Rossdale, Chris (2013) Anarchism, anti-militarism, and the politics of security. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis seeks to conceptualise an anarchist response to the politics of security.
Understanding security as a discourse of conceptual and political mastery, and as
therefore resistant to incorporation within a framework of emancipation, it argues that
anarchism offers theoretical and practical resources through which creative
insurrections in the political-metaphysical fabric of security might be made. The thesis is
built around an ethnography of UK-based anti-militarist activism, interpreting a variety
of practices, tactics and strategies through a conception of anarchism which emphasises
prefigurative direct action and a ceaseless resistance to relations and discourses of
domination and hegemony. Three central interventions in the logics of security are
identified. The first involves the subversion of the hegemonic ontology of agency which
can be identified across both traditional and critical understandings of security; those
anti-militarists under examination do not appeal to „the state‟ to redress their grievances
and insecurities, preferring instead to „directly‟ engage in practices of security. The
second intervention emphasises those forms of anti-militarism which can be seen to
subvert the security/insecurity binaries themselves, and to open spaces and possibilities
beyond the totalising frameworks which constitute our contemporary politics of
security. The third examines those moments and movements where, as they subvert
these binaries, anti-militarists prefigure forms of subjectivity which displace those forms
of rationality and relationality which underpin the politics of security (and militarism).
Together these three interventions destabilise the politics of security in ways which
offer powerful opportunities for rethinking and resisting contemporary forms of
political domination and violence. This also functions as an argument about the politics
of resistance, which is conceptualised here not as a programmatic, strategic or
confrontational posture, but a tactical, prefigurative and anarchic exploration of
becoming otherwise.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HX Socialism. Communism. Anarchism J Political Science > JC Political theory
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Anarchism, Militarism, Security, International -- Political aspects, National security -- Political aspects
Official Date:	June 2013
Dates:	Date Event June 2013 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Politics and International Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Brassett, James; Croft, Stuart
Sponsors:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC)
Extent:	viii, 272 leaves : illustrations.
Language:	eng

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