On whiteness in critical security studies: The case of nuclear weapons

Abstract

In this contribution, I seek to highlight some of the intersections between nuclear weapons, colonialism and race, while offering some critical reflections on recent claims by Alison Howell and Melanie Richter-Montpetit (2019, 2020) that racism and methodological whiteness are at the heart of central perspectives in the field of critical security studies. I argue that Howell and RichterMontpetit’s diagnosis offers important openings for the study of race and (in)security, but I also point to some limits of their critique. I then go on to consider how methodological whiteness has framed nuclear weapons research in (critical) security studies and offer some suggestions for how to move beyond a white subject position in nuclear weapons scholarship. I would like to begin, however, with a few words on my motivation for writing this piece. When I first saw the call for contributions, my impulse was to pass on the invitation. I reasoned that the forum would offer an occasion for me to learn from colleagues who have been more attentive to questions of race and racism than I have been myself. Indeed, there is now a steadily growing body of work that discusses the role of race in international relations theory and international practice.1 My earlier work was attentive to the racialized realities of risk management, but I had never reflected much on the in-built whiteness of critical security studies theories, even if I was always keenly aware that dominant approaches in this field emerged out of and engaged decidedly European experiences (see, for example, Bigo, 1996; Huysmans, 1998). Nonetheless, my current research on experiences of everyday insecurity at or close to former nuclear test sites raises important questions about nuclear weapons, colonialism and race that are relevant to this forum but so far have received surprisingly little attention in critical security studies. A critical body of work on nuclear issues is finally taking root in this field of study,2 but most of these contributions have yet to fully examine the colonial foundations and racial dimensions of nuclear weapons. Shampa Biswas’s (2001, 2014) work is a notable exception to this general neglect, but given that the production, testing and (the threat of) use of nuclear weapons all crucially intersect with (post)colonial and racial realities, it is remarkable that this theme does not have a more central presence in the field of critical security studies as a whole. One of the reasons