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DOI: 10.1177/0967010606066171

2006 37: 187Security DialogueMaria Stern

'We' the Subject: The Power and Failure of (In)Security

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these notions are not shared by members of the community in question,when who we are must be forcibly instilled through disciplinary tactics,when who we are also depends on belligerently defining and even killing

who we are not. As an integral part of promising safety, the logic of secur-ity seems to spin intricate webs of abiding violence and harm webs thatare sticky and resilient, ensnaring both peoples bodies and their politicalimagination (see, for example, Campbell, 1992; Dillon, 1996; Jackson, 2004;Roe, 2004). This paradox, familiar to many, has taken on new urgency as weseek to grapple with the changing terrain of security in a world plagued byglobalized terrorism, as well as competing, and conflicting, identity claims.The paradox of (in)security as it is framed here therefore continues towarrant further reflection.2

In exploring the aporias of modern logics of security, Burke (2002: 7)

identifies an urgent need to interrogate the images of self and other thatanimate (in)secure identities and to expose the violence and repression thatis so often relied on to police them. In this spirit, the present article aims toclosely examine how a specific we as the subject of security is con-structed through discourses of danger and safety (Campbell, 1992; Weldes,1999: 105). In particular, reading from the (in)security narratives of Mayanwomen, I ask how the inscription of a specific and multiple identity,Mayanwomenpoor, as the subject of security enacts and resists manyof the dangers of securitizing identity that seem to be attendant to modern

logics or grammars of security (Maalouf, 2000; Roe, 2004; Williams, 2003).These narratives underscore that attention to identity even multiple identi-ties as possible subjects of or vehicles for attaining security seems torepeat familiar and potentially violent logics. The notion of securing evenmultiple identities is written out of an underlying grammar that presupposesthat complete representation and securing of a subject is possible (Butler,Laclau & Z izek, 2000).

In setting up my inquiry in this way, however, I am not suggesting thatthere is one universal logic of security that underwrites all struggles forsecurity. Nevertheless, as many critical security scholars argue, dominant

modern discourses of politics frame prevailing notions of political commu-nity, possible subjects of security, and relations between (sovereign) self andother in times of perceived threat and danger (see, for example, Burke, 2002;Connolly, 2004; Dillon, 1996, 2004; Inayatullah & Blaney, 2004; Walker, 1993,2004). Grammars of security are powerful insofar as they inform how people

believe they need to seek safety and avoid harm, as well as the choices thatthey make based on those beliefs.3

188 Security Dialogue vol. 37, no. 2, June 2006

2 The paradox of (in)security has been widely addressed in the field of security studies; see, for example,Benkhe (2000), Campbell (1992), Connolly (1991), Dillon (1996), Der Derian (1995), Roe (2004), Weldes etal. (1999) for a good overview.

3 See Pin-Fat (2000), Heyes (2003: 117) and Zerilli (2003) for a discussion of the workings of grammars ofpolitics from a Wittgensteinian point of view. I am basing my use of the term grammar on these works.

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Mayan womens (in)security narratives reflect the lived experiences ofmarginalized peoples struggling for security in resistance. They thereforeplace in high relief the difficulty of navigating in any way that is palatable the

integral and supplementary relationship between security and insecurity andits attendant relation to the politics of identity that characterize the globalsecurity landscape (Behnke, 2000; Huysmans, 1998; Roe, 2004; Zehfuss, 2003).I do not raise this paradox in relation to peoples who have suffered undermultiple and violent forms of oppression and domination lightly. Thepalpable violence that pervades global politics (i.e. the dirty war inGuatemala) makes the allure of the promise of security and emancipation the deliverance from violence, threat, danger and oppression if not neces-sary for pure survival, then imminently compelling (Butler, 1997; Butler &Connolly, 2000; Bhabha, 1994; Fanon, 1963; Inayatullah & Blaney, 2004;

Maalouf, 2000).Yet, instead of following an impulse to resolve this conundrum or to do

away with it altogether, perhaps through paying attention to the very uneasethis conundrum occasions we may glimpse apertures for resisting its poten-tially violent effects. Indeed, while the relations of violence embedded inMayan womens (in)security narratives induce my concern, how they aresimultaneously resisted elicit my hope. In particular, I shall attend to howthe establishment of the securable subject we is promised, and how thispromise remains impossible in these discourses. Looking at how the impos-

sible promise (or the ultimate failure) of securing identity plays out in aparticular site among people whose voices are not often heard in writingson security invites reflection over failure as an opening for thinking securitydifferently (Heyes, 2003: 8; Ziarek, 1995: 90).4

