Keeping the Monster under the Bed. A Dialogical Approach to Security as Reasoned Emotion

Abstract

Emotion is essential to reason, and vice versa — an observation that is both crucial and overdue to acknowledge in International Relations, which has witnessed an upsurge in scholarship on the emotions in the last decade. In an exploratory attempt at introducing the emotion- reason debate to security studies, this thesis introduces a dialogical approach to security as a reasoned emotion. First, theories of reason and emotion will be reproduced genealogically, second a critique of instrumental reason is tentatively formulated on this basis, third the concept of emotion will be reviewed in light of contemporary appraisal theories, and finally a discourse analysis of so-called ‘neighbourhood prevention networks’ in Belgium and The Netherlands aims to discover all of these dynamics in day-to-day practices of securitisation. The insights gained thereupon bear significant implications for international security, as much in theory and research as in political practice.