Drawing the discourses of ontological security: Immigration and identity in the Danish and Swedish cartoon crises

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Agius
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Security Concerns ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
Cartoon Crisis

The controversy of the Danish cartoon crisis in 2006 overshadowed a similar one that took place in Sweden a year later. The crises have broadly been framed as a clash of values but both cases reveal differences worthy of investigation, namely for the complex tensions and convergences between the two states on questions of immigration, Nordic solidarity and national identity. This article aims to explore the intersubjective discourses of identity that were threaded through the debates on the cartoon crises, looking to the overlapping discourses that have constructed ideas of identity in terms of ontological security, or security of the self. It argues that both cartoon crises represent a complex discursive performance of identity that speaks to a broader set of ontological security concerns which intersect at the international, regional and national levels. Even in their differences, Swedish and Danish discourses show the tensions associated with the desire for a stable and consistent idea of self when contrasted with the Muslim ‘other’, explored in the context of discourses of modernity and tolerance, which operate as key sites that work to reiterate, reclaim and reinstate the idea of the progressive state.

‘This is not who we are’: Gendered bordering practices, ontological insecurity, and lines of continuity under the Trump presidency

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Christine Agius
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Immigrant Children ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
The Us ◽  
Democratic Nation ◽  
Gender Lens ◽  
Policies And Practices

Abstract The Trump presidency ushered in a heightened sense of ontological insecurity in the US, based on a national self-narrative that portrayed an emasculated America. Trump promised a return the US to primacy by pursuing policies and practices that focused on border protection, militarisation, and the vilification of external others, while amplifying racial tensions within the country. From caging immigrant children at the border, to an enabling of white supremacy and the Capitol riots, Trump's presidency was broadly seen as aberration in the self-narrative of America as a tolerant, democratic nation. In this article, I am interested in how gendered bordering practices inform ontological (in)security in Trump's narrative of the nation, domestic and external policy, and discourses. While Trump's electoral loss to Biden in 2020 has been described as a ‘return to normal’, this article instead considers how Trump's presidency exhibited lines of continuity when examined through a gender lens. Understanding how masculinism informs ideas of ontological security reveals how notions of gendered bordering, hierarchy, and ordering have been persistent threads in US politics, rather than simply an anomaly under Trump. This suggests greater potential to read ontological security in more complex terms through gendered bordering practices.

scholarly journals Estrangement and Selfhood in the Classical Concept of Waṭan

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 16-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaseen Noorani
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
The Self ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Classical Concept ◽  
Subjective Meaning ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Primary Love

The modern Arabic term for national homeland, waṭan, derives its sense from the related yet semantically different usage of this term in classical Arabic, particularly in classical Arabic poetry. In modern usage, waṭan refers to a politically defined, visually memorialized territory whose expanse is cognized abstractly rather than through personal experience. The modern waṭan is the geopolitical locus of national identity. The classical notion of waṭan, however, is rarely given much geographical content, although it usually designates a relatively localized area on the scale of a neighborhood, town, or village. More important than geographical content is the subjective meaning of the waṭan, in the sense of its essential place in the psyche of an individual. The waṭan (also mawṭin, awṭān), both in poetry and other types of classical writing, is strongly associated with the childhood/youth and primary love attachments of the speaker. This sense of waṭan is thus temporally defined as much as spatially, and as such can be seen as an archetypal instance of the Bakhtinian chronotope, one intrinsically associated with nostalgia and estrangement. The waṭan, as the site of the classical self’s former plenitude, is by definition lost or transfigured and unrecoverable, becoming an attachment that must be relinquished for the sake of virtue and glory. This paper argues that the bivalency of the classical waṭan chronotope, recoverable through analysis of poetic and literary texts, allows us to understand the space and time of the self in classical Arabic literature and how this self differs from that presupposed by modern ideals of patriotism.

scholarly journals (Re-)imagining the ‘Self’ of Ontological Security: The Case of Brazil’s Ambivalent Postcolonial Subjectivity

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco A. Vieira
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Self In Relation ◽  
Postcolonial State ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Postcolonial States

In this article, I critically engage with and develop an alternative approach to ontological security informed by Jacques Lacan’s theory of the subject. I argue that ontological security relates to a lack; that is, the always frustrated desire to provide meaningful discursive interpretations to one’s self. This lack is generative of anxiety which functions as the subject’s affective and necessary drive to a continuous, albeit elusive, pursuit of self-coherence. I theorise subjectivity in Lacanian terms as fantasised discursive articulations of the Self in relation to an idealised mirror-image other. The focus on postcolonial states’ subjectivity allows for the examination of the anxiety-driven lack generated by the ever-present desire to emulate but also resist the Western other. I propose, therefore, to explore the theoretical assertion that postcolonial ontological security refers to the institutionalisation and discursive articulation of enduring and anxiety-driven affective traces related to these states’ colonial pasts that are still active and influence current foreign policy practices. I illustrate the force of this interpretation of ontological security by focusing on Brazil as an example of a postcolonial state coping with the lack caused by its ambivalent/hybrid self-identity.

