New materialism, whiteness and the politics of vitality: rethinking activity/passivity in critical security studies

Brito, Tarsis (2025) New materialism, whiteness and the politics of vitality: rethinking activity/passivity in critical security studies. Security Dialogue. ISSN 0967-0106

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Abstract

New materialist thought has become particularly influential in critical security studies over the past decade. Advocating for an understanding of security that comprises and does justice to the vibrant, unpredictable and active role of materiality, scholars have significantly contributed to an array of debates within critical security studies. Engaging with post/decolonial, critical race studies and feminist literatures, this article offers a critique of new materialism that focuses on its embracement of ideas of vitality, activity and movement as a way to overcome modernity’s pervasive subject/object dualisms. My argument is that this stance risks reifying an activity/passivity hierarchy that has been centrally interwoven with colonial, racial and gendered dynamics of subjugation. The idea is that new materialism’s incisive critique has often failed to interrogate colonial modernity’s abjection of passivity itself, a process that has been paramount in the historical production and securing of whiteness. This article’s goal, however, is not only to push the analytical and political boundaries of new materialism. By rethinking the racial-colonial underpinnings of this activity/passivity hierarchy, the article also offers promising research avenues for critical security studies which help us understand and interrogate racial-colonial security structures and practices of policing, violence and exploitation.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author
Divisions:	International Relations
Subjects:	J Political Science > JZ International relations J Political Science H Social Sciences
Date Deposited:	02 Dec 2024 10:36
Last Modified:	27 Mar 2025 20:50
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/126210

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