To this end, I also take my point of departure in a question posed by Dillon(1996: 35): how do representations of danger make us what we are? I addressthis question in my analysis of Mayan womens (in)security narratives,

but reframe it slightly: how do discourses of danger and safety seeminglycollapse all that we are into the naming of who we are and thereby inflictviolence on being with ourselves and with others? And, how might such a

violent dynamic be resisted?The Mayan women (in)security narratives that this article will explore were

recorded as life-history texts in Guatemala in 1995, as a peace accord (whichwould end over 30 years of armed violence) was being negotiated and long-desired security seemed possible (Stern, 2005). To be very clear: unlike the

brutal security policies of the Guatemalan army, Mayan womens (in)secur-ity narratives did not advocate violence in any direct sense. Instead, whatmotivates my reading of their narratives as sources for better understandingthe paradox of (in)securing identities is how in their (in)security discourses

Maria Stern The Power and Failure of (In)security 189

4 I am indebted to Marysia Zalewski for helping me to develop this line of thought. For further discussion offailure as an opening for resistance, see Stern & Zalewski (2005).



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many Mayan women also enacted their own harmful boundaries of inclu-sion and exclusion in efforts to secure themselves from violent exclusionarytactics (see Burke, 2002; Behnke, 2004: 284). These lines of demarcation

stringently defined who was being protected. However, they also ultimatelyexcluded, disciplined and even harmed (because of their exclusion) someMayan women in the hopes of making the subject Mayan women safe(Stern, 2005).

Yet, as we shall see, these narratives were neither uniform nor cohesive, butinstead were contradictory within their own plots and in relation to eachother. Some narrators erected strict boundaries discerning self from enemy.Others resisted such authoritative moves. Nevertheless, all the narratorsspoke about their lived experiences of violence and insecurity. They explicit-ly identified themselves as Mayan women, and stated that they were

struggling for the security of Mayan women in particular and the Mayanpueblo more generally. When read together, the narratives can therefore beseen as making up an overarching (in)security discourse in resistance(Jackson, 2004: 18; Stern, 2005). It is perhaps the very lacunae in these dis-courses that offer hope for resistance to their also totalizing and exclusionarytactics (Weldes et al., 1999: 169).

This article will proceed as follows: First, I will briefly introduce Mayanwomen as they were represented in the (in)security narratives. Second, Ishall highlight some of the key features of a modern and dominant logic of

(in)security, as it has been relayed in the broadly defined field of criticalsecurity studies (Krause & Williams, 1997). Third, I will introduce the conun-drum of (in)security as it is inscribed in Mayan womens narratives andexplore how this grammar plays out and is resisted in these sites.

Mayan Women

We are working to give our ethnias, our pueblos, their own voice. . . . We are workingwith redemption of the culture so that the women know their identity, their rights, theirrole in society, which they have had for the 500 years during which women have been

triply discriminated against, that is to say, as a woman, as Mayan and as poor. . . . Butthe women [also] have been able to play a very important role inside the community inrelation to language, to traditional dress, as healer, priestess. . . . She is the transmitterof the culture to the children because the children are raised by the mother and learn. . . our way of being indigenous, so it is important to promote this struggle. . . . Thestruggle of the woman is not a recent struggle . . . no, it is a struggle which has muchhistory, which . . . for us . . . is very important. . . . This struggle has cost lots of lives.. . . [The Mayan pueblo lives under] a system of repression, in fear, in hunger, [under]bullets. In Guatemala . . . there is not democracy. What there is, is daily death. . . . Onlyunity gives us force. . . . As a saying goes, you can not start a fire with only one piece ofwood; when there are many, yes you can.

Mara, Guatemala, 1995




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In 1995, at the end of over 30 years of armed conflict, the celebration of 500years of resistance to colonialism, and in the context of a global (yet diverse)womens movement, 18 Mayan women recounted their security narratives

(Stern, 2005).

5

These narratives tell a story about people who had suffered atthe confluence of many different violent and discriminatory relations andwho were attempting to find a platform for the assurance of their survival,dignity, basic needs, well-being, etc. Their triple identity as Mayan, womenand poor was informed by their experiences of being triply oppressed byintersecting relations of power.

