What is 'critical' about 'critical security studies' ? [thoughts for Stockholm roundtable]

 For a long time, in International Relations and Security Studies at least, to be ‘critical’ is almost entirely congruent to being against the established Realist and Positivist tradition. This is associated with the end of the Cold War, and with the drastic changes that were made possible or enabled in our way of thinking by that moment. Twenty years after, critical IR theory (and a great part of Security thinking as well) seems to be still blocked in a perceived necessity to provide arguments against the pre-1990 tradition. Perhaps the time has come to attack new targets, at least. More important, a critique which continuously attacks an established tradition risks not only to lose its relevance once that tradition fades away, but also to become itself a dominant paradigm, a monolithical and imposing frame of thought that authoritatively leaves no room for alternatives. Perhaps it is time to question the ‘critical’ itself, and perhaps it is time to see it not in absolute terms, as ‘that-which-criticizes-Realism’, but as that way of thinking which, from a constant peripheral position, questions whatever paradigm is dominant and mainstream. Not for the sake of jealously challenging the establishment, but because of a belief in dialogue, change and improvement. In this respect, perhaps to be ‘critical’ can never be a theoretical position, but a methodology, a set of tools. Perhaps to be ‘critical’ is just a standpoint relative to a concrete situation.

This would mean that we need to take seriously the truism that ‘all critique should be constructive’. If ‘critical’ thought is to be used instrumentally in situations, it should provide more than arguments that disrupt, challenge, and bring uneasiness. Its aim should be to continuously attempt to improve the situation. There are already prominent voices in IR theory and Security Studies that emphasize the importance of emancipation as the ultimate goal of any social theory. Yet emancipation cannot be a universal concept; emancipation looks different for the white Eastern European male migrant who is being refused entry to France, than for the African woman living in dire poverty in the slums of Pretoria. This is obvious, but often forgotten. It makes no sense to blame an objective set of structures – be it capitalism, neo-liberalism, globalization, the state and so on – for the repression of the entire humanity. Emancipation and resistance are situational. Struggles against repression are local, and even if they might communicate themselves at the global level, their relevance cannot and must not be generalized beyond the specific conditions of their occurrence. We cannot have a critical security theory that attempts to emancipate the whole ‘humanity’. Sometimes the Westphalian straightjacket is a better tool than the blind Kantian universalism.

As a methodology, however, critical thought about security has to be complemented with practice. The critical methodology is more than data gathering or passive observation. We need to seriously engage with the ‘object of study’, to the extent to which the boundary between the researcher and the researched becomes blurred or fades away completely. This is happening already in many corners of security studies, as participatory techniques are more and more favoured against traditional positivist methodologies. Yet, this preference should not come just as an academic trick, a means to ensure originality and novelty. ‘Doing’ critical security studies should be aimed at serious engagement with the field, an engagement which in the end should strive to improve the conditions of the oppressed. If we are not just observing, but participating, our participation should bring some ‘added value’ to the people we study. When we want to understand, when we intervene in a situation, when we embed ourselves in the field, when we actively participate in an emancipatory struggle of any kind, we are not just gathering information for the next article. We are not undercover agents or curious tourists taking photographs. This might be too difficult to achieve in the security field, where there are many overlapping discourses, practices, agencies and interests at stake, and where it is hard to distinguish between repressive and enabling security practices. That is why we also need to engage even more with the concept of security, to discern between its different uses, and to acknowledge that we need special tools for studying it.

There seems to be a sort of struggle in critical security studies, a struggle in which we try to uncover the most interesting, less-known-in-our-field, original and radical author to infuse some new insights to how we think about security. Most of the time, these are authors that have already made a career in other disciplines, and that have inspired tons of studies and applications already, and that have dealt with sometimes rather divergent things from our interests with security. Their importance and utility to security studies is of course, beyond contestation. Interdisciplinarity is a virtue of the highest degree. Yet, perhaps we also need to focus on the peculiarities of the study and practice of security, on those aspects that make it a unique field that requires a set of original tools to understand it better. I do not really know how these tools should look like, but they have to emerge from a deeper understanding of security itself. We should understand how security works in different situations, for different agents and at different levels. There is a difference between security as a policy and security as emergency politics; between the security of an Italian community in Milan and the security of a Mexican community in Chiapas; between security at a pride parade and security at an anti G8 demonstration. All these nuances should be enough for us to try to develop a critical methodology of security that goes beyond borrowing from other social sciences.