Return to sender: making sense of reactionary securitising audiences in securitisation theory

Securitisation theory famously depends on the acceptance of a securitising move by a relevant audience. More than twenty years on, the questions of who, what and where the audience is, as well as how the audience accepts or rejects the securitising move, constitute a significant and persistent gap in the literature. This paper makes the case for a theoretical re-engagement with the audience through Judith Butler’s concept of ‘counter-speech’ (1997). It suggests that, beyond mere rejection or acceptance, the audience may sometimes constitute a ‘counter audience’ which not only rejects the securitising move but shifts the focus from the existential threat being presented to the existential threat to freedom posed by the imposition of emergency measures. Through the example of the 2022 Canadian convoy protests, it argues that the audience should be understood not only intersubjectively, as others have put forth, but as an agent itself capable of security utterances, and thus capable of transforming and disrupting the security field.