Aporias of Security

Abstract

Maybe the [task] nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are. We have to . .. get rid of the political "doublebind," which is the simultaneous individualization and totaliza tion of modern power structures. . . . The political, ethical, so cial, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from the state's institutions, but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of indi vidualisation which is linked to the state.-Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power"What does it mean to be secure? Should we even need to ask? Surely we know. We know that security is one of the most funda mental human needs: an irrefutable guarantee of safety and wellbeing, economic assurance and possibility, sociability and order; of a life lived freely without fear or hardship. That security is a uni versal good available to all, and a solemn pledge between citizens and their political leaders, to whom their people's security is "the first duty," the overriding goal of domestic and international policy making. As such it has been able to trace a powerful path between subject and world, state and citizen, to promise simultaneously a solution to the inchoate fears and insecurities of everyday life and the enormous^ spatial, cultural, economic, and geopolitical com plexities of government. In short, security remains one of moder nity's most stubborn and enduring dreams. However, I believe that, more than ever, we do need to ask what it is to be secure. Surely we no longer know what security isin that Platonic sense. Surely more than ten years after the end of the Cold War, after the Clinton Doctrine and the destruction of the Twin Towers, after humanitarian and policy disasters in Indochina, Africa, East Timor, the Middle East, and Central America, and after a growing body of humanist and critical scholarship has questioned

Stakeholder security: the new western way of counter-terrorism?

“…The 'top-down', executive, efforts to manage threat definitions, bodies and information against an insecure backdrop certainly appear to fit this conceptualisation of policy formulation as an exercise in precautionary risk management (see also Burke 2002, Kessler & Daase 2008, Kittelsen 2009). In terms of the 'bottom up' initiatives of the new topography, however, this approach appears rather less complete.…”

Revolutionary securitization: an anthropological extension of securitization theory

“…Seen from this perspective, 'security' represents the optimal point of balance, so to speak, between contrasting individual wills and collective agendas (Rotchshild, 1995;Rose 1999;Burke 2002). Mindful, obviously, of the contested and ambiguous character of the term, we use the adjective 'liberal' in a conceptually minimal sense, to refer to the idea that political processes operate upon (the question of sovereignty) and are sustained by (the question of legitimacy) people who in an irreducible sense remain transcendent to them.…”

Dharma Power: Searching for Security in Post–New Order Indonesia

“…In doing so, the Balinese took advantage of the new political climate that made it possible to mobilize along ethnic and religious lines. By adopting this solution and embracing the seductive yet utopian promise of modern logics of security, which thrive on fear and violent exclusions (Burke 2002;Der Derian 1995), they may also have fed the increasing spiral of insecurity.…”