Limits of security, limits of politics? A response
- PDF / 119,584 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 442 x 663 pts Page_size
- 71 Downloads / 253 Views
My article, ‘Security and the Other Scene: Desecuritization And Emancipation’ has triggered reactions to the political claims it put forth. The most controversial claim — in the eyes of the critics — was the formulation of the impossibility to think security only analytically, outside any political project. The other main criticism concerned the concept of politics formulated in the article. In my response, I argue first that political decisions are necessary to cut across the ‘indiscernability of knowledge’. Moreover, security is the political concept par excellence, as it entails questions about the politics that we enact. Second, I expose the closure that Schmitt’s concept of the political entails for our possibilities of thinking a different politics. Journal of International Relations and Development (2006) 9, 81–90. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jird.1800073 Keywords: analysis; emancipation; politics; security; theory
Introduction Reading the responses to my article on ‘Security and the Democratic Scene’ I also had ambiguous feelings of engagement/disengagement.1 Disengagement was triggered by what seemed to me a dismissal of that which did not fall within the realm of the familiar or known. Thus, a politics of dis-identification and contestation of concrete universality became the equivalent of liberal identity politics, despite a clear dis-identification from Habermasian a pproaches and liberalism in the article (Aradau 2004: 390, 402). Engagement was, however, prompted by the important questions that the reactions to the article have raised about the concept of politics and the role of theory. My article was part of a larger project that tackled the relation between security and politics and attempted to think another concept of politics that was neither politics of security nor a politics of liberal discussion.2 The desire to fall back upon a politics of ‘text and talk’ that would resonate with a liberal politics of negotiation and discussion or upon a politics of exception as the ultimate and only possible horizon of all politics appeared to me as symptomatic of some of the impasses of critical thought nowadays. Journal of International Relations and Development, 2006, 9, (81–90) r 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1408-6980/06 $30.00
www.palgrave-journals.com/jird
Journal of International Relations and Development Volume 9, Number 1, 2006
82
A politics of ‘text and talk’ is ambiguous about its own limits. ‘Text and talk’ already implies legitimate speakers who can formulate meaningful discourses rather than apolitical rants or engage in a debate rather than in irrational outbursts of violence. Yet, as I have pointed out in ‘Security and the democratic scene’, the gates of communication sometimes need to be opened by force. Moreover, assuming that securitization, just like any other discourse, allows for argumentative contestation obscures the way in which security practices (rather than just discourses) have ordered societies to the exclusion of the enemies of order. In my reading, securitization is not only a dis
Data Loading...
