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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2023
The role of performance in ontological security seeking is underdeveloped, despite the fact that many elements of such behaviour – narratives, rituals, routinised meetings – carry a distinctive performative quality. Drawing on Butlerian performance theory, this article makes the case that performances are essential to re-establishing coherence and a sense of self following ontologically critical situations. The reproduction of the self, especially while directly addressing fundamental existential questions, is an important way to overcome critical situations. At the state level, this reproduction of self also includes a reproduction of the international system, a task which is best enacted in everyday diplomatic practice. To explore this theory, I use Brexit as an illustrative case study. Brexit was a moment of profound crisis for the United Kingdom (UK) and an ontologically critical situation. It forced the UK to reposition itself on the world stage and confront significant challenges to its self-understanding. In Westminster, these efforts centred on ‘Global Britain’ – a narrative shift that bridged the identity gap and provided a thin framework for foreign policy. At the same time, British diplomats were tasked with international realignment post-Brexit. In this way, everyday diplomatic practice became Brexit performances.
1 Alexander Sam Jeffrey, The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in Dayton Bosnia (Malden, MA: Wiley & Sons, 2012), p. 20.
2 Filip Ejdus, ‘Critical situations, fundamental questions and ontological insecurity in world politics’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 21:4 (2017), pp. 883–908; Filip Ejdus, Crisis and Ontological Insecurity: Serbia’s Anxiety over Kosovo’s Secession (Cham: Springer, 2020).
3 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
4 Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity.
5 Jennifer Mitzen, ‘Anchoring Europe’s civilizing identity: Habits, capabilities and ontological security’, Journal of European Public Policy, 13:2 (2006), pp. 270–85; Brent J. Steele, ‘Ontological security and the power of self-identity: British neutrality and the American Civil War’, Review of International Studies, 31:3 (2005), pp. 519–40.
6 John Cash, ‘Psychoanalysis, cultures of anarchy, and ontological insecurity’, International Theory, 12:2 (2020), pp. 306–21; Catarina Kinnvall, ‘Borders and fear: Insecurity, gender and the far right in Europe’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 23:4 (2015), pp. 514–29.
7 Christopher S. Browning, ‘“Je suis en terrasse”: Political violence, civilizational politics, and the everyday courage to be’, Political Psychology, 39:2 (2018), pp. 243–61.
8 Felix Berenskötter, ‘Parameters of a national biography’, European Journal of International Relations, 20:1 (2014), pp. 262–88; Jelena Subotić, ‘Narrative, ontological security, and foreign policy change’, Foreign Policy Analysis, 12 (2016), pp. 610–27.
9 Mitzen, ‘Anchoring Europe’s civilizing identity’.
10 Derek Bolton, ‘Targeting ontological security: Information warfare in the modern age’, Political Psychology, 42:1 (2021), pp. 127–42.
11 Brent J. Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State (London: Routledge, 2008).
12 Ejdus, Crisis and Ontological Security.
13 See especially Christopher S. Browning and Pertti Joenniemi, ‘Ontological security, self-articulation and the securitization of identity’, Cooperation and Conflict, 52:1 (2017), pp. 31–47; Thomas Colley and Carolijn van Noort, Strategic Narratives, Ontological Security and Global Policy: Responses to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Cham: Springer, 2022); Hugo von Essen and August Danielson, ‘A typology of ontological insecurity mechanisms: Russia’s military engagement in Syria’, International Studies Review, 25:2 (2023), pp. 1–25; Jennifer Mitzen, ‘Ontological security in world politics: State identity and the security dilemma’, European Journal of International Relations, 12:3 (2006), pp. 341–70.
14 Richard Ned Lebow, ‘Identity’, in Felix Berenskötter (ed.), Concepts in World Politics (London: SAGE Publishing, 2016), pp. 73–87.
15 Mitzen, ‘Ontological security in world politics’.
16 Berenskötter, ‘Parameters’; Steele, Ontological Security.
17 See especially Bolton, ‘Targeting ontological security’; Karl Gustafsson and Nina C. Krickel-Choi, ‘Returning to the roots of ontological security: Insights from the existentialist anxiety literature’, European Journal of International Relations, 26:3 (2020), pp. 875–95; Mitzen, ‘Ontological security in world politics’.
