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‘We’ the Subject: The Power and Failure of (In)Security

Department of Peace and Development Research, Göteborg University and the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Stockholm, Sweden

One way of exploring the paradox of (in)security and its implications for the reproduction of violence is to inquire into how the promise of a secure subject is inscribed in discourses of (in)security. Why is the successful securing of ‘we’ impossible? How might the supplementary relationship between security and insecurity inform the inscription of ‘we’ as the sovereign subject of security? Arguably, integral to the promise of an assured security is the concealment of the impossibility of fulfilling this very promise. This article aims to closely examine how a specific ‘we’, as the ‘subject’ of security, is constructed. Reading from the (in)security narratives of Mayan women - narratives that reflect the lived experiences of marginalized peoples struggling for security in resistance - it explores how the inscription of a specific and multiple identity, ‘Mayan women’, as the subject of security enacts and resists many of the dangers of securitizing identity that seem to be attendant to modern logics or grammars of security. Looking at how the impossible promise (or the ultimate failure) of securing identity plays out in a particular site among people whose voices are not often heard in writings on security invites reflection over failure as an opening for rethinking (in)securing identity.

Key Words: security • identity • violence • resistance • gender

Security Dialogue, Vol. 37, No. 2, 187-205 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0967010606066171


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