Security is a Relation

• In Event: Science from Elsewhere: Thinking from Where we Think - II

Abstract

What can a genealogy of food security and social security bring to security studies? Emma Rothschild suggests that since the eighteenth century, two models of security have operated in Western political life: national security, protection from others’ aggression; and human security, ensuring an adequate life. Rothschild’s writing now reads as an anachronism: she laid out an optimistic history of a 1990s-era future, in which human security had come to dominate global politics. The ‘human security’ construct has largely disappeared under the weight of post- 9/11 security regimes. My paper seeks to interrupt contemporary security regimes with elements of their own history. Security studies in the early twentieth century were oriented not around risk and probability but around relations of love and aggression. Security studies were led by psychoanalysts (Karl Abraham, Eric Fromm, Melanie Klein,) anthropologists (Audrey Richards, Cora Du Bois,) and ethologists (J. McVicker Hunt, Harry Harlow.) They focused on relations of need, frustration and gratification. The primal scene for security studies in early twentieth century was the infant at its mother’s breast. Suckling and weaning formed a template for all adult interactions, and the affective, social and economic life of a people or culture. Where the infant’s needs were gratified, security resulted; where the infant was frustrated, insecurity, hate and aggression ensued. Security was at the center of this schema; security represented the ability to give and receive love. What might a security studies look like, which grapples with love and aggression?

Author

• Dana Simmons, University of California Riverside