18 Jef Huysmans, ‘Security! What do you mean?: From concept to thick signifier’, European Journal of International Relations, 4:2 (1998), pp. 225–255 (p. 243).
19 Gustafsson and Krickel-Choi, ‘Returning to the roots of ontological security’; Mitzen ‘Ontological security in world politics’; Steele, Ontological Security, p. 3.
20 Mitzen, ‘Ontological security in world politics’, p. 273.
21 Regina Karp, ‘Identity and anxiety: Germany’s struggle to lead’, European Security, 27:1 (2018), pp. 58–81.
22 Ben Rosher, ‘“And now we’re facing that reality too”: Brexit, ontological security, and intergenerational anxiety in the Irish border region’, European Security, 31:1 (2022), pp. 21–38 (p. 22).
23 Judith Butler, ‘Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory’, Theatre Journal, 40:4 (1988), pp. 519–33 (p. 523).
24 Butler, ‘Performative acts’, p. 523.
25 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), p. 2.
26 Rebecca Adler-Nissen, Charlotte Galpin, and Ben Rosamond, ‘Performing Brexit: How a post-Brexit world is imagined outside the United Kingdom’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19:3 (2017), pp. 573–91 (p. 575).
27 Butler, Bodies That Matter, p. 10.
28 David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), p. 9.
29 Butler, Bodies That Matter, p. 2.
30 Butler, Bodies That Matter, p. 12.
31 Charlotte Epstein, ‘Constructivism or the eternal return of universals in International Relations: Why returning to language is vital to prolonging the owl’s flight’, European Journal of International Relations, 19:3 (2013), pp. 499–519 (p. 509), emphasis in original.
32 Minseon Ku and Jennifer Mitzen, ‘The dark matter of world politics: System trust, summits, and state personhood’, International Organization, 76:4 (2022), pp. 799–829 (p. 801).
33 Alexandria Innes, ‘Accounting for inequalities: Divided selves and divided states in International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations 29:3 (2023), pp. 1–22.
34 Alun Jones and Julian Clark, ‘Performance, emotions, and diplomacy in the United Nations Assemblage in New York’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109:4 (2019), pp. 1262–79 (p. 1264).
35 Iver B. Neumann, ‘“A speech that the entire ministry may stand for,” or: Why diplomats never produce anything new’, International Political Sociology, 1:2 (2007), pp. 183–200 (p. 190).
36 Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver B. Neumann, Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 6.
37 Mitzen, ‘Ontological security in world politics’.
38 Giddens, Modernity and Self Identity, p. 124.
39 Felix Ciută, ‘Narratives of security: Strategy and identity in the European context’, in Richard C. M. Mole (ed.), Discursive Constructions of Identity in European Politics (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 190–207 (p. 200).
40 Ejdus, ‘Critical situations’, p. 884.
41 Ejdus, ‘Critical situations’, p. 884.
42 Ejdus, Crisis and Ontological Security, p. 17.
43 Ejdus, Crisis and Ontological Security, p. 17.
44 Ejdus, Crisis and Ontological Security, p. 20.
45 See especially Laura Roselle, ‘Strategic narratives and alliances: The cases of intervention in Libya (2011) and economic sanctions against Russia (2014)’, Politics and Governance, 5:3 (2017), pp. 99–110; Brent J. Steele, ‘Ontological security and the power of self-identity’; Brent J. Steele, Defacing Power: The Aesthetics of Insecurity in Global Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010).
46 See especially Felix Berenskötter, ‘Anxiety, time, and agency’, International Theory, 12:2 (2020), pp. 273–90; Karl Gustafsson, ‘Why is anxiety’s positive potential so rarely realised? Creativity and change in international politics’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 24:4 (2021), pp. 1044–9; Bahar Rumelili, ‘Integrating anxiety into international relations theory: Hobbes, existentialism, and ontological security’, International Theory, 12:2 (2020), pp. 257–72.
47 Mark Laffey, ‘Locating identity: Performativity, foreign policy and state action’, Review of International Studies, 26:3 (2000), pp. 429–44 (p. 432).
48 Kathi Weeks, Constituting Feminist Subjects (La Vergne: Verso, 2018), p. 127.
49 Epstein, ‘Constructivism’, p. 510.
50 See Richard Gowan, ‘Separation anxiety: European influence at the UN after Brexit’ (European Council on Foreign Relations, 2018); Steven Kettell and Peter Kerr, ‘From eating cake to crashing out: Constructing the myth of a no-deal Brexit’, Comparative European Politics, 18:4 (2020), pp. 590–608; Benjamin Martill, ‘Withdrawal symptoms: Party factions, political change and British foreign policy post-Brexit’, Journal of European Public Policy 30:11 (2023), pp. 1–24; Angus McDonald, ‘Our democracy, our identity, our anxiety’, Law and Critique, 28:3 (2017), pp. 323–43.
51 Rosher, ‘“And now we’re facing that reality too”’.
52 C. Nicolai L. Gellwitzki and Anne‐Marie Houde, ‘Feeling the heat: Emotions, politicization, and the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 60:5 (2022), pp. 1470–87.
53 Srdjan Vucetic, Greatness and Decline: National Identity and British Foreign Policy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021); Nick Whittaker, ‘The island race: Ontological security and critical geopolitics in British parliamentary discourse’, Geopolitics, 23:4 (2018), pp. 954–85.
54 Christopher S. Browning, ‘Brexit, existential anxiety and ontological (in)security’, European Security, 27:3 (2018), pp. 336–55.
55 Luiza Bialasiewicz, David Campbell, Stuart Elden, et al., ‘Performing security: The imaginative geographies of current US strategy’, Political Geography, 26:4 (2007), pp. 405–22.
56 Subotić, ‘Narrative’, p. 616.
57 Iver B. Neumann and Ole Jacob Sending, ‘Performing statehood through crises: Citizens, strangers, territory’, Journal of Global Security Studies, 6:1 (2021), pp. 1–16 (p. 5).
58 See Marcus Nicolson, ‘Racial microaggressions and ontological security: Exploring the narratives of young adult migrants in Glasgow, UK’, Social Inclusion, 11:2 (2023), pp. 37–47.
59 See James Brassett, Christopher Browning, and Muireann O’Dwyer, ‘EU’ve got to be kidding: Anxiety, humour and ontological security’, Global Society: Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations, 35:1 (2021), pp. 8–26; Catarina Kinnvall and Jennifer Mitzen, ‘Anxiety, fear, and ontological security in world politics: Thinking with and beyond Giddens’, International Theory, 12:2 (2020), pp. 240–56; Rosher, ‘“And now we’re facing that reality too”’.
60 Butler, Bodies That Matter, p. 114.
61 Adler-Nissen, Galpin, and Rosamond, ‘Performing Brexit’, p. 575.
62 Tracy Morison and Catriona Macleod, ‘A performative-performance analytical approach: Infusing Butlerian theory into the narrative-discursive method’, Qualitative Inquiry, 19:8 (2013), pp. 566–77 (p. 570).
63 Stephanie Taylor, ‘Self-narration as rehearsal: A discursive approach to the narrative formation of identity’, Narrative Inquiry, 15:1 (2005), pp. 45–50 (p. 48).
64 Morison and Macleod, ‘A performative-performance analytical approach’, pp. 571–2.
65 Morison and Macleod, ‘A performative-performance analytical approach’, p. 572.
66 Stephanie Taylor, ‘Narrative as construction and discursive resource’, in Michael Bamberg (ed.), Narrative: State of the Art (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007), p. 118.
67 Campbell, Writing Security.
68 Adler-Nissen, Galpin, and Rosamond, ‘Performing Brexit’.
69 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999); Butler, Bodies That Matter; Morison and Macleod, ‘A performative-performance analytical approach’.
70 ‘Brexit: Big Ben bongs mark moment UK leaves European single market and customs union’, ITVNews, 1 January 2021, available at: {https://www.itv.com/news/2020-12-31/brexit-big-ben-bongs-mark-moment-uk-leaves-european-single-market-and-customs-union}.
