Terrorism, System Thinking and Critical Discourse Analysis

Starting from a critical analysis of the US intervention in Afghanistan in response to the 11 September 2001 events, this paper seeks to propose a different approach to terrorism/counterterrorism analysis consisting in putting at the forefront the discursive dimension of the phenomenon through the lens of critical discourse analysis and in grounding it in a system thinking approach. The main argument is that ‘terrorism’ cannot be understood outside a context, language and culture, and that to be fully grasped as a dynamic phenomenon, it has to be framed in a systems perspective. Among the key elements of system thinking that can enhance the understanding of terrorism are boundary definition, casual loops and feedbacks, delays, emergent properties and overshoot‐and‐collapse.