SILENCING AND MARGINALIZING OF THE VULNERABLE THROUGH DISCURSIVE PRACTICES IN THE POST 9/11 ERA

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1 SILENCING AND MARGINALIZING OF THE VULNERABLE THROUGH DISCURSIVE PRACTICES IN THE POST 9/11 ERA Ebru Öztürk As it has been stated that traditionally, when we use the term security we assume three basic questions are being asked: Security from what? Security by whom? Security achieved through which means? (Liotta, 2002: ) 1, I focus on what I see as the fourth essential question: security for whom? The traditional answer to this question has been the state, although this has not been without its consequent challenges. The new machismo heralded by the post-9/11 global war against terror threatens to silence the progress made during the 1990s with regard to building a global normative consensus on the importance of human security. Today, more than ever, human security coexists uneasily with national security. The popularization of human security as a functional security concept referring to the individual instead of the state has given a measure of legitimacy to the individualbased approach. The importance and role of the individual in security is now recognized, but often only from the position of elites as they determine individual security needs. Within this paper, I, with following the Hoogensen & Rottem 2 s point of view, argue that it is not sufficient to assume individual security needs from a distance; rather, it is both necessary and more effective to respond to the security needs articulated by individuals themselves, particularly those who are the least secure. (Hoogensen & Vigeland Rottem, 2004). While the paper will explore the gender identity as an integral perspective of security, the securitization theory of Copenhagen School and Feminist Security scholars approach to the security following question will be asked parallel to this focus: Through what processes are some actors empowered to speak security on behalf of particular communities? And to what extent are there alternative articulations of security, and how have these voices been silenced or delegitimized? While identity is crucial to my understanding of security (McSweeney, 1999: 5 3 ) I would like to demonstrate the significance of gender for security beside the oftenlinked concepts as ethnicity and race. Recognizing gender as a significant dimension of identity and security opens the door to non-state-based views of security and illustrates how identity shapes individual and collective security needs (Hoogensen & Vigeland Rottem, 2004). 1 Liotta, P. H., 2002, Boomerang Effect: The Convergence of National and Human Security, Security Dialogue, vol. 33, no. 4, pp Gender identity and the subject of security. Hoogensen G., Rottem, S. V. (2004) Security Dialogue, 35 (2), pp McSweeney, B. Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School, Review of International Studies, 22 (1996) pp

2 One of the most common arguments against adopting the human or individual approach to security is the argument that if we define security outside of state interests and actions, especially if we focus on the individual as the new referent, then we succumb to pressures to define security as anything and everything, rendering the concept meaningless. Recognizing security needs from the individual point of view inevitably widens the parameters of what security means. Setting new parameters, especially based on the security of the individual, is a significant task. The question is then, do we take on this task, or do we accept state-oriented security as the only legitimate articulation because the parameters are conveniently narrow and manageable? State and Security The concept of security must extricate itself from the purely militaristic dimension but prevail as a notion that entails a logic of necessity. This is seen in connection to means. The end is to securitize individuals, not a system of states. Ole Wæver and the Copenhagen School address the historic dimensions inherent in the security discourse. The goal of the Copenhagen School is defined as the following: Based on a clear idea of the nature of security, securitization studies aims to gain an increasingly precise understanding of who securitizes, on what issues (threats), for whom (referent objects), why, with what results and, not least, under what conditions (what explains when securitization is successful). (Buzan et al. 1998: 32) 4. The success of the Copenhagen School stems in part from its willingness and ability to engage the widening-deepening debate in security studies, that is whether the concept of security should be expanded to cover other issues or sectors than the military and secondly, whether entities other than the state should be able to make the claim to have its threats located under the security rubric. Securitization refers to the process of presenting an issue in security terms, in other words as an existential threat: The way to study securitization is to study discourse and political constellations: When does an argument with this particular rhetorical and semiotic structure achieve sufficient effect to make an audience tolerate violations of rules that would otherwise have to be obeyed? If by means of an argument about the priority and urgency of an existential threat the securitizing actor has managed to break free of procedures or rules he or she would otherwise be bound by, we are witnessing a case of securitization. (Buzan et al. 1998: 25) 4 Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998). 2

