Enclosing Critique: The Limits of Ontological Security

The concept of ontological security has received increased attention in the security studies literature over the past ten years. This article develops a critical perspective towards ontological security and its mobilisation by IR scholars, arguing that substantive ethical and political resources are produced by resisting the terms of ontological security/insecurity. It argues that the aspiration to ontological security, to contiguous and stable narratives of selfhood, can (violently) obscure the ways in which such narratives are themselves implicated in power relations. Furthermore it argues that attempts to order political life into an ontological/security episteme disciplines or marginalises modes of subjectivity which resist the closure of ontological securityseeking strategies. The article engages queer figurations of subjectivity as mobilised by Judith Butler, Donna Haraway and Jack Halberstam, as well as examples from anti-militarist social movements, to demonstrate traditions which refuse and resist the framework of ontological security. It does this both in order to highlight particular practices and strategies that are written out by an epistemology oriented around ontological security/insecurity, and to show how a resistance to such ordering can enliven political action in various ways.