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Toward a Critical Poetics of Securitization: A response to Anker, Castronovo, Harkins, Masterson, and Williams

Botha, Marc

Toward a Critical Poetics of Securitization: A response to Anker, Castronovo, Harkins, Masterson, and Williams Thumbnail


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Abstract

In this brief set of responses to the five challenging and insightful articles gathered above under the banner, Security Studies and American Literary History, I draw attention to a particularly pressing area for future research on the relation between security and literary studies: the distinction of security from securitization and the implications this has for the constitution and lived experience of contemporary subjectivity. My contention is that there is a diminishing relation between the secure subject and the securitized subject. A critical poetics of securitization capable of exposing this growing rift with greater clarity thus constitutes a significant program for the broad field of literary studies. It also potentially provides the means for contesting the internal logic and relations between concepts such as vulnerability, fragility, and precarity on the one hand, and of adaptation, resilience, and robustness on the other. A critical poetics of securitization further promises to shed light on the techniques and technologies of neoliberalism as dominant paradigm, drawing particular attention to its implications for the constitution of contemporary political subjectivity and the tensions which persist between virtual and visceral subjects, and between the biopolitical abstraction of bodies and the politics of viscerality that witnesses their return.

Citation

Botha, M. (2016). Toward a Critical Poetics of Securitization: A response to Anker, Castronovo, Harkins, Masterson, and Williams. American Literary History, 28(4), 779-786. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajw054

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Oct 22, 2016
Publication Date Dec 1, 2016
Deposit Date Sep 4, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal American Literary History
Print ISSN 0896-7148
Electronic ISSN 1468-4365
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 28
Issue 4
Pages 779-786
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajw054

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Copyright Statement
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in American Literary History following peer review. The version of record Marc Botha; Toward a Critical Poetics of Securitization: A response to Anker, Castronovo, Harkins, Masterson, and Williams, American Literary History, Volume 28, Issue 4, 1 December 2016, Pages 779-786 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajw054.





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