Becoming Undisciplined: Toward the Supradisciplinary Study of Security

In recent years we have seen increasing reflection among scholars of security studies regarding the boundaries of their field and the range of its appropriate subject matter. At the same time, scholars elsewhere in the academy have been developing their own approaches to issues of security. These various pockets of work have been undertaken in nearly complete isolation from one another and with little apparent awareness of relevant developments in the other fields. In this essay, we advance the claim that security cannot be satisfactorily theorized within the confines of disciplinary boundaries—any disciplinary boundaries. The challenge thus becomes how to develop what might be termed a “supradisciplinary” approach to the study of security that will allow us to think and engage our subject matter across a range of discourses without giving rise to an interdisciplinary hybrid or sui generis discipline.