Abstract. This article supplements and extends the ontological security theory in International Relations (IR) by conceptualizing the notion of mnemonical security. It engages critically the securitization of memory as a means of making certain historical remembrances secure by delegitimizing or outright criminalizing others. The securitization of historical memory by means of law tends but to reproduce a sense of insecurity among its contesters. To move beyond the politics of mnemonical security, two lines of action are outlined in the paper: (i) the desecuritization of social remembrance in order to allow for its repoliticization, and (ii) the rethinking of the Self-Other relationship in mnemonic conflicts. A radically democratic, agonistic memory politics is called for that would cease from the knee-jerk treatment of the issues of identity, memory and history as problems of security. Rather than trying to secure the insecurable, a genuinely agonistic mnemonic pluralism would enable to question different interpretations of the past, instead of pre-defining national or regional positions on legitimate remembrance in ontological security terms.
IntroductionJust like families should have the right to complete their own photo albums, such a right should also be reserved for states and nations. Otherwise we would be asked to undress ourselves completely, so that our identity could be utterly destroyed. ...attacks on the identity [are] targeted in the first place [at] ...the most important part of our identity Ð its core part. The core part is made of our inheritance. Of what we are and what is our inherent being like. That is precisely why all states, nations and people hold dear the story of their origins and inception...We should not deceive ourselves that our perseverance could be guaranteed exclusively with the sword of truth (Aaviksoo, 2011). Besides raising major ontological and epistemological questions about determining the limits of a collective 'self', anthropomorphizing the state and its collective 'memory', we are presented with a vision of the world where war serves as a key for understanding politics. 'Our memory must be defended' emerges as a variation of the omnipresent security-discourse, as yet another ringtone of the familiar 'society must be defended '-logic (see Foucault, 2003). Pursuing the security of the biographical self-narrative of the state (Berenskoetter, 2014) (of which mnemonical narratives occupy a central place) 1 as part of the state«s security policy invites us 1 Cf. the concepts of ontological narratives (which are used to define who we are, which, in turn, can be a precondition on knowing what to do) and public narratives (Somers, 1994:618-619).