Security regimes

1982 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jervis
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Self ◽  
Security Regime ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Security Concerns ◽  
Security Regimes ◽  
Concert Of Europe

Regimes are harder to establish in the security area than they are in the economic realm because of the inherently competitive cast of many security concerns, the unforgiving nature of the problems, and the difficulty in determining how much security the state has or needs. Nevertheless, there is at least one example of a functioning security regime—the Concert of Europe. Under the Concert the great powers sharply moderated their individualistic and competitive policies and exercised restraint in the expectation that others would reciprocate. The self-interest that they followed was broader and longer-run than usual. The Balance of Power, however, is a regime only if the restraints are internal, as Kaplan implies, as contrasted with Waltz's formulation in which states restrain each other. Current superpower relations should not be considered a regime because the principles, rules, and norms have little autonomy but instead can be best understood as quite direct reflections of the states' power and interests.

scholarly journals The Last Flemish Primitive: Jan Vercruysse’s Self-Fashioning of Artisthood and National Identity

Arts ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Anton Pereira Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Self ◽  
Artistic Identity ◽  
Deliberate Strategy

In 1989, the artist Jan Vercruysse (1948–2018) stated that he was “the last Flemish Primitive”. This comment, despite being only a fragment of a lengthy interview with Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, became a trope in subsequent writings on Vercruysse. I argue that the statement was part of a deliberate strategy by Vercruysse in shaping his identity as a (Belgian) artist. First, I focus on Vercruysse’s Portraits of the Artist (1979–1984), a series of photographic works in which he uses the genre of the self-portrait—thereby implicitly referring to the Flemish Primitives—as a means to express the constructedness of artistic identity. Second, I explore Vercruysse’s construction of his identity and his relationship vis-à-vis the notion of Belgian art. Finally, the statement uttered in 1989 will be contextualized within the changing political and cultural context of Belgium and Flanders in the 1980s. I demonstrate how the statement can be read as invoking a radically different conception of Belgian art during this period.

scholarly journals Becoming a strategist: The roles of strategy discourse and ontological security in managerial identity work

2020 ◽  
pp. 147612702090878 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saku Mantere ◽  
Richard Whittington
Keyword(s):  
Identity Work ◽  
The Self ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Occupational Groups ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Emotional Basis ◽  
Opening Up

What is the managerial identity work involved in becoming a “strategist”? Building on a rich, longitudinal set of interviews, we uncover three tactics through which managers mobilize the strategist identity. The self-measurement tactic uses strategy discourse as a normative measuring stick for evaluating the individual as a manager. The self-construction tactic uses strategy discourse as a blueprint for realizing career aspirations. The final self-actualization tactic uses strategy discourse as an emotional basis for crafting meaning into work. We find that strategy discourse can play both disciplinary and emancipatory roles, influenced by managers’ sense of ontological security. The article highlights the importance of social-psychological processes in strategist identity work and discusses implications for the contemporary opening up of strategy and for other similarly loosely structured occupational groups.

Badea et al 2019 IJIR - Threat to national identity continuity

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantina Badea ◽  
Michael Bender ◽  
Helene Korda
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Identity Group ◽  
Majority Group ◽  
Muslim Immigrants ◽  
Identity Continuity ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Impact

European majority group members increasingly perceive threats to national continuity, which in turn leads to defensive reactions, including prejudice against Muslim immigrants. However, according to self-affirmation theory, individuals can respond in a less defensive manner if they have affirmed positive aspects of their self-concept (self-affirmation) or their social identity (group-affirmation). In the present research, we test the potential of affirmation procedures as tools for reducing prejudice towards Muslim immigrants when national continuity is threatened. We examine the impact of personal vs. normative attachment to Christian roots of national identity on the efficacy of affirmation procedures, and the congruence between the threatened and the affirmed domains of the self. Results show that group-affirmation reduced opposition to Muslims’ rights amongst participants personally attached to the idea that national continuity is based on Christian roots. The discussion stresses the importance of non-congruence between the threatened domain of the self and the affirmed domain for the design of affirmation procedures.

Mapping intersections: A dialectical reflection on postcolonial memory in Shyam Benegal’s Trikaal (Past, Present, Future)

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-81
Author(s):  
Arundhati Sethi
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
National History ◽  
Alternative Discourse ◽  
Portuguese Empire ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Street

The article explores how Shyam Benegal’s 1985 film Trikaal (Past, Present, Future) navigates the social and psychic map of postcolonial Indian memory to reveal a pattern of persistent dualities and unlikely convergences of time, space and subjectivities. Via the domestic cosmos of a fictional Goan family, the film delves into the transitional and largely neglected phase of Goa’s decolonization from the Portuguese Empire. While situating itself in this specific moment, the film also puts forth an alternative discourse of approaching national history and the boundaries of the self. This is achieved by rerouting memory away from the high street of conventional history, utilizing the critical prism of reflective nostalgia and allowing the shadows of marginality to spill over the entirety of the narrative stage. Ultimately, we encounter a dialectical fabric of national identity dominated by unsettling intersections of past and present, home and abroad, memory and amnesia, power and oppression, romance and horror.

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