No way out: desecuritization, emancipation and the eternal return of the political — a reply to Aradau

Abstract

Claudia Aradau addresses important issues within the securitization approach of the Copenhagen School. Discussions of security, securitization and desecuritization always involve implicit or explicit stances on political preferences. Unsatisfied with both desecuritization and the identification of security with emancipation, she goes on to develop an alternative take on the problem. De-coupling emancipation from security, Aradau tries to locate emancipation as the counter-strategy to securitization in a realm beyond and outside the reach of exceptional politics, sovereign authority and exclusionary moves. What Aradau underestimates is the central, indeed constitutive, role that security plays in the ontotheology of politics.