The narratives of these women speak about a struggle to resist the multipleforms of violence that constituted their lives: the violent security strategies ofthe Guatemalan state (which aimed at homogenizing difference eitherthrough genocide or through violent assimilationist strategies), racism with-

in the society at large, prevailing sexism also within Mayan communities,and a system of classism as a result of which 90% of the population lived inextreme poverty (Jonas, 2000: 28). Indeed, Mayan womens struggles centredaround both subverting the power relations that harmed them and theircommunities and finding safety and belonging in a collective commonstruggle, identity and way of life.

Security, as it was articulated in their narratives, involved insisting on thehistorically rooted cultural difference of the Mayan community (and Mayanwomen in particular) as a resistant stance and as a reflection of their lived

experiences. The (in)security narratives were therefore marked by thewomens insistence that the picture of the sovereign national subject was onepainted out of the violence of unsuccessful homogenization. The culturaland gendered difference of Mayan women also bore with it the promise ofsecurity (see also Roe, 2004: 290).

Securing We as Subject of Security: A Dominant Logic

One way of exploring the paradox of (in)security and its implications forthe reproduction of violence is to inquire into how the promise of a securesubject is inscribed in discourses of (in)security. Why is the successful secur-ing of we impossible? How might the supplementary relationship betweensecurity and insecurity inform the inscription of we as the sovereign subjectof security? Arguably, integral to the promise of an assured security is theconcealment of the impossibility of fulfilling this very promise. Securitynarratives, however, work towards concealing this impossibility. Theyrepresent a story of security and the subject that is to be secured that iscohesive, and therewith the promise of security seems possible. What dosuch stories look like, in broad strokes?


5 My work is based on the (in)security narratives of political leaders who define themselves as Mayanwomen (Stern, 2005).



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Security narratives both those written by the security elites of modernsovereign states and those written in resistance to the violence and exclusionof sovereign national projects can be seen as key discourses through which

modern politics and political subjects are inscribed (see Weldes, 1999). Theyare distinctly modern insofar as they are written through the idiom ofmodern state sovereignty and the correlated belief in the possibility of asovereign subject. This subject is cast as ontologically prior to the discoursesestablished to secure it (Burke, 2002; Campbell, 1999; Dillon, 1996; Edkins,Pin-Fat & Shapiro, 2004). Importantly, like other narratives, security narra-tives offer seemingly cohesive representations of reality with a given past,present and future, with a beginning, middle and end, and a clear, coherent,stable subject (Disch, 2003: 264; Wibben, 2002). Security narratives are osten-sibly written to provide safety, to counter danger. They can also be seen as

attempts to impose order and certainty, to ensure existence.As a critique of the logic of the foundational myths of modern sovereignty,

security instead can be understood as a discursive practice, which cannot beseparated from the processes of identity formation and even the constitutionof subjectivity (see, for example, Campbell, 1992; Dillon, 199091, 1996;Weldes, 1999). Furthermore, modern political thought posits insecurity asan inevitable supplement to security (Dillon, 1996: 127). Following Edkinsexplanation of the logic of the supplement, security can only exist in rela-tion to insecurity (Edkins, 1999: 70). Moreover, insecurity haunts any notion

of security or act of securing, making it both necessary and impossible(Edkins, 1999: 70; Behnke, 2000, 2004; Sylvester, 1994). The logic of conceal-ment of the impossible promise of security appears in part as follows: inorder for the subject of security to be securable, it must be circumscribed,contained, nameable, with contours dividing the included from the excludedand borders marking that which is to be made secure from the dangerousOthers (Campbell, 1992; Jackson, 2005; Schmitt, [1932] 1996).

The politics of identity inhere in this logic: in order for the subject of secu-rity to be secured, it must be named, represented, given an identity(McSweeney, 1999; Williams, 2003: 519). Read in this way, identity offers the

vector for the forming of the subject so that it can be secured (Weldes, 1999:103105). Identity, as construction or process, can be seen as an attempt topin down, capture, name, represent the subject, offering an image (Mendieta,2003: 408), a name (Hall, 1990: 225) of a self in language, a horizon fromwhich to take a stand (Taylor, 1989: 27). Importantly, identities can be seenas the temporary attachment to the subject positions called forth to representthe subject, which, as we will see below, is ultimately unrepresentable (Hall,1996: 56; Edkins, 1999: 32; 2004: 12).

