The  phrase “War on Terror” has quietly been retired from\nofficial usage, but it persists in the American psyche, and our\nunderstanding of it is hardly complete. Nor will it be, W. J. T\nMitchell argues, without a grasp of the images that it spawned, and\nthat spawned it.

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Exploring the role of verbal and visual images in the War on\nTerror, Mitchell finds a conflict whose shaky metaphoric and\nimaginary conception has created its own reality. At the same time,\nMitchell locates in the concept of clones and cloning an anxiety\nabout new forms of image-making that has amplified the political\neffects of the War on Terror. Cloning and terror, he argues, share\nan uncanny structural resemblance, shuttling back and forth between\nimaginary and real, metaphoric and literal manifestations. In\nMitchell’s startling analysis, cloning terror emerges as the\ninevitable metaphor for the way in which the War on Terror has not\nonly helped recruit more fighters to the jihadist cause but\nundermined the American constitution with “faith-based” foreign and\ndomestic policies.

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Bringing together the hooded prisoners of Abu Ghraib with the\ncloned stormtroopers of the_Star Wars_saga, Mitchell draws\nattention to the figures of faceless anonymity that stalk the\never-shifting and unlocatable “fronts” of the War on Terror. A\nstriking new investigation of the role of images from our foremost\nscholar of iconology,_Cloning Terror_will expand our\nunderstanding of the visual legacy of a new kind of war and reframe\nour understanding of contemporary biopower and biopolitics.

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