Articulations of identity radicalizing conflict: Installing necessity necessity

As discussed in chapter 2, discursive action includes the rational, failed rational, as well as irrational aspects of the attempts by discursively constituted subjects at reconstituting and reproducing discursive structures. Articulation of identity is the subcategory of discursive action aimed at the discursive structure of identity. The aim of articulating identity is the distribution of subjectivity by the constitution of new identities and by the ongoing narration of existing identity.

This section sets out to account for the contribution to radicalization of conflict from the articulation of identity. Specifically, the section asks:

ii. How may identity be articulated to necessity to contribute to radicalization of conflict?

To answer the question, the focus needs to be on the articulation of identity with a view to observe how subjects may strategically seek to install necessity in the self/other policy narratives they promote. Necessity, firstly, has the potential effect of

stopping internal identity politics. If necessity is installed, certain elements of the narratives are presented as 'non-negotiables'. Necessity therefore, secondly, has the potential effect of closing down – as far as concerns the necessitated element – the possibility of self-reform, self-reflection and dialogicality in relation to the other; i.e.

in external identity politics. Necessity successfully installed stops debate internally – and it attempts to limit the space of co-narration of the other. If the other does not accept to be muted on the element invested with necessity, the instalment of necessity transports conflict from internal identity politics to external identity politics. Figure 3.22 illustrates the effect of articulating necessity to a narrative.¹¹⁴

Time narrated by actor

Figure 3.22 Self/other policy narrative articulated to necesisty

Consistency is projected into future articulations of narratives by the agent

Necessity may be installed in a policy narrative in various ways: As pointed out in subsection 3.1.6, necessity may be installed via the formation of the self/other policy narrative as such; i.e. via the specific way in which the relation constructed between self and other presents itself as an interactional grammar. I.a. when Their posture is described as threatening to Us; or when Their presence in a territory described as

114 When read in continuation of figure 2.7.

Ours is presented as a infringement of our rights or our identity. These – and other – ways of relating Them and Us are presenting specific elements as necessary to include in the future narration of the relation.

This section investigates two further ways in which elements may be presented as necessary in the continued narration of a relation. Firstly, necessity may be articulated via the temporalization of a narrative. Necessity articulated by temporalization is discussed in subsection 3.2.1. Secondly necessity may be installed via the articulation of the inertia of sedimented discourse. This way of articulating necessity – not in but to the structure of the self/other policy narrative – is the focus for subsection 3.2.2.

3.2.1 Installing necessity by the temporalization of narratives

Chapter 2 noted how narratives may be narrativized when it "feigns to make the world speak of itself and speak itself as a story." (White 1980:6-7) In this way, narrativizing discourse installs necessity in the world by letting the world tell how things are or will be articulated – rather than presenting how things are being articulated to form the world. Chapter 2 took this as an occasion to generally focus the analysis of the dissertation on such articulating away of the articulation. The overall modus of analysis is to uncover the way elements are made necessary by covering up the way they are made necessary.

The most basic way of constructing necessity in a narrative is to fixate one specific future as the inescapable consequence of the past: simple cause and effect. Such a 'causal necessity' annuls the policy character of the narrative. It does not rule out action. It just leaves action futile as it will have no effect; the effect being determined by the cause in the past. Not a very bright prospect for a politician who, by trade, earns his living from proposing action under the name of policy. Such a temporalization places too much weight on the past to appear satisfactory in modernity: It cancels out the sense that our actions now may have an effect. If the

past determines, we are – as a collective – out of control. However, a series of more complex temporalities are available to a measured narrating away of the narrating present by discursively re-allocating primacy to either the past or the future.

Koselleck describes the modern ideologies – the -isms – as programs for the future with disregard for the past:¹¹⁵ The necessity of the future projected by these –isms comes from an explicitly made choice awarding more value to this future than to that future. It seems even today that in most political debates references to courses of events more than a couple of decades ago come across as peculiar. In some debates, these modern '-isms' live on.