71 Jennifer Rankin, ‘Brexit: No Union Jack-lowering ceremony in European parliament’, The Guardian, 16 January 2020, available at: {https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/16/brexit-no-union-jack-lowering-ceremony-in-european-parliament}.
72 Neumann and Sending, ‘Performing statehood’, p. 4.
73 Amanda Rogers, ‘Geographies of performing scripted language’, Cultural Geographies, 17:1 (2010), pp. 59–61.
74 Butler, Bodies That Matter, p. 219.
75 Browning, ‘Brexit’.
76 These questions draw on Ejdus, Crisis and Ontological Security and Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity.
77 Theresa May, ‘The government’s negotiating objectives for exiting the EU’, London, 17 January 2017.
78 May, ‘The government’s negotiating objectives’.
79 Oliver Daddow, ‘GlobalBritainTM: The discursive construction of Britain’s post-Brexit world role’, Global Affairs, 5:1 (2019), pp. 5–21 (p. 5).
80 Daddow, ‘GlobalBritainTM ’; Kai Oppermann, Ryan Beasley, and Juliet Kaarbo, ‘British foreign policy after Brexit: Losing Europe and finding a role’, International Relations, 34:2 (2019), pp. 133–56; Oliver Turner, ‘Global Britain and the narrative of empire’, The Political Quarterly, 90:4 (2019), pp. 727–34.
81 Daddow, ‘GlobalBritainTM’, p. 15.
82 Daddow, ‘GlobalBritainTM’, p. 16.
83 Oppermann, Beasley, and Kaarbo, ‘British foreign policy’.
84 Turner, ‘Global Britain’.
85 Jess Gifkins, Samuel Jarvis, and Jason Ralph, Global Britain in the United Nations (London: The United Nations Association UK, 2019), p. 9.
86 Turner, ‘Global Britain’, p. 729.
87 Jess Gifkins, Samuel Jarvis, and Jason Ralph, ‘Brexit and the UN Security Council: Declining British influence?’, International Affairs, 95:6 (2019), pp. 1349–68.
88 Ryan K. Beasley, Juliet Kaarbo, and Kai Oppermann, ‘Role theory, foreign policy, and the social construction of sovereignty: Brexit stage right’, Global Studies Quarterly, 1:1 (2021), pp. 1–14 (p. 11).
89 Gifkins, Jarvis, and Ralph, ‘Brexit and the UN Security Council’.
90 Campbell, Writing Security, p. 62.
91 Megan Dee and Karen E. Smith, ‘UK diplomacy at the UN after Brexit: Challenges and opportunities’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19:3 (2017), pp. 527–42.
92 Jones and Clark, ‘Performance, emotions, and diplomacy’, p. 1262.
93 Dee and Smith, ‘UK diplomacy’; Gifkins, Jarvis, and Ralph, ‘Brexit and the UN Security Council’; Gowan, ‘Separation anxiety’.
94 Gowan, ‘Separation anxiety’.
95 Gifkins, Jarvis, and Ralph, ‘Brexit and the UN Security Council’; Gowan, ‘Separation anxiety’.
96 Gifkins, Jarvis, and Ralph, ‘Brexit and the UN Security Council’.
97 Gifkins, Jarvis, and Ralph, ‘Brexit and the UN Security Council’.
98 ‘Will Brexit see European division at the UN Security Council?’, Euractiv News, available at: {https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/will-brexit-see-european-division-at-the-un-security-council/}.
99 Vincent Pouliot, ‘The practice of permanent representation to international organizations’, in Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver B. Neumann (eds), Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 80–108 (p. 82).
100 Brent J. Steele, Ontological Security, p. 21.
101 Adrian Rogstad and Benjamin Martill, ‘How to be great (Britain)? Discourses of greatness in the United Kingdom’s referendums on Europe’, European Review of International Studies, 9 (2022), pp. 210–239; Robert Saunders, ‘Myths from a small island’, New Statesman (October 2019), pp. 22–5; Turner, ‘Global Britain’.
