Matrix comments by Lene Hansen

In my talk for the RA135 class, I argued in favor of revising the Matrix to make it more poststructuralist and discursive. I held that the Matrix appears to be based on an objective assessment of threats, but that it would benefit from taking a turn towards a discursive conceptualization. The distinction between an objective and a subjective conceptualization of security goes back to Arnold Wolfer’s classical article “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol” and it points to the importance of threats to acquired values, but also to (subjective) fears that such values be attacked. The importance of subjective elements has been theorized using the concepts of beliefs and perceptions, yet these perspectives keep in place an objective conceptualization insofar as they see the subjective as interfering with or distorting an objective assessment. Hence for instance the concern with ‘misperceptions’.

Discursive conceptualizations break with the objective-subjective distinction by arguing that there is no objective definition of (in)security, but rather that ‘security’ should be understood as a speech act. Using ‘security’ is, in the words of Ole Wæver and the Copenhagen School, to securitize an issue, that is, to construct it as being of such importance to ‘our’ survival that radical measures are called for. ‘Security’ thus refers to the political modality of threat and dangers, not to an objective level of threats. A discursive conception of security differs from a subjective one, in that it does not see ‘words of security’ as (mis)perceptions interfering with what is objectively security. It is a social and a political conception of security, in that it points to how security is constituted in language, and how securitizing actors articulate threats and dangers in the attempt to have these accepted by their relevant audiences.

Coming from a Poststructuralist perspective, I would be in favor of pushing the speech act approach of the Copenhagen School in a more Foucaultian direction. I would argue that in addition to seeing security as the construction of a particular political logic, it should be noted that constructions of threat always imply the delineation of Self/Selves and Other(s). To argue that something or someone is threatening is to constitute a ‘who’, who is threatened, and to constitute a set of subjects who are part of forming – or countering – this threat. This implies that the construction of political subjects (naming the relevant subjects and deciding on their identity) is indeed as, if not more, important than whether there is a threat or not. Thus the question isn’t whether ‘terrorism’ is a threat or not, but how the ‘terrorist subject’ is formed, how certain activities are defined as ‘terrorist’, and what the use of the ‘terrorist’ terms does to provide ‘Us’ with the rights to fight ‘terrorism’.

The consequences of taking a discursive approach to The Matrix would be at least two-fold. First, it would imply asking what important securitizing actors (at national, regional and global levels) constitute as threats (one should note that securitizing actors might usually be top-politicians or international institutions, such as NATO or the European Union. Securitizing actors are in other words often individuals. This however is not to say there is an individual concept of security, since what securitizing actors securitize is in most cases threats to national, global, or regional security. Individuals are rarely referent objects of security.) Second, it would also involve analyzing what Others and Selves (what political subjects) are constructed in discourses of threat and insecurity. This in turn would call for more work on the relationship between ‘the human’ and ‘the state’, including how non-state subjectivities as collectivities rather than atomistic ‘humans’ could be drawn in.

Lene Hansen, University of Copenhagen

Posted by Lene Hansen on December 11, 2006 12:35 PM | Permalink

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