Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T18:15:22.905Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Psychoanalysis, cultures of anarchy, and ontological insecurity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2020

John Cash Open the ORCID record for John Cash [Opens in a new window]
John Cash*
Affiliation:
School of Social & Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: johndc@unimelb.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When ontological insecurity looms, what comes next? Is chaos the sole alternative to the maintenance of established role-identities and routines? Or is there a more complex set of possible responses to the dread threat of ontological insecurity? The principal approach to ontological security in International Relations (IR) relies unduly on Giddens' account. Consequently, this approach fails to adequately capture both the variety of ways in which coherent and continuous identities can be maintained and the variety of ways in which the available cultural repertoire can support ontological security differently when challenged. Typically, ontological security is re-established, prior to collapse, through re-balancing of the cultural repertoire to give broader scope to an alternative cultural form and the qualitatively different practices it organizes. Due to misrecognition, this reorganization may proceed without disturbing the ontological security of states-in-interaction. Unconscious processes, encoded into cultural forms, are integral to such variable defenses against ontological insecurity. A re-conceptualization that regards Wendt's cultures of anarchy, and their qualitatively different modes of relating, as dynamically co-present within cultural repertoires, but with potentially variable weightings, complements this approach to ontological in/security.

Keywords

ontological insecuritypsychoanalytic theorymisrecognitioncultures of anarchycultural unconsciousunconscious defense mechanismsGiddens
Type
Symposium: Anxiety, Fear, and Ontological Security in World Politics: Edited by Catarina Kinnvall and Jennifer Mitzen
Information
International Theory , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , July 2020 , pp. 306 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arfi, Badredine. 2020. “Existential Security qua Surviving (while Always Becoming Otherwise) through Performative Leaps of Faith.” International Theory 12 (2): 291–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berenskoetter, Felix. 2020. “Anxiety, Time, and Agency.” International Theory 12 (2): 273–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burack, Cynthia. 2004. Healing Identities. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cash, John. 1996. Identity, Ideology and Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cash, John. 2009. “Waiting for Sociality: The (Re)birth, Astride a Grave, of the Social.” In Waiting, edited by Hage, Ghassan, 27–38. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Cash, John. 2016. “To Dwell in Ambivalence: On the Promise and Dilemmas of Beck's ‘The Art of Doubt’.” In The Consequences of Global Disasters, edited by Elliot, Anthony and Hsu, Eric L.. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cash, John. 2017. “The Dilemmas of Ontological Insecurity in a Postcolonising Northern Ireland.” Postcolonial Studies 20 (3): 387–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1959. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. New York: Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1960. The Ego and the Id. New York: Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1961. “A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-Analysis.” In Standard Edition, Vol. XVII, edited by Strachey, James, 135–44. London: The Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1972. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 2006. “Mourning and Melancholia” In The Penguin Freud Reader, edited by Phillips, Adam, 310–326. London & New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. 1971. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Hom, Andrew, and Steele, Brent J.. 2020. “Anxiety, Time, and Ontological Security Theory's Third-Image Potential.” International Theory 12 (2): 322–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Melanie. 1948. Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, 1921–1945. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Klein, Melanie. 1975. Envy and Gratitude. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. 1991. Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. 1993. Nations Without Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. 1988. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II. New York and London: Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Laing, Ronald D. 1990. The Divided Self. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Menzies Lyth, Isabel. 1988. “The Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence Against Anxiety.” In Containing Anxiety in Institutions: Selected Essays, Vol. 1, 43–85. London: Free Associations Books.Google Scholar
Mitzen, Jennifer. 2006a. “Anchoring Europe's Civilizing Identity: Habits, Capabilities and Ontological Security.” Journal of European Public Policy 13 (2): 270–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitzen, Jennifer. 2006b. “Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma.” European Journal of International Relations 12 (6): 341–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rumelili, Bahar. 2020. “Integrating Anxiety into International Relations Theory: Hobbes, Existentialism, and Ontological Security.” International Theory 12 (2): 257–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, Brent. 2005. “Ontological Security and the Power of Self-Identity: British Neutrality and the American Civil War.” Review of International Studies 31: 519–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, Brent. 2008. Ontological Security in International Relations. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sucharov, Mira. 2005. The International Self: Psychoanalysis and the Search for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wendt, Alexander. 2006. “Social Theory as Cartesian Science: An Auto-Critique from a Quantum Perspective.” In Constructivism and International Relations: Alexander Wendt and his Critics, edited by Guzzini, Stefano and Leander, Anna, 181–219. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar