The theory act: Responsibility and exactitude as seen from securitization

Abstract

[Speech act theorist J.L.] Austin gives us insights into the capacity of mankind for creating shared environments through language, not as a matter of transmitting anything from one head to the other or of causally influencing each other’s mental states, but as a matter of establishing situations and roles and attributing local statuses to participants. Herein lies the power of human civilization as opposed to ‘state of nature’; the power which alone makes it possible, on occasion, for someone weak and without weapons to be listened to and even obeyed, the power which makes it possible to conceive and pursue things such as social equality or solidarity and equal opportunities for genders, all of which would not be conceivable in a ‘state of nature’ ethology. To acknowledge in theory and investigate such power is at the same time to foster it and defend it against the risk of regression into forms of social life based on brute force and coercion.1