Securitization and the Political: contributions from Hannah Arendt

Abstract

In the past few years, many scholars keen to the Copenhagen School (CS) turned to the works of the German political scientist Carl Schmitt in order to strengthen the philosophical foundations of the theory, especially the disputed concept of exception. Schmitt is a singular and important contribution to the debate, however his definition of the political makes securitization concept more conservative and a more unilateral event as politics would only be explicit in the exception spectrum. Our idea in this brief paper is to present a contribution to this discussion coming from a less considered perspective: the works and writings of Hannah Arendt. We will examine how her ideas towards politics and the exception can shed a light on the same issues that Schmitt seems to blur even further. We believe that bringing Hannah Arendt to the debate offers a different understanding of the foundational problems of the securitization concept and enhances the normative appeal of the theory towards a broader and more sophisticated base, opening new paths for research and discussion under the framework of the Copenhagen School.