Description
Ontological Security Studies (OSS) has developed a sophisticated theorization of identity in International Relations. Foremost among the referents used in OSS are (auto)biographical narratives, in that they keep a ‘story of the Self’ going through time and space. Surprisingly, though, the OSS research community rarely deals with the truth claims of such narratives, let alone how issues of truth shape, impact, disturb and/or follow from narrations of such ‘Selves’. This paper brings OSS work on narratives and mnemonical security, into conversation with Foucault’s late work on parrhesia. I examine the contrasts and overlaps between the (auto)biographical narratives and the ‘account of the Self’ described by Foucault in his lectures. Doing so, I propose, helps specify the moments, and content, that can lead to ontological (in)security for agents and especially within the politics of memory and forgetting. I do through with two case illustrations from the United States: the 1995 ‘Enola Gay’ controversy and the 2025 Smithsonian ‘reforms’.
