Towards an Aesthetics of Peace at at Time of War: Alternative Understandings and Responses to Global Terrorism (2005)

The terrorist attacks of September 2001 highlight a fundamental paradox. While security issues are becoming increasingly complex and transnational our means of understanding and responding to them are still based primarily on strategic expertise and corresponding militaristic ways of articulating defence policy. This project is the first extensive study that derives systematic insight into security dilemmas from a range of hitherto neglected aesthetic sources such as literature visual art architecture and music. The so-derived knowledge is then employed to engage defence specialists and policy makers in an interdisciplinary dialogue about the nature of and responses to terrorist threats.