A call for abolition: The disavowal and displacement of race in critical security studies

Abstract

We offer a rejoinder to Security Dialogue’s call for reparative work on race and racism in Critical Security Studies, questioning the ability of a discipline at the heart of an Antiblack world, to engage in truly reparative practices. The attempt to incorporate questions of race and racism into the discipline requires a disavowal, as it denies that Critical Security Studies emerged from and is embedded in systems, structures and institutions of power that rely on Antiblackness. This leads to a displacement, for it assumes that race and racism remain separable from Critical Security Studies, refusing to acknowledge that the discipline has always been part of the problem. Thus, we make two main points in response to calls for reparation from within Critical Security Studies. Firstly, that there can be no openings for truly reparative work from the position of the discipline, it remains within the grounds of Antiblackness. Secondly, that there can be no repair of Critical Security Studies, there can be no ethico-political future for it other than abolition.