslan
North Ossetia's Beslan
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References

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