Reading Security Imaginaries as Fantasies – Loss, Desire, and Enjoyment in the Military Quest for Explainable AI

Abstract

What does the Lacanian notion of fantasy offer to the study of security imaginaries? The article answers this question by introducing a fantasmatic reading strategy illustrated by a case study of the US narrative of ‘technological revolutions of war’ that has recently been fueled by a growing demand for ethical and explainable artificial intelligence in military applications and weapon systems. The article offers a Lacanian comment to the expanding International Relations literature on security imaginaries. It demonstrates how a fantasmatic reading encompasses both a discourse analytical tracing of background understandings employed by many security imaginary scholars and an affective tracing at the margins of discourse that captures the force with which subjects continue to invest in – and patch the constitutive gaps of – a security imaginary. In studying security imaginaries through fantasies, we propose zooming in on three analytical moves: analyzing the continuing construction of a lost utopia in security discourses; following the specific objects of desire that is organized around its own inevitable failure; and locating the mode of enjoyment encountered at the boundaries of the socially acceptable norms.