Nevertheless, the conclusion must be that – on their own merit – theories of the sublime are an insufficient explanation for the grossly disproportionate importance placed on the containment of the limitless threat.
While said threat may have highlighted the subject’s inability to apprehend that which is without measure, the attacks of September 11 revealed Al-Qaeda as a ‘false sublime’. Instead of remaining as a shadowy, inferred risk, ‘the threatening potentiality is realised … [r]eal physical pain [was] inflicted’ (link, p. 637).
As a limitless threat, Devetak concludes that global terrorism of Al-Qaeda cannot operate simply through symbolic and ideational analogies to terror, but ‘rather, it enacts it.’ (ibid)
