Literary representations of risk: terror, crime and punishment

Abstract

All forms of terror seem to aim at the destruction of the individual experience and judgement of people. Part of our world is threatened by political terror (as represented first by Dostoevsky) or ethnic and cultural terror (as convincingly described by J. M. Coetzee), but it seems possible, at least in principle, to find an answer to these threats. Is religion the primary remedy against nihilism and, therefore, also against terrorism as Dostoevsky believes? Or is the quasi or semi-autonomous self the major antagonist of terrorism? The genetic manipulation of the human race, as sketched by Michel Houellebecq in his novel Les Particules élémentaires (1998), holds a threat that is irreversible. The cloning of human beings, which supposedly offers a solution to many of our problems, seems too high a risk to take.