Discourse matters---representations recontextualize language and thought against the Other.

Bringing together the four different empirical analyses in Table 11.1, above, illuminates the fluid nature of any particular discursive formation, such as the discourse of security and counter-terrorism that we have analyzed in this book. This fluidity is realized across both time and space: first, through the temporal flow of discourse as language within a discursive formation undergoes transformations as one set of documents supersedes another over time; and secondly by the institutional differentiation of networks of discourse across space, as language within a discursive formation is delocated from one site and relocated in another. Temporal transformation is governed in the last instance by the material conditions of history, such as the 7/7 attacks and the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War; recontextualization across space is governed in the last instance by the power relations and economic interests of different agents and institutions, such as those within the political sphere and the public sphere (see also Hunter and MacDonald 2017; MacDonald et al. 2015). In the preceding chapters, the flow of discourse through time has been revealed by our analysis of documents relating to UK security and counter terrorism (Chapter 7); the relocation of discourse across space has been revealed by our analysis of documents relating to nuclear proliferation (Chapter 9). Both of these analyses entailed the use of more conventional corpus techniques, in particular the machine-driven generation of keywords. However, as outlined in Chapter 5, these were augmented by the intuitive analysis of concordance data to verify and interpret salient lexis in context. In what follows we review the substantive and theoretical implications of the transformation and recontextualization of the documents across time and space which we have analyzed in the previous chapters.

Transformation Over Time

As is well known, within his studies of the discursive formation of the disciplines of the human sciences (e.g. 1970), Michel Foucault challenged the conventional Enlightenment narrative of the linear development of knowledge and science towards some ultimate goal. Instead he argues that disciplines shift in a more arbitrary fashion from one ‘episteme’ to another and—rather than displaying a historically coherent pattern of development—they shift through a series of ‘ruptures’ and ‘discontinuities’. One implication of the archaeological method, however, is that a ‘discipline’ or ‘discursive formation’ is relatively stable within the particular historical period within which it is situated. The temporal span of fifteen years which we adopted for our chronological analysis in Chapter 7 has a somewhat narrower focus to those of Foucault, which focused on entire ‘systems of knowledge’ often spanning centuries. However, our diachronic reach remains considerable when compared with many other critical studies of security discourse, which more often than not settle for a synchronic approach which does not have the scope to engage with patterns of chronological change in the discourse. Even on our relatively ‘micro-chronological’ timescale, observed changes in the prominence of certain lexis from one period of time to another enabled us to infer shifts in the ways in which security and counter-terrorism was being constituted within the documents; as they were produced at different time periods within the context of one nation state (the UK).

In the first phase of our chronological comparison in Chapter 7, we compared two sub-corpora to reveal changes that took place over the period 2001–2011. Here, it appeared that the words cohesion and community become recontextualized over time within the second sub-corpus in a discourse which supports the ideological construction of a totalizing, singular, community of the nation state. The appropriation and recontextualization of the headline words contest and prevent from common parlance serve to impute to UK government a sense of agency and active engagement in the ‘war on terror’ against a hypostatized Other. However, although more abstract expressions such as violent, extremism and terrorism also emerged as salient throughout our second sub-corpus in order to signify the target of this government action, we could find little explicit identification of any social group to which these antagonistic tendencies are attributed. In fact, contra some critics (e.g. Appleby 2010) there appeared to be an explicit tendency to shy away from attributing suspicion of extremism to any one ethnic group. However, what also emerged from this comparison as distinctive of the second sub-corpus, was the statistical significance of Muslim and Muslims. From this we infer that, while the documents in the second sub-corpus appear to consciously avoid any explicit stigmatization of any ethnic group as being associated with ‘violent extremism’, there remains an implicit attempt to constitute a normalized form of Muslim affiliation to British values and British identity. Furthermore, we see emerging from this sub-corpus the beginning of a more nuanced linguistic tendency to use ‘extremism’ to signify an antagonistic position which arises internal to the nation state, and ‘terrorism’ to signify an antagonistic position which arises external to the nation state

In the second phase of our chronological analysis, our comparison of the third sub-corpus (2012–2106) with those produced by UK government departments and their agencies between 2007 and 2011, revealed not only that security emerged in this period as by far and away the strongest keyword across the entire sub-corpus, but also that the logic of the security operation that was discursively constituted appeared to be bound up with two premises: first, that it is not just the protection of the populace that is now contingent upon national security, but also the ‘prosperity’ and ‘influence’ of the nation state; and secondly, that the perceived ‘threats’ to the nation state are constituted discursively as being (spatially) extensive and (temporally) escalating exponentially into an ‘infinite future’ (after Dunmire 2011). This infusion of a discourse of national security with the principles of neoliberalism may in part be constitutive of the ideological pursuits of the more right-wing administration that was elected to the UK government in 2011, under the premiership of David Cameron and subsequently Teresa May.

However, our chronological analysis of the security discourse of this most recent period, also suggests another aspect of these documents that changed over this fifteen-year span. As a shift takes place between 2012 and 2016 towards a concern not only with internal, but also with external security, we see emerging from the latest sub-corpus a new concern with ‘bordering practices’ (Vaughan-Williams 2012). Tis entails not least the capacity of agents of the state to deprive certain subjects of their freedom of movement, but in more extreme examples, of liberty itself. However, our analysis has also revealed simultaneously an explicit—and even insistent—discursive pre-occupation with the values of ‘fairness’, ‘responsibility’, ‘proportionality’ and ‘respect’ which characterize the ethos of liberalism. With this caveat, however, a preponderance of lexis throughout this final sub-corpus constitutes a range of subject positions which are distributed throughout the legal-penal system, of which the figure of the detainee emerges as paradigmatic. This leads us to conclude that—despite the focus on the liberal, multicultural concepts of ‘community’ ‘cohesion’ and ‘citizenship’ which feature prominently in the discourse of UK security at the beginning of the twenty first century—the lexis of ‘retention’ and ‘detention’ remains a distinctive feature of security discourse well into the second decade.

Viewed overall, our chronological analysis also revealed a gradual move away from a more or less exclusive concern with the internal coherence of the population of the nation state (2001–2006), through a nuanced acknowledgement of external influences upon activities which might pose a threat to the nation state (2007–2011), to a third period in which the specter of an external threat to the nation state became very much more evidenced (2012–2016). This seems very much in keeping with the paradox which confronted the UK government in aftermath of the London bombings. The attacks were carried out by subjects who possessed UK citizenship, but who nevertheless expressed allegiance to an extra-territorial non-state actor, Al-Qaeda. However, ultimately, our comparison of Sub-corpus III with Sub-corpus II revealed an increasing preoccupation with externally facing security concerns. This does not constitute an absolute supersession of internal by external concerns, but rather indicates the increasing ‘de-differentiation’ over this period of the discourse of internal security and counterterrorism, and the discourse of external security (after Bigo 2008). This melding of external with internal security appears entirely in keeping with this final set of documents, which were produced in the context of the gradual expansion of an Islamist caliphate across the Syria-Iraq border and the near-collapse of Syria as a ‘viable state’ (see Chapter 2).