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The ISIS videos staging the executions of James Foley and Steven Sotloff are usually understood as devices to deter, recruit, and “sow terror.” Left unanswered are questions about how these videos work; to whom they are addressed; and what about them can so continuously bring new audiences into existence. The evident durability of ISIS despite the imminent defeat of its state, coupled with the political impact of these particular videos, make these questions unusually urgent. Complete answers require analysis of the most understudied aspect of the videos that also happens to be vastly understudied in US political science: the visual mode of the violence. Approaching these videos as visual texts in need of close reading shows that they are, among other things, enactments of “retaliatory humiliation” (defined by Islamists) that perform and produce an inversion of power in two registers. It symbolically converts the public abjection of Foley and Sotloff by the Islamist executioner into an enactment of ISIS’ invincibility and a demonstration of American impotence. It also aims to transpose the roles between the US, symbolically refigured as mass terrorist, failed sovereign, and rogue state, and ISIS, now repositioned as legitimate, invincible sovereign. Such rhetorical practices seek to actually constitute their audiences through the very visual and visceral power of their address. The affective power of this address is then extended and intensified by the temporality that conditions it—what I call digital time. Digital time has rendered increasingly rare ordinary moments of pause between rapid and repetitive cycles of reception and reaction—moments necessary for even a small measure of distance. The result is a sensibility, long in gestation but especially ofthistime, habituated to thinking less and feeling more, to quick response over deliberative action.

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alls to examine the world from "non-Western" 1 perspectives have increased exponentially in recent years. 2 Such calls emerge, in part, as an antidote to what Thomas J. Biersteker recently identified as the geographical, linguistic, methodological, and political parochialism that has plagued a variety of Western approaches to the study of politics and international relations. 3 Yet the shift in emphasis from "center" to "periphery" derives as much from exigency as scholarly interest: while colonialism and imperialism brought different cultures, peoples, and regions into an arguably unprecedented proximity, the relatively recent advent of what is sometimes called "neocolonial globalization" significantly intensifies the exposure. 4 1 I place "West" and "non-West" here within quotation marks to signal how I will problematize such categories in this article. All subsequent references to "West" and "non-West" should be read as problematic, although I will omit the quotation marks.2 I presented an earlier version of this essay at a panel entitled "Looking at the World through Non-Western Eyes," at the 1998 International Studies Association Meeting, Washington, D.C., the theme of which was "One Field, Many Perspectives: Building the Foundations for Dialogue." The theme of dialogue among multiple worldviews and perspectives can be found in many academic panels, conferences, and publications, from specific workshops devoted to clashes and dialogues among civilizations to broadly cast international conferences intended to substantively and literally expand the scholarly representation of non-Western cultures.3 Thomas J. Biersteker, "Eroding Boundaries, Contested Terrain," International Studies Review 1, No. 1 (1999), p. 7. 4 Roland Robertson points out that as the term "globalization" gained popularity in the second half of the 1980s, it has taken on different meanings, not all necessarily compatible or precise.

The steadily increasing appeal of Islamic fundamentalist ideas has often been characterized as a premodern, antimodern or, more recently, as a postmodern phenomenon. To explore the relationship of Islamist political thought to modernity, and the usefulness of the terminology of “modernity” to situate and understand it, this article explores two comparisons. The first is a comparison across time, and involves the juxtaposition of a prominent nineteenth century Islamic “modernist” and the critique of modernity by an influential twentieth century Islamic fundamentalist thinker. The second is a comparison across cultures, and involves the juxtaposition of this Islamic fundamentalist critique and many Western theorists similarly critical of “the modern condition.” These comparisons suggest that Islamic fundamentalist political thought is part of a transcultural and multivocal reassessment of the value and definition of “modernity.” Such reassessments should be understood in terms of a dialectical relationship to “modernity,” one that entails not the negation of modernity but an attempt to simultaneously abolish, transcend, preserve and transform it.