Description:
<jats:p>This article addresses the question ‘can literature help us with terrorism?’ by interrogating the common assumption that terrorism always ‘has an agenda’ that needs to be understood and addressed. The article offers a critique of Robert Applebaum’s argument that Shakespeare’s <jats:italic>Macbeth</jats:italic> represents a denial of the political agenda of the Gunpowder Plot, and argues that terrorism – especially contemporary Islamic terrorism – is nihilistic, merely destructive and offers (in Derrida’s words) ‘nothing good to be hoped for’. The achievement of <jats:italic>Macbeth</jats:italic> is to expose the ‘mystery of iniquity’ (2 Thess. 2.7) that lies behind all terrorism.</jats:p>