Description
In this article, I investigate how embodied acts of vulnerability reflect a deliberate and agentic mode of security politics (Butler 2016, 22) that is practiced by non-state actors. The Securitization Studies literature continues to privilege state actors as securitizing actors, elevate speech acts above other modes of securitizing practices, and prioritize state-led security practices with insufficient attention to how non-state actors address engage in this space. Alternative, embodied modes of constituting threats, insecurities, referents, and security practices remain underexplored. Drawing on examples such as direct actions, hunger strikes and protest marches in Australia and the EU, I conceptualize such embodied acts as a mode of security politics where threats, insecurities and security references are co-constituted via the (im)mobilization of the body in particular ways, and whereby the embodiment of vulnerability along these lines is itself a security act, i.e. a response to the threat or insecurities being articulated.
