Yours in Revolution: Retrofitting Carlos the Jackal
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.135451Keywords:
Terrorism, Carlos the Jackal, naming, faciality, Cold War, embodiment, AssayasAbstract
This paper explores the representation of ’Carlos the Jackal’, the one-time ’World’s Most Wanted Man’ and ’International Face of Terror’ – primarily in cin-ema but also encompassing other forms of popular culture and aspects of Cold War policy-making. At the centre of the analysis is Olivier Assayas’s Carlos (2010), a transnational, five and a half hour film (first screened as a TV mini-series) about the life and times of the infamous militant. Concentrating on the various ways in which Assayas expresses a critical preoccupation with names and faces through complex formal composition, the project examines the play of ab-straction and embodiment that emerges from the narrativisation of terrorist violence. Lastly, it seeks to engage with the hidden implications of Carlos in terms of the intertwined trajectories of formal experimentation and revolutionary politics.
References
Assayas, Olivier (2011): Carlos, Criterion DVD [2010], 339 mins.
Assayas, Olivier (2011): Interview, Russia Today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3w6EW7qDy4 (accessed 28 February 2012).
Bradshaw, Peter (2010): ‘Carlos — review’, The Guardian, October 21 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/oct/21/carlos-film-review (accessed 28 February 2012).
Buck-Morss, Susan (2003): Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left, London: Verso.
Burleigh, Michael (2008): Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, London: Harper.
Carr, Matthew (2006): The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism, New York and London: The New Press.
Clark, Nicola (2011): ‘Carlos the Jackal Goes on Trial for Bombings in France’, The New York Times, November 7 2011: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/world/europe/carlos-the-jackal-goes-on-trial-for-bombings-in-france.html?_r=0 (accessed 28 February 2013).
Cummings, Richard H (2009): Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989, Jefferson, NC: MacFarland.
Curtis, Adam (2012): ‘He’s Behind You’, The Medium and the Message, BBC blog, October 21 2012: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/hes_behind_you (accessed 28 February 2013).
Dafinoiu, David (2011): ‘On Carlos the Jackal & Wadi Haddad’, email to Fred Burton, June 15, The Global Intelligence Files: http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/375919_on-carlos-the-jackal-and-wadi-haddad-.html (accessed 28 February 2013).
Davis, Mike (2007): Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb, London: Verso.
Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari (1988): A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, London: Athlone Press.
Dobson, Christopher & Ronald Payne (1977): The Carlos Complex: A Pattern of Violence, London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Duguay, Christian (1997): The Assignment, Columbia Tristar DVD [2005], 114 mins.
Dutoit, Thomas (1995): ‘Translating the Name?’ introduction to Jacques Derrida, On the Name, trans. David Wood, John P. Leavy, Jr. and Ian McLeod, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ix-xvi.
Follain, John (1998): Jackal: The Secret Wars of Carlos the Jackal, London: Orion.
Forsyth, Frederick (1971/2011): Day of the Jackal, London: Arrows Books.
Hamm, Mark S. (2007): Terrorism as Crime: From Oklahoma City to Al-Qaeda and Beyond, New York: New York University Press.
Hilwi, Rasha (2011): ‘Leila Khaled in Lipstick: Palestinian Women Out of Frame’, Al-Akhbar English, September 29 2011: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/748 (accessed 26 May 2013).
Hoad, Terry F. (1993): English Etymology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Home, Stewart (1994): ‘Carlos the Jackal’, Konkret, October issue: http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/sp/carlos.htm (accessed 28 February 2013).
James, Ian (2009): ‘Chavez praises Carlos the Jackal’, The Independent, November 21 2009: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chavez-praises-carlos-the-jackal-1825135.html (accessed 28 February 2013).
Jameson, Fredric (2002): The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema Space and the World System, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Laqueur, Walter & Barry Rubin (eds, 2001): The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, New York: Penguin Books.