Through the writing of (in)security, identity, which in the lived experiences

of everyday life might be more fluid, becomes necessarily more entrenched,fixed. Through rendering it seemingly stable, the particular image or repre-




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sentation of the subject can, as Mendieta explains, seemingly gain a footholdon an imaginary place: the sovereignty of ourselves and, importantly, besupposedly securable:

Subjects or selves were constructed through a matrix of vectors: nation, class, gender,race, sexuality, and ethnicity. . . . Depending on the nature of the threat, we mobilizedifferent images about ourselves. In this way, the person, as a social agent, finds herselfat the vortex of these converging vectors. We are many, and we are always being tornasunder by the many forces that impinge upon us and that make claims on us. We nego-tiate these forces, and thus we gain a foothold on an imaginary place: the sovereignty ofourselves. . . . Our identities, then, we may aver, are a matter of positionality or locality.An identity is not a prius, object or substratum, or essential substance. It is a social locus,and a social locus is an imagined and imaginary topos. (Mendieta, 2003: 408)

In this sense, discourses of danger and safety/security employed to secure

the subject we require that we is stable. This we is inscribed as fixed inspace through the geographic, cognitive and political borders of thestate/nation/political community. It is also produced as cohesive and self-identical though time (Walker, 1993). Mechanisms of inclusion and exclusionand bifurcation, which seem to be attendant to defining the subject of secu-rity in order to secure it, often depend on strict lines demarcating both insidefrom outside, and belonging from deviance, danger or evil (Barth, 1969;Hylland-Eriksen, 1993; Jackson, 2004; Walker, 1993). Securing the subjectrequires the policing of boundaries and the taming or homogenization ofan imagined self. Arguably, this occurs more or less violently; in extremecases, the border guards secure these boundaries through tactics that resultin killing in the name of cleansing.6

Hence, discourses of (in)security work to conceal the unavoidable deferralof security through the production of an identity (as representation of thesubject of security) that is stable and knowable, and therewith securable.Evocations of danger and threat to this identity shall be overcome and dis-armed through particular security strategies that will end insecurity. Indeed,the very enactment of these strategies maintains the illusion of the possibili-ty of a secure subject as immanent (Dunmire, 2005). The promise of security

thus appears as if it can, indeed, be kept.We can summarize some of the discursive moves attendant to the domi-

nant logic of securing a we as follows: First, the subject of security (we) isimbued with a certain identity (see Weldes, 1999). Second, this identity isconstructed as stable and certain throughout time as self identical to thesubject as it was then, as it is now, and as it will be into the future. Third,the subjects of security are inscribed as residing in a particular and demar-cated space. Fourth, danger is named and threat identified. Spatial borders


6 Ethnic cleansing is a term that has gained much attention in the wake of the brutal tactics employed inBosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in Rwanda/Burundi. The killing of the Other in the name of purity,however, is a practice that has punctuated many conflicts throughout history.



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and boundaries both define this subject against the dangerous Other andprotect it from the threats this Other poses. Fifth, cognitive borders and

boundaries are established to distinguish an us from a them. These

borders also prescribe codes that distinguish normalcy from deviance orbetrayal, good from evil, Us from Them, etc. Sixth, despite the evocation ofdanger and threat, security discourses reassure us that order and safety areseemingly re-established or at least promised and are therefore immanent(the answer to security is in the past, embedded in the foundation, which isalready known: how we were before). Seventh, security discourses set thestage for the enactment of certain security measures or strategies to ensuresafety and survival as sovereign subjects in the face of dangerous Others(Jackson, 2004).

How, then, do such dynamics play out in Mayan womens (in)security

narratives?

The Conundrum of (In)Security in Mayan Womens Texts

The woman is the educator, even the generator of this world. . . . The woman has a lotof importance. . . . We are starting to see, as part of the history, as Mayan women inGuatemala. The grandparents have told us that before the Spanish invasion the womanwas respected . . . and her opinions were taken into account, because . . . women sharedmuch with Mother Earth. Mother Earth gives life; also, women give life. . . . Women lostall of this importance after the Spanish invasion. From that point on they began to rape

the women, our grandmothers. There was no more respect.Onelia, cited in Stern (2005: 113)

Ladino,7 or as we call it, Meztizo, is when, let us say, one already has mixed blood, orthat is, one does not practise ones own language, own customs, rituals, traditions, butinstead, has another perspective. . . . [Ladinos] do not believe in the Mayans beingincluded. They view them as Indios, treating the concept [Indios] contemptuously. . . .They devalue indigenous women because of the same situation of inculturation thatthey have. . . . They practise another culture which is not theirs.

