Accounting for inequalities: divided selves and divided states in International Relations
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231158529 |
| Author | Alexandria Innes |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231158529
European Journal of
International Relations
2023, Vol. 29(3) 651 –672
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661231158529
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E
JR
I
Accounting for inequalities:
divided selves and divided
states in International
Relations
Alexandria Innes
City, University of London, UK
Abstract
Ontological security studies have added complexity to the state level of analysis in
International Relations (IR) by embracing an approach that permits moving across
and between levels of analysis without calcifying an assumption as to who or what
constitutes the key actors of international politics. I draw on a case study of gender-
based violence and subsequent responses to argue that ontological security studies
in IR have thus far failed to fully account for intersectional inequalities within social
narratives of security. I argue that the state is incapable of providing ontological
security because of inherent inequalities that underlie national identity. It is only in
attending to those inequalities that we can attend to the biases at the heart of the
state. Looking to ontological insecurity in the context of trauma provides a delineated
means of accessing these dynamics in a way that is formulated around a pathologised
ontological insecurity (rather than an existential, and therefore normalised, process of
ontological insecurity). Through the case study of the murder of Sarah Everard and the
responses, the value and necessity of an intersectional approach is made clear: trauma
responses that are positioned as transgressive by the patriarchal and White supremacist
dominating narrative are used within that narrative to undermine the credibility of
alternative narratives of security. The state adopts a technique of dividing identity and
constructing normatively oppressed identities as transgressive to consolidate the state
narrative of security.
Keywords
Ontological security, intersectionality, gender, violence, trauma
Corresponding author:
Alexandria Innes, Violence and Society Centre, City, University of London, London EC1V 0HB, UK.
Email: alexandria.innes@city.ac.uk
1158529EJT0010.1177/13540661231158529European Journal of International RelationsInnes
research-article2023
Article
652 European Journal of International Relations 29(3)
Introduction
One of the key contributions of ontological security theory in International Relations
(IR) is the scope it provides to add complexity to the analytical unit of the state in IR.
Steele (2008), in his germinal work on ontological security theory in IR, defended his
adoption of the state level of analysis. He pointed to the potential offered by ontological
security to theorise emotions at the level of the state, for which it is necessary to travel
through the ‘emotional connection that fetishizes the authority of a nation state to pro-
mote the “national interest” . . . the citizen’s existential experience can only be com-
pleted through the state itself’ (Steele, 2008: 16). More recently, Vieira (2016) adopted a
Lacanian discursive approach, acknowledging that this permits moving across levels of
analysis from individual to state, without calcifying an assumption as to who or what
constitutes the key actors of international politics. Rumelili (2020) described ontological
security as ‘pragmatically’ situated across levels of analysis, again recognising the flex-
ibility this offers with respect to constituting the state both as composed of individual
citizens and simultaneously as a unitary entity that can be understood to act and feel.
Edjus and Rečević (2021) connect these separate dimensions of the state, moving through
levels of analysis to conceptualise ontological security as an ‘emergent phenomenon’
that is produced in a bottom-up way starting with the individual, spreading through a
community and reaching a tipping point to manifest at the state level. Moreover, onto-
logical security theorists have critiqued the centrality of the state in IR; for example,
Delehanty and Steele (2009) note the masculine bias at the heart of state-dominant auto-
biographical narratives. Kinnvall (2006) demonstrates how subnational groups that chal-
lenge an ontologically securing identity become constructed as threatening Others. Mac
Ginty (2019) targets the everyday of ontological security, pointing to the domestic space
of the home as the foremost referent of security for an individual. Rossdale (2015) argues
that the power relations at the heart of ontological security narratives are reproduced
within IR theorising and preclude the possibility of recognising the political potential of
fractionalised identities, that is, a political potential that can counteract the chauvinism
of state-based and patriarchal narratives of security.
This research builds on these critiques of the centrality of the state and of state-based
discourses of security. I argue that ontological security theory thus far has failed to fully
account for intersectional inequalities within social narratives of security. Looking to
trauma theory, and trauma as a producer of ontological insecurity, I seek to critically
examine the added potential of ontological security in IR if one decisively rejects the
conventional levels of analysis in IR as a framework for theorising the international
social and political world. The objective in this sense is to avoid the reification of the
state and to contest the power narratives of the state, while simultaneously acknowledg-
ing the empirical positioning of the state in international politics. The motivation for this
dyadic rejection and acknowledgement of the conceptual power of the state is to better
address the form and functioning of social inequalities in security theorising. This move
can be replicated across IR theory as a means of counteracting the extant biases attached
to the state. There are important transnational, supra-national and extra-national inequal-
ities that reveal complex social forces in international politics. These inequalities might
manifest differently in different states but are also continuous across state borders (such
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