A call for abolition: The disavowal and displacement of race in critical security studies

Introduction In 2020, Security Dialogue issued a call for interventions on race and racism in critical security studies, responding to a tumultuous year of global upheaval and academic controversy surrounding racial issues in contemporary society. In the call, the editors highlighted the lack of engagement with race in the field, requesting submissions that interrogate these issues and propose reparative framings to inform future research. Our response to this call seeks to raise some notes of caution, to indicate that the depth and nature of the problem require full acknowledgement prior to the consideration of what, if any, reparative work may be undertaken. We do not think that the call is problematic in its statement that ‘the spectres of race and racism haunt the field of critical security studies, not just the broader discipline of International Relations’ (Security Dialogue, 2020). However, we question the ability of the field to provide reparative perspectives that are adequate to the task of grappling with these spectres. Since its beginnings, critical security studies has sought to move discussions of security away from traditional, state-centric perspectives, towards broader and deeper approaches, often focusing on the possibility of security as emancipation or interrogating its conceptual foundations. Studies emerged that focused on gender, securitization, new materialism, ontological security and many other issues, as well as race, as critical security scholars found new and diverse subjects to centre their research on. Recent ground-breaking work has highlighted how spectres of race within the canon of thought in international relations continue to shape disciplinary approaches and assumptions, with Meera Sabaratnam’s (2020) and Olivia Rutazibwa’s (2020) work being just two examples. Despite these interventions, issues of race and racism remain peripheral to the field, understood as an addition to the discussion rather than a foundational factor at the core of notions of security and the world they seek to secure. The question, then, is whether it is possible or desirable to disentangle critical security studies from its racial foundations, to salvage or redeem it, and, if so, how