Diana, Guatemala City, 1995

Many Mayas have stopped wearing their traditional dress so that the other society . . .the Ladinos will accept them. . . . They lose much within the group. The group doesntview them anymore as Mayas, because they do not speak the language, dont wear theclothes, as if they devalue themselves, devalue the culture. . . . There are womenwho have done this . . . and it is dangerous, dangerous to devalue [us]. . . . The Mayanculture is starting to decay . . . and we women are those who supported it the most. In[such a] case, she loses everything, it is dangerous because she is decaying the culture.. . . It is not necessary to arrive at this . . . losing being Mayan; instead, she needs to besure of herself, valorize herself and be conscious of her role as a woman.

Elena, Guatemala, 1995; cited in Stern (2005: 116)


7 Ladino/a refers to the dominant population, which typically has mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage.Ladinoization is a term for the process whereby an indigenous (Mayan) person becomes assimilated intothe ladino/a culture.



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Crucial to Mayan womens struggle for security, and the attendant namingof threat, danger and safety, was also the production of an identity (or iden-tities) to represent the subjects in resistance: a we that, although perhaps

multiple (Mayanwomenpoor), could also be named and thereby secured.In these texts, Mayan women (or The Mayan Woman) is cast as the knownand a priori subject of a promised security. Her/their status as sovereign sub-

ject is assumed as a given; the narrators know who she is now and who (andwhere) she has been throughout history.

These stories map an uninterrupted lineage from the Spanish invasion tothe counter-insurgency war of the 1980s. Mayan women remained the samecharacter in the unfolding of an ancient narrative about danger and threat, aswell as past glory, importance and respect (Alcoff, 2003; Hall, 1990: 225). Theconnection to the past allowed Mayan women a clear and irrefutable sense

of who they are in the midst of a morass of historical and present-day subju-gation and danger. Knowing who they, their ancestors and their children areoffered a safe space in which uncertainty was thwarted and belonging

brought both support and immortality. The Mayan heroes and heroines ofhistory lived on and enjoyed a particular site in the human community,despite the attempts at ethnocide and genocide on the part of their enemies(Anderson, 1991).

This subject had certain and knowable positive attributes, which werecontrasted with a notion of the dangerous Other (see Campbell, 1992;

Jackson, 2004; Weldes, 1999). The narratives established that we are closeto Mother Earth, promote and guard the culture, speak Mayan languagesand wear traditional clothes, are worthy, sacrificing, reproductive. They arerapists, disrespect Mother Nature, repress us, devalue indigenous women,treat indigenous people contemptuously, have no identity. Through suchcontrasts, the narrators specifically worked towards countering the defini-tion of the victim and the Other in the oppressors eyes with a subverted,valorized identity. They thus replenished the denotation of being indigenouswith positive associations of gendered national (ethnic) pride and belonging,culled from the past. At the precipitous time on the eve of Peace, being

Mayan bore with it not only a history of racist repression and violence, butalso one of greatness and splendour, even privilege. It is this latter sense of

being Mayan women that promised the narrators a sense of themselves assecure political subjects, pregnant with future possibilities and still glimmer-ing with the glory of the past.

Borders and boundaries both defined this subject against the dangerousOther (the violent Guatemalan state as current embodiment of the Spanish;the Ladino society) and protect it from the threats this Other poses (rape, dis-respect, repression and bullets, as well as the decaying of culture and the loss

of identity and heritage). The narrators defined Ladinos in direct relation totheir self-definitions. Rosa, for example, identified the history, knowledge




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of and access to culture as one of the largest areas of distinction betweenLadinos and Mayans Mayans had culture, while Ladinos did not:

Ladinos are looking for their identity, but they are not going to find it. . . . We can iden-

tify ourselves as Mayans. . . . Ladinos still havent found their identity. But, we havemade forums and meetings to identify ourselves because we dont want confusionabout our being Mayans.