102 Saunders, ‘Myths’, p. 24.
103 Turner, ‘Global Britain’.
104 Mark Lyall Grant, ‘Statement in the 6306th meeting of the UN Security Council’, New York, 4 May 2010.
105 Mark Lyall Grant, ‘Statement at the 6477th meeting of the UN Security Council’, New York, 8 February 2011.
106 Phillip Parham, ‘Statement in the 6919th meeting of the UN Security Council’, New York, 13 February 2013.
107 Daniel Fiott, ‘“Our man in Brussels”: The UK and the EEAS: Ambivalence and influence’, in Rosa Balfour, Krista Raik, and Caterina Carta (eds), The European External Action Service and National Foreign Ministries: Convergence or Divergence? (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2015), pp. 75–88.
108 Fiott, ‘“Our man in Brussels”’.
109 Jonathan Allen, ‘Statement in the VTC meeting on cooperation between the United Nations and regional and subregional organizations’, New York, 3 June 2020.
110 UK Mission to UN, ‘LIVE on #Periscope: U.K. Foreign Secretary @BorisJohnson speaks to media @UN’, Twitter, 22 July 2016, available at: {https://twitter.com/UKUN_NewYork/status/756583544655405056?s=20}.
111 James Roscoe, ‘Statement in the 8792nd meeting of the UN Security Council’, New York, 10 June 2021.
112 Grant, ‘Statement in the 6306th meeting’; Grant, ‘Statement in the 6306th meeting’; Parham, ‘Statement in the 6919th meeting’; Peter Wilson, ‘Statement in the 7112th meeting of the UN Security Council’, New York, 14 February 2014.
113 Roscoe, ‘Statement in the 8792nd meeting’.
114 Allen, ‘Statement in the VTC meeting’; Dame Barbara Woodward, ‘Statement in the 9065th meeting of the UN Security Council’, New York, 16 June 2022.
115 Allen, ‘Statement in the VTC meeting’; Stephen Hickey, ‘Statement in the 8482nd meeting of the UN Security Council’, New York, 12 March 2019.
116 Woodward, ‘Statement in the 9065th meeting’.
117 Woodward, ‘Statement in the 9065th meeting’.
118 Roscoe, ‘Statement in the 8792nd meeting’.
119 Browning, ‘Brexit’.
120 Browning, ‘Brexit, p. 339.
121 Daddow, ‘Global BritainTM’, p. 14.
122 Turner, ‘Global Britain’.
123 Grant, ‘Statement in the 6306th meeting’.
124 Matthew Rycroft, ‘Statement in the 7705th meeting of the UN Security Council’, New York, 6 June 2016.
125 Grant, ‘Statement in the 6306th meeting’.
126 Vincent Della Sala, ‘Europe’s Odyssey? Political myth and the European Union’, Nations and Nationalism, 22:3 (2016), pp. 524–41.
127 Della Sala, ‘Europe’s Odyssey’; Ian Manners, ‘Global Europa: Mythology of the European Union in world politics’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 48:1 (2010), pp. 67–87.
128 Hickey, ‘Statement in the 8482nd meeting’.
129 Hickey, ‘Statement in the 8482nd meeting’.
130 Allen, ‘Statement in the VTC meeting’.
131 Roscoe, ‘Statement in the 8792nd meeting’.
132 Allen, ‘Statement in the VTC meeting’; Roscoe, ‘Statement in the 8792nd meeting’; Woodward, ‘Statement in the 9065th meeting’.
133 Woodward, ‘Statement in the 9065th meeting’.
134 Woodward, ‘Statement in the 9065th meeting’.
135 Grant, ‘Statement in the 6306th meeting’.
136 Wilson, ‘Statement in the 7112th meeting’.
137 Grant, ‘Statement in the 6306th meeting’.
138 Allen, ‘Statement in the VTC meeting’; Roscoe, ‘Statement in the 8792nd meeting’.
139 Allen, ‘Statement in the VTC meeting’.
140 Theresa May, ‘Speech at the 2016 UN General Assembly’, New York, 20 September 2016.
141 Bialasiewicz, Campbell, Elden, et al., ‘Performing security’, p. 408.
