Towards Emancipation of the Self: A Critique of ‘Security as Emancipation’

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the ‘security as emancipation’ literature, by examining and problematizing its conception of the individual as subject and object of emancipation. The unquestioned assumptions and the pre-given answers, concerning the individual, that permeate the Critical Security Studies literature can be considered an important theoretical gap, which ultimately leads to an incapacity to conceptualize the conditions under which emancipation is to be undertaken. It will be argued that the absence of an analysis of the individual in this body of literature (and particularly in the work of Ken Booth) paves the way for the emergence of liberal, competitive and self-interested conceptions, which ultimately undermine the idea of emancipation by surrendering it to the ‘marketplace of emancipation claims’. The next step will be to problematize these taken-for-granted notions, by presenting a different philosophical position towards the individual, as embedded in modern societies. The objective is to create the space for critique and dissent, whilst making the case for a reconstruction of emancipatory capacity and possibilities around th