Ebru Öztürk 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: 474–475)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 & Rottem2’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: 53) 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. 473-488. 2 Gender
identity and the subject of security. Hoogensen G., Rottem, S. V. (2004) Security Dialogue,
35 (2) , pp. 155-171. 3 McSweeney, B. ‘Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School’, Review of International
Studies, 22 (1996) pp. 81-93 1 Ebru Öztürk 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 Ebru Öztürk 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 Ebru Öztürk 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
Wæver, Ole, 1995. ‘Securitization and Desecuritization’, in Ronnie D Lipschutz, ed., On Security.
New York: Columbia University Press (46–86).
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6
Williams, Michael C. (2003) ‘Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics’,
International Studies Quarterly 47(4): 511-32.
7
Möller, Frank (2007) ‘Photographic Interventions in Post-9/11 Security Policy’, Security Dialogue
38(2): 179-96.
8
Hansen, Lene, 2000. ‘The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in
the Copenhagen School’, Millennium 29(2): 285–306
4 Ebru Öztürk 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.
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