Overcoming the Politics of a Geo-body: Exploring the Possibilities of CSS in an Asian Context

Abstract

This article explores the possibility of Critical Security Studies (CSS) in the geopolitical context of modern Asia. Following the end of the Cold War, CSS emerged and developed by broadening and deepening the contested concept of ‘security’ while focusing on people rather than states. Borrowing critical perspectives fromthe Frankfurt School, including critical social constructivism, feminism, the post-colonial theory, and the post-structural theory, CSS tries to deepen the concept of security by prioritizing both the ontological and epistemic emancipation (or liberation) of oppressed people, and by resisting the realistic theory of the powerful, by the powerful, for the powerful.

However, the world’s political reality is again becoming harsh. For example, ‘the war on terror’ following 9/11 has enforced a security state by securitizing every sector. In addition, state-centrism, which still remains hegemonic in Asian geo-politics, suppresses the separatist dissidents by utilizing the excuse that it is part of ‘the war on terror.’ The irony of this excuse is that post-colonial Asian states use the discourse of national liberation against imperialistic colonialism in order to legitimize its human rights abuses against minorities, which is an internal enemy for the states. We can call this kind of phenomena the “emancipation dilemma.” If an emancipatory project or movement becomes hegemonic and is institutionalized in accordance with state-centrism, that regime may bring about another oppression.

We need to go beyond this kind of state-centrismby bringing the CSS perspective into an Asian context, too. Here, we focus upon the bio-politics of a geo-body that manages the operations of the technology of territorial sovereignty, which creates nationhood spatially by strengthening the performative aspects of borders between the inside (friend) and the outside (enemy). In order to liberate the people suppressed by the security states, we need to overcome the politics of a geo-body and go beyond border thinking derived fromnationalistic essentialism.