Anti-grammar and securitization

Gingrich & Baumann delivers the concept of interactional grammar with the counter-concept of anti-grammar closely articulated to physically violent policies such as genocide and categorical killings. Even if this counter-concept is not the only way of envisioning futures without a relation between self and other, its close affiliation with violence makes it an important focus for identity political analysis.

Furthermore, the concept of 'genocidal anti-grammar' invites articulation with a conceptualization in International Relations of a specific type of self/other relation;

the securitized relation: When an other is securitized – pointed out as an existential threat to the self – it is very difficult to see the relation as implying a grammar for future interaction. To the contrary; an obvious policy option towards a securitized other – an other pointed out as an existential threat to you – is the elimination of the other. That policy conclusion is, however, not the only one possible to apply to a securitized relation. A securitized relation need not necessarily end up anti-grammatical: re-opening a space for dialogical co-authorship becomes a crucial task in such 'anti-grammatical' situations.

Baumann portraits "the breakdown of all three grammars [as] a return to the anti-grammar of: 'we are good, so they are bad' with the genocidal conclusion: 'we must live, so they must die'" (Baumann 2004:42). The result is "categorical killings"

(Baumann & Gingrich 2004b:195). Difference turns into radical otherness exactly when the grammars cease to work: "In situations of genocide, the Other is turned

from being a necessary, if undervalued, partner in the process of collective selfing into an obstacle to selfing that must be removed by indiscriminate violence."

(Baumann 2004:47)

This criterion is mirrored in Neumann's call to add the concept of 'violisation' to the theoretical apparatus of the Copenhagen School's theory of securitization: A securitization is attempted when an existential threat is pointed out to a valued referent-object along with the means for the aversion of the threat – and securitization has succeeded when the relevant audience accepts the breaking of rules involved (Wæver 1995; Buzan et al. 1998). The rhetorical figure of securitization is, along with the securitizing agent and the audience, illustrated in figure 3.2.

Referent-Object

Extra-Ordinary Means Existential

Threat

{

}

Sec uritizing Agent

Audience

Figure 3.2 The speech act of Securitzation

When someone gives in to the temptation to point out a sociological other as the constitutive threat to ones identity, a special situation occurs in which both the threat and the referent-object is narratively endowed with agency: The securitizing agent speaks on behalf of the self (whether everyone included in the self agrees or not) – and the threat pointed out may (whether intended or not) eavesdrop and react to being pointed out as a threat. This situation is illustrated in figure 3.3. "Violisation" is to

denominate the process in which not only security status but "the use of force" is added to politics in the form of large-scale violence: war (Neumann 1998:18).

Neumann and Gingrich & Baumann agree that not all violence crosses the threshold which they try to define: Neumann grants that "identity is already violised for example when an asylum centre is arsonised and people die as an effect" (1998:18).

But even as the concept of violisation is suggested to cover "the cases where large-scale violence is actually in evidence", the article focuses on the outbreak of war, and Neumann suggests that "societal violence which is not intended to impinge on the question of state borders may be bracketed" (1998:18). This dissertation opts to remove the brackets and follows the generalization performed by Baumann &

Gingrich. Firstly, they grant "that there is system-immanent or system-maintaining violence" (2004b:195). Secondly, however, a qualitative threshold is passed when

"the exceptional violence of irretrievably anti-grammatical selfings/otherings ... aim to annihilate the other" (2004b:196).

Extra-Ordinary Means

{ }

Self = Securitizing

Agent Radicalized

Other = (Unintended?)

Co-Audience

Figure 3.3 Securitization as othering

The other pointed out as existential threat (possibly) doubles as a (possibly) unintended co-audience of the speech act.

This criterion in Baumann & Gingrich is followed by a second diacriticon which they argue coincide with the first one (genocidal violence): Genocide is made possible, when the construction of a group no longer follow “the conventions of othering the other by one or another of the three grammars and thus to define identities and alterities as mutually constitutive and at least residually dialogical.” (Baumann 2004:46, italics added) The choice of the labels 'grammar' and 'anti-grammar' is explained by analogy:

Just as linguist's grammars make the difference between sentences meaningful to others and sentences unintelligible to others, so the grammars of identity/alterity spell the difference between otherings that are meaningful to the others and the ungrammatical otherings that are unintelligible to the othered

because it insists on the annihilation of the other (2004:46; italics added).

The distinctions 'residually dialogical'/'non-dialogical' and 'different/existential threat-which-must-be-eliminated' coincide as "The denial of the right to be different turns into a denial of the right to be." (2004:47) Or phrased differently; the "different grammars do entail different directions and degrees of dialogical potential"

(Baumann & Gingrich 2004b:194); but "only at the threshold of empowering the anti-grammar of dehumanization ... identity and alterity ceased to be conceivable as mutually constitutive or potentially dialogical." (2004b:197)⁸⁷

Constructing a self/other relationship by playing on the three grammars, hence, implies a structural openness to the other as a co-author of the discourse of the self – even if the openness is small and the space for reconstruction delimited. The conceptual pair grammar/anti-grammar, hence, establish a theoretical platform for and delimitation of the agency implied in both Bhaba's concept of mimicry (as

87 The distinction is discursively protected when system-immanent violence – by contrast – is "represented in dominant discourses as a form of dialogue or communication" and hence insisted to be grammatical (2004:197): 'We are sending them a message by punishing them'.

suggested by Rumelili, cf. subsection 3.1.1) and the agency achieved via the alternative, yet partially parallel theoretical way by Butler’s queer feminism (cf.

Gingrich 2004:9 and chapter 2).

Recall Butler's definition of the subject as "an inherited set of voices, an echo of others who speak as the 'I'" (1997:25), and, hence, "constituted by discourse, but at a distance from oneself" (1997:33f) from where "it is clearly possible to speak with authority without being authorized to speak" (1997:157). Also for Butler, however, the possibility remains that "one can be 'put in one's place by such speech, but such a place may be no place" (1997:4, 137). The anti-grammar of genocide is the extreme denial of place for the other in the narrative of the relation between self and other.

If an other is constructed as a dehumanized, existential threat, then no place is left to speak from: "What ever they do or say in their defence, they are wrong and will not be accommodated within any of the established grammars." (Baumann & Gingrich 2004b:196) But annihilation of the other may, contrary to what Baumann & Gingrich implies, not be an automatic response to the pointing out of the other as a threat. Not even to the pointing out of the other as an existential threat.

The Copenhagen School of security theory suggests that a securitization – the conversion of a problem into a security problem – involves the pointing out of an existential threat to a valued referent object. It also, however, suggests that when you point out an existential threat, you need to follow up with an extraordinary means to its aversion – at least if you want to stay in authority (Wæver 1995). But the policy need not be the annihilation of the other. Huysmans observes that when targeted at an identity category

securitization makes constructive political and social engagement with the dangerous outside(rs) more difficult. It also has a tendency to inscribe predispositions towards violence in social relations. ... In ... security framing, individual[s...] become indexes

of a collective force. ... Under these conditions dialogue and constructive engagement will become more difficult (Huysmans 2006:57-8)

Difficult, but not necessarily impossible.

In that sense, 'securitization' may be discerned as a limit of grammatical othering; a last resort (or: last exit) before genocidal anti-grammar. The policy of securitization closes down the dialogical openness to the other – but large scale categorical killings is not a necessary conclusion.⁸⁸

Grammars lay out the conditions for the co-authorship of the other in self/other narratives – anti grammar denotes the extreme case where there is no possible voice for the other as there is no legitimate life for the other. Securitization defines the limit where the dialogue is closing down but the termination of life is not pointed out as necessary.

Closer inspection, however, may find a variation of ways in which relational grammars for the future may break down. More ways than may be accounted for satisfactorily by the single counterconcept of genocidal anti-grammar. Subsection 3.1.4 analyses how the three basic grammars may combine to form a typology of policies for the future relation of self and other – and finds how grammar may break down in three distinct ways.

88 When Buzan et al. (1998:32) refers to 'the grammar of securitization' as a felicity/facilitating condition of a securitizing speech act, this structure is also a grammar for action – albeit a more specific act, namely for the speech act of securitization. In Austinian speech act theory, reference is often made to the importance of performing perfectly the conventional 'grammar' institutionalized in discourse allowing the speech act to work; i.a. a grammar-for-the-speech-act preceding the speech act. As implied above, what I have in mind in this discussion is the grammar-for-subsequent-action included in the speech act.

'The policy of securitization' as understood by the dissertation – i.e. as a involving a specific combination of the basic grammars for relating to the other – may be installed by successfully following the grammar of the securitizing speech act.