The production of precariousness for the dissenting subject at the intersections of neoliberal and cultural nationalist practice

Abstract

In this study, I examine how dissenting subjects become precarious in the context of national security labor. I argue that the intersection of neoliberal and cultural nationalist practices produces a state formation, which is not genuinely interested in building institutional capacities for strengthening national security. Instead, the neoliberal, cultural nationalist state is more interested in investing in organizational actors who can produce spectacles, which transform citizens into passive consumers of state propaganda. Dissenters who call for expansion of institutional capacities threaten the prevailing authority structures, as institutions can then become sites for democratic action. Using auto-ethnographic approach to analyze the letters that I wrote while working in a national security organization in India and its subsequent coverage in the media, I contend that the marginalization of the dissenter is used as a tactic by the state for normalizing the erosion of institutional capacities.