De-securitization, sexual violence, and the politics of silence

Abstract

Drawing on the author’s archival research in Germany and the US, empirical data about US-allied troop sexual violence during post-World War II occupied Germany suggests a complex interplay between gender, security, silence production, and state identity. Through a feminist security studies lens, this article theorizes about an unexplored, obscured form of de-securitization: the unmaking of a security issue or referent object as active silence. De-securitization as silence provides a unique insight into silence production, gender’s normativity, and security. To move beyond de-securitization’s presumed politicization, the argument identifies specific hypervisibilities and new state-self, dominant memory regimes as acts, discursive representations, processes, or incidents of de-securitization – producing and reproducing active silence and facilitating the making of a newly imagined, ‘good’ German state-self.

The violent construction of silence(s): The case of targeted killings in North Waziristan, Pakistan

“…Silences are highly complex. In a de-securitization context, silences signify the unexplored yet normalized space between politicized (i.e., active involvement of an issue in the political discourse) and depoliticized (i.e., the issue disappears or is not part of the mainstream political discourse) (Hirschauer, 2019). As illustrated by literature, de-securitization as a discourse or practice can be adopted in a pre-emptive manner before the threshold of securitization is reached.…”

“…Speaking on silence, Hirschauer (2019) has contended that de-securitization moves through maintaining active practice of silence should not be characterized as passive inactivity but rather as a process of enduring productivity (of silence). Similar connotations attached to silence(-ing) have been voiced, especially in post-conflict context(s), along with the discourse on gender-related violence where strategic silencing had been employed to evade attention and avoid further potential for violence (McAlister et al, 2021).…”