Know your Schmitt: a godfather of truth and the spectre of Nazism

In a recent article in the Review of International Studies Hans-Karl Pichler argues that Hans Morgenthau's intellectual universe was saturated by 'typically European philosophical problems' which he transferred to an American political context. He shows this by looking at how Morgenthau tried to overcome the value determinacy of social science, as pointed out by Weber, by grounding his political realist theory in a Schmittean understanding of the political, which defines war–the friend/enemy distinction–as the essence of the political and founds it anthropologically in the evil, dangerous nature of human beings.2 I have a problem with the article because Schmitt emerges as just a serious political theorist, which he indeed was. But he was also more than an important political theorist. He was a member of the Nazi party between 1933 and 1936 explicitly providing legal justifications for the Nazi regime and its policies, thus becoming for some the Kronjurist of the Nazis. In that period also anti-Semitic references started appearing in his work. Since then his name and work have carried the spectre of Nazism and by implication of the Holocaust with them. This spectre is nowhere sensed in Pichler's analysis. It does not seem to have any grip on Pichler's narrative. I think this is unfortunate because I believe this spectre should always haunt any invoking of Schmitt or Schmittean understandings of the political. The reason is not to silence discussions about his understanding of the political, but rather to render normative questions about the ethico-political project his concept of the political incorporates as the kernel of any working with or on Schmitt's ideas

What's in an act? On security speech acts and little security nothings

This article makes a claim for re-engaging the concept of ‘act’ in the study of securitization. While much has been written about the discursive and communicative aspects of securitizing, the concept of ‘act’ that contains much of the politicality of the speech-act approach to security has been relatively ignored.The task of re-engaging ‘acts’ is particularly pertinent in the contemporary context, in which politically salient speech acts are heavily displaced by securitizing practices and devices that appear as banal, little security nothings. The main purpose of the article is to begin the framing of a research agenda that asks what political acts can be in diffuse security processes that efface securitizing speech acts

Mobilising (global) democracy: a political reading of mobility between universal rights and the mob

This article argues that a political reading of mobility is instrumental for understanding the role of democracy within globalised structures of power. Relegated to a socio-economic background that prompts new engagements with democracy, mobility has been neglected as a condition of possibility and as a form of political democratic practice. Drawing on Georg Simmel's sociology of money, we show that practices of mobility become democratic moments in relation to structures of power that are constituted across the territorial circumscription of national states. Understood as a particular form of sociality, mobility can work upon structures of power through universal rights and the politics of the 'mob'. In this sense, practices of mobility are also democratic inscriptions of equality. Keywords: democracy, mass politics, migration, mobility, rights, Simme

Dire et écrire la sécurité : le dilemme normatif des études de sécurité

On constate depuis quelques années, en Europe de l'Ouest et ailleurs, un retour du discours sur la sécurité dans le domaine des affaires sociétales et intérieures. Les références multiples, dans les débats politiques et académiques, à une nouvelle construction sécuritaire qui relie terrorisme, drogue, immigration et droit d'asile, ont généré une nouvelle problématique dans les études de sécurité . On s'est penché sur le processus qui a amené des questions d'identité culturelle, ethnique et d'..

Introducing critical security methods

Critical security studies (CSS) is now an established fi eld of scholarship. Central to CSS is the shared assumption that security threats and insecurities are not simply objects to be studied or problems to be solved, but the product of social and political practices. CSS aims to understand how those practices work and their social and political implications

Securitization and the construction of security

Those interested in the construction of security in contemporary international politics have increasingly turned to the conceptual framework of `securitization'. This article argues that while an important and innovative contribution, the securitization framework is problematically narrow in three senses. First, the form of act constructing security is defined narrowly, with the focus on the speech of dominant actors. Second, the context of the act is defined narrowly, with the focus only on the moment of intervention. Finally, the framework of securitization is narrow in the sense that the nature of the act is defined solely in terms of the designation of threats. In outlining this critique, the article points to possibilities for developing the framework further as well as for the need for those applying it to recognize both limits of their claims and the normative implications of their analysis. I conclude by pointing to how the framework might fit within a research agenda concerned with the broader construction of security