Description
This article calls for a research agenda which looks at narrative challenge and disruption from within, that is, within political elites. Merging ontological security studies (OSS) with insights from narrative studies, we introduce the idea of political elites as being split between ontological disruptors and defenders. This is different from traditional accounts of OSS which usually and often implicitly attribute the role of ontological repairers to political elites. We argue that members of the elites sometimes intervene in political debates through disruptive language which challenges established identity narratives and pushes the boundaries of acceptable foreign policy discourse. We conceptualise this type of disruption as ontological nuisance: a predictably recurring, less-than-existential disturbance to established biographical narratives from within. The article illustrates ontological nuisance empirically by systematically analysing how populist radical right parties (PRRPs) engage with the elite narratives about foreign policy and identity. By foregrounding contestation in the discourse among political elites, we show how interventions by PRRPs can call into question the relative elite consensus across the political spectrum. Specifically, we show how articulations by the German radical right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) tap into fundamental pillars of the ongoing foreign policy discourse about the national ‘Self’ (internal dimension), relations with ‘significant Others’ (intersubjective dimension), and the nature of the international order (systemic dimension). In this way, opposition parties can shape the debate about biographical narratives without ever being in government.