Lichfield, John (2013): ‘Trial of ‘celebrity terrorist’ Carlos the Jackal starts in confusion in Paris’, The Independent,May 13 2013: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/trial-of-celebrity-terrorist-carlos-the-jackal-starts-in-confusion-in-paris-8614493.html (accessed 26 May 2013).
Marcus, Greil (2012): ‘What the Film Wants’, Kent Jones (ed.): Olivier Assayas, Vienna: SYNEMA, 190-199.
McCabe, Colin (2011): ‘Carlos: Sudden Death’, The Criterion Collection, September 26 2011: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1998-carlos-sudden-death (accessed 28 February 2013).
Naficy, Hamid (2001): An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Napoleoni, Loretta (2005): Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks, New York: Seven Stories Press.
Price, Brian & Megan Sutherland (2008): ‘On Debord, Then and Now:An Interview with Olivier Assayas’, World Picture 1, Spring: http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/World%20Picture/WP_1.1/Assayas.html (accessed 28 February 2013).
Rancière, Jacques (2009): The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott, London: Verso.
Ramírez Sánchez, Ilich (2009): ‘Letter to Barack Obama’, January 29: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=7009&lg=en (accessed 28 February 2013).
Ramírez Sánchez, Ilich& Jean-Michel Vernochet (2003): L’Islam Révolutionnaire, Paris: Editions du Rocher.
Reeve, Simon (1999): The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama Bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism, York, PA: Northeastern University Press.
Rohter, Larry (2010): ‘A Sweeping Tale of a Terrorist and His Time’, The New York Times, October 8 2010: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/movies/10carlos.html?pagewanted=all (accessed 28 February 2013).
Rose, Steve (2010): ‘Carlos director Olivier Assayas on the terrorist who became a pop culture icon’, The Guardian, October 23 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/oct/23/olivier-assayas-carlos-jackal (accessed 28 February 2013).
Santley, Joseph & Robert Florey (2001): The Cocoanuts, 4 Front Video VHS [1929], 89 mins.
Sage, Alexandria (2011): ‘Carlos the Jackal back in court over 1980s bombs’, Reuters US, November 4: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-france-trial-carlos-idUSTRE7A321Y20111104 (accessed 28 February 2013).
Schmidt, Richard L. (2006): Carlos the Jackal, History Channel DVD [2000], 50 mins.
Schroeder, Barbet (2007): Terror’s Advocate, Artificial Eye DVD, 132 mins.
Shaviro, Steven (2010): Post-Cinematic Affect, Ropley: O-Books.
Smith, Colin (1976): Carlos: Portrait of a Terrorist, London: Sphere Books.
Smith, Colin (2012): ‘Short Cuts’, London Review of Books, 34.2, January 26 2012: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n02/colin-smith/short-cuts (accessed 28 February 2013).
Sunic, Tomislav (2011): Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right, London: Arktos Media.
Thompson, David (2010): ‘Carlos: five hours of the Jackal’, Sight & Sound 20:11, November: http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49661 (accessed 28 February 2013).
Tobón, Nydia (1978): Carlos: Terrorista o Guerrillero? Mi Vivencias, Barcelona: Grijalbo.
Willsher, Kim (2004): ‘My love for Carlos the Jackal’, The Telegraph, March 25 2004: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3614369/My-love-for-Carlos-the-Jackal.html (accessed 28 February 2013).
Yallop, David (1993): To the Ends of the Earth: The Hunt for the Jackal, London: Jonathan Cape.
Žižek, Slavoj (2012): The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, London: Verso.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2013 Thomas
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Copyright for all manuscripts rests with the author(s). The editors reserve the right to edit manuscripts. Contributors are responsible for acquiring all permissions from the copyright owners for the use of quotations, illustrations, tables, etc. Each author must, before final publication fill, in a publishing agreement provided by LiU E-Press.
Since 2021 Culture Unbound uses a Creative Commons: Attribution license for new articles, which allows users to distribute the work and to reform or build upon it without the author's permission. Full reference to the author must be given. For older articles please see each article landing page.
