Aesthetics of ontological security

Aesthetics can manifest as both vulnerability and a tool of securitisation. Through aesthetic practices, subjects may appear differently than they otherwise would, as aesthetics can function both to hide imperfections and to serve as an aspiration towards achieving beauty. This paper develops an argument on how aesthetics can create security and hope by conceptualising aesthetics as not just a means of hiding insecurity but also an aspirational dimension of ontological security that elevates subjects towards becoming, as it elevates a subject beyond what it once was. For this purpose, the paper develops a phenomenological account of aesthetics emerging from sensual, embodied, affective, cultural, and cognitive experiences. From this perspective, aesthetics is not limited to what is seen or heard but instead shapes modes of being, moods, senses of self, and political imagination, and thus processes of becoming. Through the case study of the candlelight protests in South Korea demanding the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye, the paper demonstrates how aesthetic experience generated hope in a moment typically theorised as a critical situation. In doing so, the article contributes a phenomenological perspective to the ontological security scholarship by demonstrating how aesthetic experience can produce ontological security and calls for attention to creative processes of ontological security.