The securitization audience in theologico-political perspective: Giorgio Agamben, doxological acclamations, and paraconsistent logic
| Author | Michael P. A. Murphy |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117819842330 |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117819842330
International Relations
2020, Vol. 34(1) 67 –83
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117819842330
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The securitization audience
in theologico-political
perspective: Giorgio
Agamben, doxological
acclamations, and
paraconsistent logic
Michael P. A. Murphy
University of Ottawa
Abstract
Over the past two decades, securitization theory has developed into a robust literature of cases and
critiques. The vast majority of the attention paid to securitization has been to the securitizing actor
and the referent object, leaving the audience – the body that determines the fate of a securitizing
move by accepting or rejecting the securitizing actor’s request – undertheorized. The audience is
presented as a problematic contradiction, because as a collectivity called by the securitizing actor it
appears to be a passive body, critiqued thereby as potentially irrelevant. On the other hand, both the
original Copenhagen school formulation of securitization theory and many of its current theorists
reaffirm the agency of the audience to actively determine the success or failure of the securitizing
move. This article turns to political theology for guidance, and explains the contradiction of the
passive/active audience through homology to the ekklesia and the acclamation of ‘amen’ in liturgical
doxology. The fact that the congregation is passive recipient of a call does not negate the essential
and substantial role that it must actively play, just as the contradiction of the passive/active description
of the securitization audience is not a problem of illogic, but a paraconsistent truth.
Keywords
audience, Copenhagen School, critical security studies, Giorgio Agamben, political theology,
securitization
The Copenhagen School of critical security studies, better known as securitization the-
ory, has produced a vast literature in the past two decades, and continues to draw
attention from new and familiar faces, in new and familiar places. As an example, the
Corresponding author:
Michael P. A. Murphy, University of Ottawa, 120 University Private, Room 7005, Ottawa, ON K1N6N5, Canada.
Email: mmurp078@uottawa.ca
842330IRE0010.1177/0047117819842330International RelationsMurphy
research-article2019
Article
68 International Relations 34(1)
twentieth anniversary of Security: A New Framework for Analysis was marked both by a
virtual special issue of Security Dialogue, where editor Mark Salter introduced a collec-
tion of major interventions in the securitization debate that ‘show the socio-political
assumptions that make the security theory schematic work or rather not work’,1 and by a
special issue of Global Discourse surveying securitization in the Non-West, in an effort
to show how the ‘‘shackles of Westphalia’ can be removed, creating spaces for further
ontological and epistemological study, while retaining the utility of the Copenhagen
School’s approach’.2 Yet despite the continued attention paid to this discursive approach
to critical security studies, tensions remain within the framework.
One such tension is the contradictory description of the audience as both a passive and
an active participant in the securitization act. The audience – seemingly – could only be
passive if the securitizing actor can select the relevant audience. This would appear to,
then, empty the audience of all agency, given that the securitizing actor would – hypo-
thetically, at least – be able to choose the most sympathetic audience available to maxi-
mize the likelihood of a successful securitizing act. This weakness, combined with
objections to the logical coherence of illocution dependent on speech act acceptance, has
led some critics of securitization theory ‘to bracket the audience from the securitization
process’, because it ‘is not an analytical concept, but rather a normative concept in ana-
lytical disguise’,3 meaning that, in final analysis, ‘there simply is no conclusive relation-
ship between audience acceptance and the ‘success’ of securitization’.4 Other scholars,
however, have asserted the agency of the audience, describing an active character, even
despite the potential influence of the securitizing actor’s choice of audience. We find this
both in theoretical and empirical analyses of failed securitizing moves,5 as well as the
agency of the audience to advocate for desecuritization or securitization of risks that
have not been securitized.6 Defining the audience as both passive and active presents a
contradiction internal to a primary entity in the drama of securitization.
How might we make sense of the contradiction? One way, following Rita Floyd7 and
others, is to privilege the passive position as receptor of the speech act, asserting the
potential irrelevance of the audience, while others, including most notably Ole Waever,
defend the audience’s centrality and agency.8 Taking the lesson from the paraconsistent
logicians that ‘some contradictions are true’,9 I argue that the audience is in its nature
both passive – insofar as it is called by the securitizing actor – and active – insofar as its
decision to grant assent determines the success of the securitizing move. By engaging in
political theology – which in this case means examining a theological unit homologous
to the political audience – I demonstrate that the apparently confusing contradiction is
unproblematic, and participates in a logic of the called community. The passive response
of a call to be the audience is precisely what establishes the powerful agential position of
that body. By offering an example for political-theological inquiry in subject matter typi-
cal for International Relations (IR), the article also contributes to the interest in the prom-
ise of political theology for IR theory.
Political theology represents a largely untapped resource for International Relations in
general, and critical security studies in particular. While Carl Schmitt’s first treatise on the
topic has been widely read and cited, until recent attention at ISA, BISA, and in a Special
Issue of the Journal of International Relations and Development, theological questions
have largely been sidelined in IR theory. This is not to say that religion has not played a role
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