Description
In this piece, I advance a re-evaluation of the foundation of ‘state identity’ by beginning with Foucault’s insight into the conceptual creation of the nation-state must be examined as a non-universal, historically contingent development. In order to situate my inquiry, I propose to critically interrogate the formation of the German nation-state, which was officially established in 1871, as a key moment in the development of ‘national security' as a material-discursive practice. This textual analysis draws from a series of cultural and political sources to sketch out some of the key moves in thought from the period to connect to the practice of statecraft. The study shows that the German nation-state’s raison d’être was born out of a sense of ontological insecurity yet also functioned to produce said insecurity as a raison d’état for imperial expansion. Thus, the peculiarity of German state formation both yields and is produced by a historical identity of German völkisch identity, which interplays with state identity. This has important implications for Ontological Security scholarship as it calls for a need to interrogate the basic foundations of the nation-state as a model if we are to understand more fully the phenomenon of state identity and behavior today.