Rosa, Guatemala, 1995

The narrators, like Rosa, thus emphasized culture/customs as markers ofdifference: Mayans looked different; they thought differently than Ladinas;and they identified with different activities and cultural expressions. Forexample, in her narrative, Susanna (another narrator) maintained a systemof differentiation that lent itself to strict dictates of how a Mayan should

think, act and identify herself. This system was in direct relation to an (imag-ined) assessment of how Ladinas thought, acted and identified themselves.When I asked Susanna how she could tell whether someone was Mayan orLadina, she responded:

[One can tell whether someone is Mayan through] the customs that they have. Becausewhen I studied in ________, the compaeras who were not Mayans did not look likeMayans and did not have the same thoughts as Mayans. They think differently. Forexample, we do not have the same customs as the women or men who are not Mayans.If there is a party . . . or a disco: Lets go, [they say], and they go. Among the Mayans,this cannot be done. Yes, it can be done, but it should not be done. . . . We do not iden-tify very much with . . . disco music or with going to parties. We identify more withmaking Mayan ceremonies or fiestas, like marimba. . . . Also it looks bad for our parentsor our grandparents if we go out in the case of girls/women. Women should not go outto parties. One has to be careful that ones girl does not go out and get a bad reputationor, that is, stain the honour of her father more than anyone else. So this is the difference.

Susanna, cited in Stern, 2005: 107

Here, one can read how gendered ethnic ideologies determined how a girlshould be Mayan. In this statement, gender ideologies became discursivelyimportant in determining the differences between Us and Them, as well as

between female and male (thus also hinting at the many different vectorsthat, as Mendieta explained, tear us asunder; see also Benhabib, 1999).Gender also inscribed the discourse of danger underlying the narratorsstatement: the threat of indecency would impair the dividing lines betweenan immoral Them and a pure Us (Yuval-Davis, 1997). The representation ofwe as a morally superior community, fundamentally unblemished by theevils of Western modernization, would lose its salience as a call for unityand resistance. The decline of the Mayan culture (as well as gender-specifichonour) would be at risk.

Borders and boundaries thus established to distinguish an us from athem also prescribed codes that distinguish normalcy from deviance, or




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betrayal: a Mayan women must know her identity, her role in society, so asnot to devalue us and cause the culture to decay (Elena). Indeed, the fearof losing the culture and betrayal ran as an underlying theme in these

(in)security narratives. When addressing the problems that sexism posedinside the Mayan pueblo, Rosa, for instance, was careful to not alienateherself too much from the Mayan pueblo, as doing so might mean betrayal,and therewith possible estrangement from a base of security even from herreal self. She stated: always the men, the fathers, have this machismo. But,they are not to blame, no they are not. But they always believe that womenare less, always, always, the woman is less(Rosa, Guatemala City, 1995).

Machismo was not the fault of her father; instead, machismo came with thecolonial invasion. She, like many other narrators, emphasized that bothwomen and men needed to wake up and recognize the real story, the

Mayan story, which told of the complementarity between women and menand the value of women in the Mayan culture. She thus tied her narrative

back into a contained whole where the different discourses of danger fitunder an overriding one that served to secure Mayan women inside acohesive Mayan pueblo.

The narratives of Elena, Onelia and Mara underscore how, whenspeaking of securing Mayan women in the face of violent national securitystrategies and the racist power of Ladinoization, these strategies requiredcollapsing all that people called Mayan women are into the specific and

strict naming ofwho they are now and have been throughout history. By sodoing, it was possible to render this specific articulation of being Mayanwomen seemingly securable in the face of great danger. This identityrequired both definition and cohesion (unity) among all Mayan women inorder to be a potent force of resistance and thereby securable, as was evidentin the words of Mara above.

As Edkins reminds us, at the moment of securitization (Waever, 1995) ortechnologization, the political is effectively foreclosed and all that remainsis the following of a script (Edkins, 1999: 117). Identity categories becomemore fixed or stable. Importantly, the fixing of identity relies on the being of

the subject of security as already established as foundational through thenarrative of its always already having been (Campbell, 1999: 24). Accordingto this logic, only its correct identity remains disputable.

The script that the narrators chose was one written in certain and recalledhistory. Mara and Onelia emphasized how, because of the violence andextremity of the marginalization of Mayans throughout history, it was para-mount that Mayan women counter the harms caused by the nation-state andthe Ladino society by rescuing and reclaiming Mayan culture. Only throughan excavation of that culture could Mayan women find the tools to create a

future that would honour the grandness of their heritage and religion, andwould deflect the power of the forces of modernization, militarization and




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racism. In all of these stories, safety resided in a culture of resistance thatdelivers/promises participation and worthiness, that is already as a dormantinstance of continued past glory. These (in)security narratives thus set

the stage for the enactment of certain security measures or strategies (know-ing ones identity and fulfilling ones role in Mayan society; unity; recupera-tion of memory; history; sacrifice; and the making of certain claims forparticipation in Guatemalan society) to ensure safety and survival assovereign subjects in the face of dangerous Others.

