The Copenhagen School of International Relations which features Ole Waever takes security issues through the speech act. The speech act is where threats can be negated by speaking to the state audience about them. (Waever, 1995). In Waever’s view hence, any threats including ones on resources can be termed as security threats if there is a speech act about it. However, as many of the Copenhagen school critics argue, there are many shortfalls of this theory. This criticism comes from several scholars such as Lene Hansen and the PARIS school.
A globally talked about issue is the one on suicides, thus falling directly under Waever’s theory. Since suicide conforms to the loss of human lives, it has several security connotations. Both the Copenhagen school and its critics would thus, see this issue in differing manners.
How Ole Waever and the Copenhagen school would view the agenda:
As mentioned by the WHO, approximately 700,000 people die around the world every year due to suicides. (WHO, 2018). If people are willing to forsake their own lives, it certainly falls as a threat to a state’s labor resources. As mentioned earlier, to combat this threat, the state apparatus would have to make a speech act informing the state population as to why this is a threat. However, as can be seen, the threat of suicide has been dealt with in two ways by states. (Time, 2023). The first type of state maintains that suicide is a criminal act of treason to the state. The second type of state is those which, do not criminalize suicide and provide support services for those who are under mental duress (and hence prone to suicidal thoughts).
When states deal with the issue of suicide as a threat, it only aggravates the problem further. Criminalizing suicide would mean that if found guilty, a person with already deteriorating mental health conditions would now be susceptible to worse treatments. Historically examples include jail time, fines and harsh deaths such as hammering of stakes into their living body. (BBC, 2011). The family of the deceased were subject to treatments of Felo de se (Felon of himself). Their belongings were handed to the crown and they were ostracized by society on religious grounds. (BBC, 2011). Even in the present, this has not stopped. This shows us that there is a need for a talk on the decriminalization of suicides. (Time, 2023). This is probably how the Copenhagen school would view it as securitizing the problem.
Fortunately, in recent times, many states have decriminalized suicides. Countries like Malaysia and India are some recent examples. (Ojha, 2018). Since the criminalization of suicides is the only problem, a notion of everyday security like post-de-criminal suicide issues, would be ignored by the Copenhagen school. This is because there is no big enough speech actor about these cases.
How Lene Hansen would approach the issue:
The problem thus, does not stop at decriminalization. This is because the states which have decriminalized suicide, still do not have the facilities to prevent future suicides. As mentioned by the WHO, state investment in mental health and psychology infrastructure has remained low across the world. (WHO, 2021).
Lene Hansen states that security must be deepened to everyday issues such as those whose voices are silenced. (Hansen, 2000). This is an important perspective when we take up aspects of suicidal death. It has been noted that people with suicidal thoughts often silence themselves (even if they have the power to speak) and show signs of withdrawal from society. (Kahn, 2019). As mentioned by Durkheim (1897), fatalist suicides are those where people’s beliefs and views are shut down by the state or society. Thus, Hansen’s (2000) critique of state security by the silencing of voices comes into play in two ways. First is the manual silencing by the people themselves, and the second is where the state silences people. This is again the reason why decriminalising suicides alone, is not enough. There is a need to boost investment in facilities and infrastructure in this area. Perhaps the state apparatus could supplement by using the speech act apparatus on the issue of post-decriminalization of suicides.
How the PARIS school would approach the problem:
The PARIS school, most notably under Foucault’s ‘biopower’ and Achille Mbembe’s ‘necro power’, also criticizes the Copenhagen school with a different viewpoint. For the Paris School, the referent object is relative. Thus, securitizing one referent object would lead to the insecurity of another object taken as the referent unit.
As Mbembe (2003) mentions, regardless of the right to life given by the sovereign, global inequalities of race, caste, and class present certain groups as a living-dead rather than a life of fulfilment that Foucault (1990) mentions in his ‘Bio-Politics’. Mbembe terms this as ‘Necro-Politics.’ Unlike most threats a state may face, suicides are not related to any particular issue of race, caste, class, or gender. While statistics may claim that a particular race, caste, class, gender or any other identity may have a higher suicide rate, it is still not limited to any of these identity groups. Unlike Durkheim’s (1897) statements there is no singular source of suicidal thoughts. Thus, when furthering securitizing methods, the state can tend to leave out certain kinds of suicidal issues, or certain groups’ lives as unimportant. Mbembe’s arguments show how securitizing mental health and suicides could accentuate the issue rather than secure it.
Does this mean, that it is worthless to prevent suicides? Although there is some truth to the PARIS school’s arguments, the popular proverb of ‘something is better than nothing’ comes into play. As can be seen, the decriminalization of suicides by states in response to the Waever (1995) and the furthering of mental health facilities in response to Hansen’s (2000) arguments is still a better alternative than the criminalization and absence of the same. As Cox (2010) would say, this is a problem-solving approach. While critically, Mbembe remains correct, there is no alternative offered. In fact, as in this or any other security issue, there is no globe-encompassing solution. As Cox (2010) mentions, while problem-solving approaches are important for the immediate, one must not ignore the critical aspects of security issues. Thus, the issue must be addressed at large, relative to the approaches that the Copenhagen school and Lene Hansen would take. The PARIS school’s critical touches must be taken into account whenever possible.
Bibliography
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Hello Anuraag,
This was a really unique and important topic that you have addressed as a security threat in the global context. The blog post was overall clearly laid out and well structured and which made to easy to follow. The case study also helped understand the theoretical concepts in a more nuanced way.
One question that came to my mind while reading this blog was how the speech act is looked at in the context of cyber-bullying where the bully could say that they are expressing their freedom of speech but this ultimately leads to the suicide of victims suffering from such bullying.