Engagement all the way down

Abstract

This paper asks about the practices and forms of critique afforded at the intersection between Science-and-Technology Studies and the critical study of security politics, by drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers. Can engagements with practice generate effective forms of critique? How does the attention to materialities and the fine-grained analysis of technical practices, that typically accompany STS-inspired research, feed into ways of practicing critique? How can the analytical attention to ‘little security nothings’ be translated into critical agendas?In addressing these questions, Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers serves as an inspiration, not just for her philosophical writing on the situated nature of critical thinking, but also for her own experimental politics and engagement. A key message of the paper is that critical practice is “engagement all the way down.” The article thinks through the ways in which the work of Stengers and her companions can be put into practice in qualitative critical security research. It builds on Foucault’s rejection of the separation between theoretical, universalist knowledge on the one hand, and practical knowledge on the other. It emphasises the processual, uncertain and practical aspects of critical thinking. It identifies the notions of following, leveraging, joined risks and paying attention as key, concrete pathways of engaged critique.

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