Thus, safety was contingent upon securing and strengthening the identitycategory, Mayan woman, through cultural revival and historical remem-

bering. The grandmothers, as Mara and Onelia explained, could guidethe way to the real role of Mayan women, and to their true identity. Anydeviations from this path were a result of the Spanish invasion and the

resulting colonization/imperialism. The Spanish and their descendantscaused the degradation of Mayan womens standing and dignity. Mayanwomen, therefore, needed to find their original connection to the life-givingforces of the earth in order to regain their importance and respect. Theycould thereby re-establish the balance between men and women, people andtheir natural environment and the stature of the Mayan pueblo.

Lacunae and Refusals

Yet, clearly, Mayan women are more than they appear in these depictions, asother moments in the narrators texts also attest. For example, Susanna(cited above) also acknowledged the securitization of the systems of differ-ence she outlined between Mayan girls and Ladinas. She underscored howthey were necessary to maintain in theory and as a cornerstone of the rheto-ric of Mayan revindication. However, life was more complicated, and thedividing lines between Mayans and Ladinasblurred much more fluidly. Shethus revealed through her efforts at obscuring the anomalies and contra-dictions in the cohesiveness of her representations of the identity: Mayanwoman. When I pressed her and asked if she (then 17 years old) liked toattend discos, she smiled and laughed, saying Oh Yes! Then she explained:

I grew up in an ambience in which my parents and my grandparents were not soradical in the Mayan culture. One is Maya, and one does not stop being Maya becauseof the act of going to a party with others. One is always Maya and one will continuebeing Maya even if one doesnt want to. So, if there is some party, I go. (Susanna, citedin Stern, 2005: 107)

Susanna deemed that she was so grounded in, aware of and secure in herMaya-ness that she need not uphold the exterior signs of Maya-ness with thesame degree of rigidity that she prescribed for Mayan girls in general.

She was in danger neither of changing her way of thinking nor of losing her




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acknowledge the limits of acknowledgment itself, that when we claim to know andpresent ourselves, we will fail in some ways that are nevertheless essential to who weare, and that we cannot expect anything different from others. This involves, perhapsparadoxically, both a persisting in ones being (Spinoza) and a certain humility, or a

recognition that persistence requires humility, and that humility, when offered toothers, becomes generosity. For me, though, an essential part of that generosity involvesthe suspension of the regime of truth that governs the elaboration and totalization ofidentities. If the identity we say we are cannot possibly capture us, and marks immedi-ately an excess and opacity which falls outside the terms of identity itself, then anyeffort we make to give an account of oneself will have to fail in order to approach beingtrue. And as we ask to know the other, or ask that the other say, finally, who he or sheis, it will be important that we do not expect an answer that will ever satisfy. And bynot pursuing satisfaction, we let the other live, offering a recognition that is not basedon knowledge, but on its limits. (Butler in Butler & Connolly, 2000: 4)

The totalizing effects of a dominant logic of (in)security (or regime of truthin Butlers words, quoted above), as that logic resonates in the (in)securitynarratives in resistance portrayed here, evokes a certain measure of despair.How can we break the seemingly endless ripples of violence that strugglesfor security animate?

The narratives show us that even careful attention to the multiplicity ofidentity that is evoked to capture or stand for who Mayan women may be as a person or a movement or a people seems to depend on a picture

being painted of the people called Mayan women (Pin-Fat, 2000: 667).Through the writing of danger, this picture became more cemented or

entrenched, since so much was at stake in the representation of the subjectMayan women as symbolically correspondent to the real (Connolly,1991;Edkins 1999: 113; Hekman, 1999: 1819; Z izek, 2000: 173). Furthermore, sucha picture demanded the harmful construction and policing of boundariesand the exacting definition of content that resides within its contours, even ifthose boundaries shifted and recomposed themselves. Importantly, thewe promised correspondence with more than just the inscription of theimagined community Mayan women as subject. The narrators supportedAndersons claim that people are often willing to die and kill for such

limited imaginings (Anderson, 1991).8

In giving the representation of a whole political community the status ofcorresponding with the soul or core of the substance, which is that com-munity, the possibility of attaining the ultimate existential security of thecommunity as sovereign subject makes sense. If we know what Mayan-ness is, then we can surely secure it. The trick, so the modern story of(in)security goes, is to find the most real representation (multiple, hybridor deep) that captures the being of the community. Through the writing of


8 For instance, when discussing the dangers of organizing in such a violent and dangerous climate, thenarrators explained that fear for their own lives did not weigh as heavily as fear for the lives of others(Stern, 2005: 126).