3 It is the discursive power of securitization which brings together actors and objects: securitizing actors are defined as actors who securitize issues by declaring something a referent object existentially threatened ; referent objects as things that are seen to be existentially threatened and that have a legitimate claim to survival The constitution of referent objects, is in other words, closely linked to the practice of securitization; they do not exist independently of discursive articulation, it is through discourse that security is defined, and where actors successfully manifest their position and capacity. On the crucial question of how to define securitizing actors, the theory is less specific (Hensen, 2000); it is argued that common securitizing actors are political leaders, bureaucracies, governments, lobbyists, and pressure groups, and that their identification depends less on who performs the speech than of what logic shapes the action. (Buzan et al. 1998: 40-41) The act of securitization is always related to the claim of the presence of an existential threat, and this leads the Copenhagen School to make a distinction between international security and social security Within the former, it is argued, security is about survival. It is when an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated object (traditionally, but not necessarily, the state, incorporating government, territory, and society) (Buzan et al. 1998: 21) In contrast, social security concerns questions of entitlement and social justice, and problems within this field are not located within the same rhetoric of danger, The distinction between social and international security relies less on whether an issue, or potential security problem, is located at the national or the international level, than on the extent to which the situation is successfully presented as one of collective survival. The Copenhagen School argues that what constitutes the field of security studies is the concern with international security ; problems falling within the realm of social security might be worthy of political consideration and important in their own right, but they should not be confused with those of international security. The school maintains that gender belongs to social security, because it concerns individual not collective security. Women are in the discourse, but are relegated to the margins. With this argument, the dominant malestream thinking on security is effectively maintained and universalized. In his initial articulations of the concept, Wæver (1995) defined security as a speech act, with securitization referring to that form of linguistic representation that positioned a particular issue as an existential threat. 3

4 Through what processes are some actors empowered to speak security on behalf of particular communities? And to what extent are there alternative articulations of security, and how have these voices been silenced or delegitimized? Wæver(1995) 5 located securitization itself in language theory, and particularly Austin s articulation of the speech act. In this framework, language itself becomes security in the sense that particular forms of language spoken or written in a particular context constitute security. First, language is only one (albeit the most central) means through which meaning is communicated. Michael Williams (2003) 6 has suggested that television images of 11 September and in particular those of the World Trade Center towers were central to the development of dominant perceptions of security and threat in the American context. Frank Möller (2007) 7 also discusses visual representations of the 11 September attacks along with conflict in Iraq in pointing to the ways in which photographic exhibitions are similarly able to communicate particular meanings of security and threat. The designation of threats justifies the use of extraordinary measures to handle them, further noting that the invocation of security has been the key to legitimizing the use of force. As Wæver (1995: 57) argues, security is articulated only from a specific place, in an institutional voice, by elites. Such a focus serves to marginalize the experiences and articulations of the powerless in global politics, presenting them at best as part of an audience that can collectively consent to or contest securitizing moves, and at worst as passive recipients of elite discourses. In perhaps the clearest statement of this limitation, Lene Hansen 8 (2000) has discussed the ways in which the focus on speech acts means contributing to the silencing of women, whose suffering and engagement with security discourses is neglected in a framework that focuses on the articulations of the powerful: of those 5 Wæver, Ole, Securitization and Desecuritization, in Ronnie D Lipschutz, ed., On Security. New York: Columbia University Press (46 86). 6 Williams, Michael C. (2003) Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics, International Studies Quarterly 47(4): Möller, Frank (2007) Photographic Interventions in Post-9/11 Security Policy, Security Dialogue 38(2): Hansen, Lene, The Little Mermaid s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School, Millennium 29(2):

5 whose voices can be heard and of those whose successful attempts at securitization can result in the enactment of emergency measures. Such a framework clearly has little to say about the plight of the most vulnerable in global politics and their experiences of and engagement with security and threat. Indeed for Hansen, the Copenhagen School does not simply neglect the experiences of women but in fact serves to further marginalize them. If security is a speech act, Hansen (2000: 306) suggests, then it is simultaneously deeply implicated in the production of silence. Feminist security scholars argue that approaching security issues through a gendered lens allows for the rejection of the assumption that power, control, and violence are necessary to ensure safety. A comprehensive security can only be achieved if the relations of domination and submission in all walks of life are eliminated and gender justice is achieved. In short, the focus only on dominant voices and their designation of security and threat is normatively problematic, contributing to the silencing of marginal voices and ignoring the ways in which such actors have attempted precisely to contest these security constructions. This can be called security as silence : a situation where the potential subject of security has no, or limited, possibility of speaking its security problem. 5