Arrangement

Presentasjonen hennar baserer seg på artikkelen «Forgetting ISIS: enmity, drive and repetition in security discourse».

Introduksjon til artikkelen:

“This paper explores the reconstitution and repetition of threat imaginaries in security discourse, with particular focus on the War on Terror era. Upon vanquishing the enemy (whether an individual militant or militant group) no tangible increase in ‘security' is claimed by securitising actors. Instead, the security apparatus turns away and reconstructs the figuration of insecurity elsewhere. Al Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS replace each other as signifiers for the most profound threat to international ordar. 

The article positions this compulsive refiguration of enemies within an aversion to attaining a state of ‘security'. The paper uses psychoanalytic concepts of drive and jouissance to argue that security imaginaries play out fantasies of insecurity to suture the symbiotic relationship between subjectivity and power. If enmity was permanently ended or victory attained, society would need to confront the continued experience of ‘lack' (ontological insecurity) – something promised to disappear upon the resolution of hostilities. The fantasy of interpellation would collapse at this point. The article contributes to Critical Security Studies by explicitly addressing the repetitive constitution of terrorist threats. It goes beyond constructivist understandings of othering to explain why the resolution of insecurity is disavowed and why enmity is continually restaged.”

Charlotte Heath-Kelly er førsteamanuensis i politikk og internasjonale studium ved University of Warwick i Storbritannia. Forskinga hennar undersøkjer integrasjonen antiterrorisme har i europeiske helse- og sosialtenester. Ho har akkurat avslutta ein studie finansiert av Wellcome Trust om førebyggingsstrategien til Storbritannias National Health Service som trenar opp legar og sjukepleiarar til å identifisere potensielle radikale pasientar. Heath-Kelly har publisert fem bøker om terrorisme, antiterrorisme og kritisk metode innanfor politikk og internasjonale relasjonar.

Seniorforskar på NUPI Rita Augestad Knudsen leier teoriseminaret.