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(in)security, identities are taken to be veritable representations of the subjectwe and elide into being we (Weldes, 1999). Articulations of identity thusserve to denote the subject in terms of securable representations (the content

of identity categories) such as we who respect Mother Earth that canbe confined and safeguarded against those who do not, have not and are not.Yet, the narratives also show how these discursive sleights of hand never

quite work. In other words, they fail. As Mendieta points out, and as thestruggle of Rosa between two related systems of oppression indicated, weare many. One image cannot reflect all that a subject shall be (Mendieta,2003: 408). Additionally, the words of Manuela attest to the claim that asubject is too large, excessive, messy, fluid, changing, contradictory andunbounded to be adequately or fully represented or therewith secured.9 It isalways becoming, and therefore cannot be pinned down in a single repre-

sentation or even in a series of multiple repetitions within the confines oflanguage (Mendieta, 2003: 407; Butler, 1997; Edkins & Pin-Fat, 1999: 11;Edkins, 1999: 15; Irigaray, 1985). In sum, the navigating by Susanna

between the script written through a highly securitized identity and thefluidity of her daily life, the discursive strategies of Rosa for maintainingunity, as well as the unease, fear and challenge of Manuela, hint at thespaces for resistance, even a different ethics (as Butler states above) offered

by this failure.These sites of refusal to the dominant logic of (in)security underscore how

any given (and thereby supposedly securable representation) of the subjectMayan women will be haunted by supplementary or excluded voices,subject positions What about me? that will inevitably clamour forattention in even the most careful attempts at representation. Despite thecohesiveness with which the (in)security discourses of Mayan womenattempt to capture and secure the subject of security into a strictly definedand coherent identity that could be secured, the security of the subject,Mayan women, remains both impossible and unknowable. The refusalsexplored above disturb and unsettle the ordering and seemingly stablefoundations of the subject of security and indeed of the possibility of

security by revealing the lacunae in the cohesiveness of the narratives thatpromise and produce them.

Drawing on the later work of Wittgenstein, Pin-Fat explains that, accordingto an (im)possible dynamic, what counts as possible depends upon what isalready tacitly accepted as impossible (Pin-Fat, 2000: 664; Pin-Fat & Stern,2005). In sum, representing and securing the subject called Mayan womencan be seen as (im)possible for two reasons: first, insecurity is the inevitablesupplement to security. Second, we can never be fully represented (and


9 The sentiments expressed by Manuela remind us of much critique that has been directed against the corefoundation of the Cartesian subject (e.g. Butler, 1997; Butler, Laclau & Z izek, 2000; Edkins, Persram &Pin-Fat, 1999; Foucault, 1980; Jabri, 1998; Z izek, 2000).



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therewith secured). Arguably, violence occurs (in part) through the conceal-ment of these two inherent (im)possibilities, and resistance to violencethrough the failure of this concealment located in the refusals or the cracks

within supposedly coherent discourses.Herein lies the possibility to disrupt the dominant logic of (in)security in itsrepetitions of violence through, as Burke advises, paying close attention tohow people live the necessity for identity and security in their daily lives,and also how they resist some of the totalizing moves that inhere in theirstruggles. In so doing, instead of trying to resolve the conundrum of(in)security as it plays out in the lives, hopes and fears of people, we canchoose, instead, to refuse the pursuit of satisfaction, and invite both humil-ity and generosity: to let people live (as Butler puts it above). Perhaps then,we can begin to resist the seductions of a grammar that also inflicts harm.

* Maria Stern is Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) inStockholm, and Lecturer and Research Fellow at the Department of Peace andDevelopment Research Institute at Gteborg University, Sweden. She is author ofNamingSecurityConstructing Identity: Mayan Women in Guatemala on the Eve of Peace (ManchesterUniversity Press, 2005) and co-editor with Brooke Ackerly and Jaqui True ofFeministMethodologies for International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2006). The author isgrateful to Peter Burgess, Stephanie Buus, Maria Eriksson Baaz, Vronique Pin-Fat,Marysia Zalewski and the anonymous referees for their insightful and extremely helpfulcomments on this article, as well as to the Special Research Programme at the SIIA for thegenerous support of my research.

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