Security<i>qua</i>existential surviving (while becoming otherwise) through performative leaps of faith

Arfi, Badredine

doi:10.1017/s1752971920000123

Cited by 19 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“… 35 For an application of Lacan in IR foregrounding the temporal dimension, see Solomon 2014. See also Arfi's 2020 discussion of survival as constantly performing a ‘leap of faith’.…”

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confidence: 99%

Anxiety, time, and agency

Berenskötter

2020

Int. Theory

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This article scrutinizes two concepts central to the ontological security framework, agency and anxiety. Its point of departure is the view that conceptions of agency are expressed in the attempt to become ontologically secure, which requires a more careful look at how humans try to satisfy the need for a ‘stable sense of Self’ by putting in place ‘anxiety controlling mechanisms’. This, in turn, raises the question what these mechanisms are supposed to control, which shifts attention to the concept of ‘anxiety’. Going back to Kierkegaard's original treatment and Heidegger's existential phenomenology, the article reviews the emergence of anxiety as a core feature of the human condition and highlights what it calls the ‘anxiety paradox’: the tendency of reflexive humans facing the freedom of being in time to attach themselves to constructs that provide a sense of temporal continuity, or certainty. The article argues that the existing ontological security literature is trapped in this paradox and therefore cannot account for radical forms of agency.

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“… 35 For an application of Lacan in IR foregrounding the temporal dimension, see Solomon 2014. See also Arfi's 2020 discussion of survival as constantly performing a ‘leap of faith’.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety, time, and agency

Berenskötter

2020

Int. Theory

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“…10 These defense mechanisms 'kick in' in response to an ontological insecurity set on constructing a secure image of what tomorrow holds, and can make masses and elites that may otherwise have little in common unite around an ideology that relieves them from the void by providing an apocalyptic and redemptive narrative vision of possible solutions to the crisis. 11 Understanding such unconscious defense mechanisms requires an understanding of ontological security as a 'security of becoming' rather than a 'security of being' as originally understood by Giddens,12 in which the ontological insecurities people experience at times of crisis compel a 'leap in faith' 13 in terms of an imagined secure past and future that can relieve the individual from their present predicament.…”

Section: Crisis Narratives: Ontological Insecurity and Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Covid-19: crisis, emotional governance and populist fantasy narratives

Kinnvall

2023

International Relations

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This short article discusses how different fantasy narratives have come together during the Covid-19 crisis in various far-right movements, parties and audiences across the world and how much of these fantasies rely on racialised and gendered notions of a fantastical world-order in which particular forms of emotional governance provide a relief and sense of security to certain societal groups. This involves a close engagement with crisis and crisis narratives in relation to ontological insecurity and anxiety; how such crisis narratives have materialised in fantasies related to borders and corona nationalism, and the emotional governance of these particular fantasies in the hands of populist leaders and their increasingly receptive audiences.

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“… 9 While Arfi 2020 asserts the ‘out-of-jointness’ of time, we highlight narrative's capacity to time fragmentary experiences.…”

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confidence: 92%

Anxiety, time, and ontological security's third-image potential

Hom

Steele

2020

Int. Theory

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In this article, we begin to extend ontological security to third-image theorizing. We argue that the autobiographical conceptions of international agents, along with other stories told about international politics, constitute ‘the international’ as a system, society, community, or inhabitable realm beyond and between first- and second-image relations. To develop this point, we focus on the relationship between narrative, anxiety, and time. We contend that ontological security issues resound in the third image once we shift from treating the international realm as social agents' external environment to treating it as a collective project in its own right. Doing so highlights the promise of ontological security studies for further differentiating international fear and anxiety, for enabling novel explanations of international phenomena, and for elaborating third-image identity formation as a wide-ranging timing effort to surmount a dynamic, processual environment full of interconnected coordination challenges.

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Securityquaexistential surviving (while becoming otherwise) through performative leaps of faith

Cited by 19 publications

References 13 publications

Anxiety, time, and agency

Anxiety, time, and agency

Covid-19: crisis, emotional governance and populist fantasy narratives

Anxiety, time, and ontological security's third-image potential

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