Description
Securitization theory famously depends on the acceptance of a securitizing move by a relevant audience. More than twenty years on, the questions of who, what and where the audience is, as well as how the audience accepts or rejects the securitizing move, constitute a significant and persistent gap in the literature. This paper makes the case for a theoretical re-engagement with the audience through Judith Butler's concept of 'counter-speech' (1997). It suggests that, beyond mere rejection or acceptance, the audience may sometimes constitute a 'counter-audience' which not only rejects the securitizing move but shifts the focus from the existential threat being presented to the existential threat to freedom posed by the imposition of emergency measures. Through the example of Canadian pandemic-era protests, it argues that the audience should be understood not only intersubjectively, as others have put forth, but as an agent itself capable of security utterances, and thus capable of transforming and disrupting the security field. These security utterances—in Butler's terms, this 'counter-speech'—occur in the gap between the securitizing speech act and its effects. Tightening the gap tightens the possibility of this counter-speech. Securitizations which occur incrementally or over a longer temporal period may therefore be more likely to incur counter-speech which 'returns' the threat to its speaker. This has particular implications for the securitization of threats with long temporal horizons, such as climate change or future pandemics.