As a politician you may, however, prefer a different version of necessity than the necessity of cause and effect or a necessity depending on a choice. You might prefer a 'you would be stupid not to-necessity'. In this kind of necessity, the narrative is structured by grasping together a past with a policy proposed in the present leading to a future goal which is implicitly constructed as undisputed. Necessity comes not as un-avoidable; neither does it come as the result of a choice; it comes across as

115 Koselleck describes how this is implicated in the modern temporality of progress: the past is largely irrelevant as 'everyone knows' that 'everything has changed' (cf. Koselleck 1985:277). Specifically, the '-isms' which turned Modernity into a programme are

"[c]oncepts of movement [which] ... open a new future. ... All concepts of movement share a compensatory effect, which they produce. The lesser the experimental substance, the greater the expectations joined to it. The lesser the experience, the greater the expectations: this is the formula for the temporal structure of the modern, to the degree that it is rendered a concept by 'progress'." (Koselleck 1985:288). Koselleck explains the conditions of possibility of the progressive –isms with "[T]echnical innovations and discoveries in early modernity" which made for "a consciousness of difference between traditional experience and coming expectation." (Koselleck 1985:277). Hence, "[t]he opening of a new horizon of expectation via the effects of what was later conceived as 'progress'" moved "[t]he objective of possible completeness, previously only attainable in the Hereafter, [so that it] henceforth served the idea of improvement on earth ... Henceforth history could be regarded as a long-term process of growing fulfilment which ... was ultimately planned and carried out by men themselves. ... the effects anticipated by plan or prognosis became the titles of legitimation of political action" (Koselleck 1985:278-9).

unquestionably good. There are alternatives – but they are not a question of choice;

they are unquestionably bad. Therefore present action is necessary – and the direction of the present action is necessary. In this version of necessity the articulating present is not totally wiped out, but it is all but dominated by the necessity of the future articulated. The effect of this way of constructing necessity is to legitimize the proposed policy – and to de-legitimize any alternatives (whether they are mentioned explicitly or only implied). The result is de-politicized narratives advocating that what is left of lesser choices should be left to those best capable of managing the road to the future implicitly accepted by all.

But the isms of modernity and the technical narratives are supplemented with new -isms of postmodernity. As Friedman has poetically put it:

Modernity moves east, leaving postmodernity in its wake; religious festival, ethnic rennaissance, roots and nationalism are resurgent as modernist identity becomes increasingly futile in the West. In the … confusion, …the periphery and margins of the system also react in … a complex combination of Third and Fourth world strategies. (Friedman 1992:360)

As indicated by the words chosen – rennaissance, roots – the temporality of these movements are different from the typical modern temporality described by Koselleck:

Taken at face value, the temporality of some of these new -isms is circular rather than linear: They propose not the constitution of a future Utopia but the re-storation of a lost Golden Age.¹¹⁶ It goes without saying that a construction of such a Golden Age to be restored relies heavily on a present narrating away of past experience.

116 Like the typical nationalist narrative, according to Smith (1991:161; cf. Gad 2005:81f).

Hence, a narrative of restoration does not conform to the temporality of historical myth, which is still linear: myths, according to Kølvrå, "do not simply contrast a pre-communitarian chaos to a utopian present, but, as an integral part of ideology, they project

A very different – and more extreme – way of dealing with the past consists in making experience totally irrelevant. If the point of arrival is the only sure thing, then the point of departure looses significance. As 'religious festival' has returned as resonance room for policy formulations, this eschatological temporal figure has made a surprising comeback.¹¹⁷

Yet another way to prioritize the future in the articulation of a narrative makes the need to analytically dissect the attempted closure even more pertinent: the security narrative. Recall (from chapter 2) the difference between the way in which individual and collective identities narrates towards death: Authentic individuals, according to Heidegger, narrate-towards-certain-death – collective subjectivities, according to Campbell, narrate-to-postpone-indefinite-death. One specific modality of articulating collective identity might, however, implicate towards-death in its narration-to-postpone-death. A narrative which securitizes an identity – by pointing out an existential threat to the identity along with the means to avert the threat – tells how we may to survive as ourselves (Wæver 1994) when confronted with otherwise certain 'death'.¹¹⁸ A security narrative directs the narrative towards a single immediate

utopia into the future." (Kølvrå 2009:37). Whether Utopia is placed in the present or in the future, the movement from chaos to Utopia is still linear. In contrast the recreation of a lost golden age constructs temporality as circular.

117 Koselleck describes how this temporality worked for the Puritans as they "draw their overwhelming force from anticipation of the future; since this was not susceptible to refutation through contrary experience, it was constantly open to repetition. That which today is ruled out by negation will be regarded in the future as superseded. A dualism temporalized in this manner sorts out possible experiences and opens up a horizon of expectation that is quite elastic." (Koselleck 1985:186).

118 Buzan et al. note as "a trivial but rarely noticed feature of security arguments: They are about the future, about alternative futures – always hypothetical – and about counterfactuals.

A security argument always involves two predictions: What will happen if we do not take 'security action' (the threat), and what will happen if we do" (1998:32).