Identity and desecuritisation: the pitfalls of conflating ontological and physical security

Abstract

How can the Self move from a securitised to a non-securitised relation with the Other while its very identity depends on its relation to the Other? Within the existing critical approaches to security, this question, which encapsulates the complex interrelationship between identity and desecuritisation, has not been explored in a systematic manner. This article builds on the emerging literature on ontological security to develop a two-layered framework of security as both ontological and physical, wherein the relationship between identity and desecuritisation can be better analysed. I argue that the conflation of ontological and physical security within the existing critical approaches to security has generated an insufficient appreciation of how identity expands the possibilities for desecuritisation while imposing new limits. In particular, the framework offered in this article highlights the possibilities for achieving ontological security in the absence of securitisation and limits to desecuritisation that stem from ontological insecurity.

Introduction to 2018 special issue of European Security: “ontological (in)security in the European Union”

“…Kinnvall 2004a, Croft 2012a, 2012b, Chernobrov 2016, as well as of the entire research field on statecraft, security issues, and diplomacy questioning realist, liberal and even constructivist theories of state agency and security (e.g. Mitzen 2006a, 2006b, Steele 2008, Rumelili 2015a, 2015b, Flockhart 2016, others have maintained that claims of ontological security foreclose important spaces of resistance, alterity, and ethical deliberations (Rossdale 2015, Browning 2016 or that research on ontological security conceptualises identity as singular and largely consistent patterns of behaviour (Lebow 2016). In response to such critique we maintain that any focus on ontological securities and insecurities proceeds from a view of identity and identifications as a process of becoming rather than being.…”

‘Memory must be defended’: Beyond the politics of mnemonical security

“…McSweeney, 1999;Huysmans, 1998;Kinnvall, 2004;Mitzen, 2006a;Steele, 2008) argues security-as-being (as distinct from security-as-survival) to be an ontological self-identity need, or an ontologically inherent condition rather than a culturally circumscribed and constructed social good. Ontological security is accordingly a basic premise for constituting a self (Rumelili, 2013). It emerges as a logical derivative of the different constitutive conditions of a state.…”

“…Survival thus still emerges as an overriding imperative of both modes of security (cf. Rumelili, 2013). Therefore, even though debating the narrowly materialist and rationalist accounts of security studies traditionally conceived, the concept of ontological security nonetheless sustains the idea of security being the greatest social value, the highest objective of any social action, indeed the universal good.…”

“…Rumelili (2013), Steele (2008) and Mitzen (2006a) prominently acknowledge that seeking ontological security by rigid attachment to a monolithic identity narrative, or the securitization of identity, is only one possibility of achieving basic trust, and a dangerous one at that. Phillip Darby (2006: 465) has nonetheless pointed out that what is missing in most of the writings on security 'is not only that the acceptance of some insecurity is a condition of security itself, but that insecurity can be enabling as well as disabling'.…”

Critical situations, fundamental questions and ontological insecurity in world politics

“…I begin by briefly reviewing the literature on ontological security in IR with the aim of shedding the light on an important lacuna related to the analytical treatment of critical situations. In the second section, I draw on the work of Anthony Giddens to develop the concept of critical situations through translation of 2010 ;Croft 2012a;Kay 2012;Lupovici 2012;Alexandra Innes and Steele 2013;Chacko 2014;Gustafsson 2014;Rumelili 2015aRumelili , 2015bSubotić 2015). The limited scope of this paper cannot do justice to all discussions informed by OST.…”