The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the significance of identity as a driving force behind Swedish security policy change. By studying social identity constructions of Russia in Swedish defence propositions from 1992, 2004 and 2015, the thesis concludes that these constructions might have resulted in shifts in Swedish security policy. The thesis uses discourse analysis to examine how Russia was socially constructed as 'difference' in the propositions. Drawing on self/other theories in IR, the study concludes that Russia was constructed in more or less antagonistic forms of ‘otherness’/’difference’ in the different propositions. In 1992, Russia was constructed as a neutral other and a temporally radical other. In 2004, Russia was constructed as a connected other. In 2015, Russia was constructed as a radical other, mostly due to the Russian aggression against and annexation of Crimea. Moreover the article concludes, through a qualitative content analysis, that these perceptions of Russia may have generated ontological (in)security for Swedish political identity. Drawing on Mitzen (2006) and others, the thesis demonstrates that ontological (in)security may have been a driving force behind security policy change. This thesis argues that the search for ontological security may have resulted in European integration for Sweden in 1992, expanded cooperation with Russia in 2004 and a proposition on a strengthened defence capability in 2015. In relation to existing research on Swedish security policy change, this thesis highlights the importance of identity and perceptions of 'others' as a driving force behind security policy change.

Identity always presupposes a sense of location and a relationship with others and the representation of identity most often occurs precisely at the point when there has been a displacement (Bhabha cited in Papastergiadis 1995:17, emphasis added). In this study I focus on the condition of displacement, placing emphasis on the disjunctures of identity arising from temporal and physical dislocations and relocations in historical and postapartheid South African contexts. Displacement, and the attendant senses of dislocation and alienation it may evoke, is explored with reference to three selected female personae. For each persona, displacement is shown to provoke transmutations in subjectivity and identity, resulting in disjunctive identities and relationships with place. Their individual narratives raise questions around the consequences of displacement for a sense of (un)belonging and the (re)making of identities across geographical, cultural, temporal, ethnic and environmental borders. The pivotal role displacement plays in the processes of formation and transformation of subjectivity and identity is foregrounded. Familial histories of diasporic displacement, together with colonial legacies that have shaped my subject position as a white, middle-class, female South African woman, are interlaced with a recounting of personal experience of displacement in postapartheid South Africa. This personal sense of displacement, experienced between the years 2000 to 2006, is extended to a discussion on what is argued to be collective forms of white, English-speaking South Africans’ dislocation during the same time period. I suggest that their sense of displacement was experienced in relation to the uncertainty of their subject positions in postapartheid South Africa. In the practical and theoretical components of the degree, I consider how the three personae’s subjectivities are practiced and lived from their different space-time continuums. This exploration prompts further questions around how the effects of displacement on subjectivity and new identity formations are contingent upon each persona’s relation to the Other of colonial discourse, or the other-strangerforeigner within. Although there are marked differences between their colonial, diasporic and postcolonial contexts, a central theme that underpins the study is that the three conditions of displacement are linked by disjunctures arising from processes of dislocation, alienation, relocation and adaptation. Each persona’s epistemological reality is shown to comprise multiple ambivalences and ambiguities, and is marked by processes of cultural contestation and inner conflict. Their ambivalences and ambiguities encompass slippages between positions of inclusion and exclusion; insider and outsider; inhabitant and immigrant; alienation and belonging; placelessness and locatedness; homely and unhomely that the experience of uprooting and relocating foregrounds. While displacement is understood in terms of trauma and conflict, this condition is also regarded as a generative space of possibility for the emergence of new identity formations. Using my experiences of self-transformation and renegotiation of my identity through processes of cultural contact and exchange as a departure point, I consider ways in which collective white, English-speaking South Africans’ cultural identities are being reformulated, renegotiated or ‘hybridised’ in postapartheid South Africa as a transforming, postcolonial society. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Visual Arts / unrestricted