Security Dialogue · 2015 · 341 citations · 52 references
Social SciencesInternational RelationsPolitical ScienceInternational SecurityMemorySecurity StudiesNational MemoryNational SecurityCollective RemembranceHistory PoliticsInternational Relations HistoryInternational Relations TheoryMemory ContestationMnemonic PoliticsOntological AnalysisPostwar Memory
The securitization of historical memory through law often legitimizes certain remembrances while delegitimizing or criminalizing others, creating insecurity among those contesting the narrative. The article seeks to extend ontological security theory by proposing a radically democratic, agonistic politics of memory that moves beyond mnemonical security through desecuritization and rethinking self–other relations. It conceptualizes mnemonical security and outlines two actions—desecuritizing social remembrance to enable repoliticization and rethinking self–other relations—to operationalize this agonistic approach.
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 to reproduce a sense of insecurity among the contesters of the ‘memory’ in question. To move beyond the politics of mnemonical security, two lines of action are outlined: (i) the ‘desecuritization’ of social remembrance in order to allow for its repoliticization, and (ii) the rethinking of the self–other relations in mnemonic conflicts. A radically democratic, agonistic politics of memory is called for that would avoid the knee-jerk reactive treatment of identity, memory and history as problems of security. Rather than trying to secure the unsecurable, a genuinely agonistic mnemonic pluralism would enable different interpretations of the past to be questioned, in place of pre-defining national or regional positions on legitimate remembrance in ontological security terms.
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