Abstract: This talk, something of a polemic, applies a critical structural realist (CSR) perspective to arrive at a critical judgment. A goal of CSR is to act as a solvent of the palimpsest of understandings of actualities to arrive at those that are approximately truer and critique those that are not. The realities critiqued are those bearing upon American exceptionalism. Critical analysis of US exceptionalism inquires into the US government's role in four different varieties of terrorism. These are state terrorism, proxy state terrorism, resistance terrorism, and response terrorism. On the basis of this analysis it is judged that American exceptionalism is a ‘Design of darkness to appall'.

Key words: American exceptionalism, critical structural realism, terrorism

Biography: Stephen Reyna is currently an Associate at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology and Honorary Professor at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute of the University of Manchester. He is a Co-Editor of Anthropological Theory; author of Wars without End (1991), Connections (2002), and Deadly Contradictions (2016); as well as numerous edited books and articles dealing with theory and African ethnography.