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The limits of imagination: Securitisation and exceptionalism in the World of Warcraft video game

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2022

Vic Castro Open the ORCID record for Vic Castro [Opens in a new window]
Vic Castro*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
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*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Securitisation theory has too often been associated with the liberal state of exception and its problematic baggage. The Copenhagen School's early claims to deconstruct (not reproduce) the national security logic seem overlooked. Using the fantasy video game World of Warcraft as a large-scale thought experiment, this article asks how a distinct security mode is still possible when the normalisation of armed violence exceeds even what Carl Schmitt's political theory can provide for. Following a careful reading of Ole Wæver's formulation of the ‘existential threat’, securitisation asserts that without a certain referent object, the world becomes meaningless. As a tool for reshaping the limits of imagination, securitisation enacts political communities in World of Warcraft by turning upside down common wisdom about normalcy and security. While normal politics are violently conflictual, securitisation fills in the role of international norms and organisation, fostering supranational cooperation and erasing sovereign disputes. Securitisation thus far exceeds its contingent incarnation in the modern concept of security – a conclusion that has consequences for the normative debate on securitisation and for non-Western interpretations of the theory.

Keywords

Securitisation TheoryPopular CultureDeconstructionExceptionCarl Schmitt
Type
Special Section on Securitisation
Information
European Journal of International Security , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , May 2022 , pp. 207 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

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References

1 Baldwin, David A., ‘The concept of security’, Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 5–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ole Wæver, ‘Security, the Speech Act: Analysing the Politics of a Word’, working paper presented at the Research Training Seminar at Sostrup Manor (1989); Ole Wæver, ‘Securitization and desecuritization’, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 46–86; Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998).

3 Holger Stritzel, Security in Translation: Securitization Theory and the Localization of Threat (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 35.

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11 A gamer such as Asmongold has 1.9 million followers on the game streaming platform Twitch. See Twitch, ‘Asmongold – Twitch’, available at: {www.twitch.tv/asmongold}, accessed 13 February 2021.

12 Many thanks to Olaf Corry for formulating this point.

13 Barkawi, Tarak, ‘Decolonising war’, European Journal of International Security, 1:2 (2016), pp. 199–214 (p. 205)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Using a Western fantasy video game to indirectly address postcolonial concerns may raise eyebrows. However, focusing on securitisation theory's applicability to the ‘non-West’ risks reinforcing the idea that the West does not display such qualities, and obscuring considerations on the theory's structure. See Bertrand, Sarah, ‘Can the subaltern securitize? Postcolonial perspectives on securitization theory and its critics’, European Journal of International Security, 3:3 (2018), pp. 281–99 (p. 291)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 This is surprising given that this mainstream game, being produced by an American studio, would have been expected to reflect American visions of security. Explaining this paradox is left to further research.

15 As the idea of a ‘real world’ that excludes representations of itself (including fictional ones) has been amply rejected by critical scholars in IR and elsewhere, the inverted commas will be implied throughout the rest of this article.

16 Amounting to two published articles and one widely circulated draft, arguably a droplet in a small ocean of theoretical securitisation literature. Wæver, Ole, ‘Politics, security, theory’, Security Dialogue, 42:4–5 (2011), pp. 465–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wæver, Ole, ‘The theory act: Responsibility and exactitude as seen from securitization’, International Relations, 29:1 (2015), pp. 121–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ole Wæver, ‘Speech Act Theories of Securitization: Illocutionary Insistence and Political Performativity’, working paper discussed at the Sydney Security Scholars conference, University of Sydney (27 November 2018).

17 Stuart Croft, Securitizing Islam: Identity and the Search for Security (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Stritzel, Security in Translation.

18 See Thierry Balzacq (ed.), Understanding Securitisation Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (London, UK: Routledge, 2010); Thierry Balzacq, Sarah Léonard, and Jan Ruzicka, ‘“Securitization” revisited: Theory and cases’, International Relations, 30:4 (2016), pp. 494–531.

19 Bourbeau, ‘Moving forward together’; Balzacq, Thierry, ‘Securitization theory: Past, present, and future’, Polity, 51:2 (2019), pp. 331–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Based on a review of the 75 most recent articles tagged with the ‘securitisation’ keyword on the Taylor & Francis website (as of November 2020), only 13 drew from a routine version of securitisation. Nevertheless, 21 articles used the word ‘securitisation’ with very little theory, making it difficult to distinguish between a nuance of routine or exception.

21 Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security, p. 21.

22 Huysmans, ‘The question of the limit’; Williams, ‘Words, images, enemies’.

23 Carl Schmitt, Théologie Politique, trans. Jean-Louis Schlegel (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1988); Carl Schmitt, Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

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26 Ole Wæver, ‘Politics, security, theory’, Security Dialogue, 42:4–5 (2011), pp. 465–80; Ulrik Pram Gad and Karen Lund Petersen, ‘Concepts of politics in securitization studies’, Security Dialogue, 42:4–5 (2011), pp. 315–28; Rita Floyd, Security and the Environment: Securitisation Theory and US Environmental Security Policy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 17.

27 Bourbeau, ‘Moving forward together’, p. 189; see also Floyd, Rita, ‘Extraordinary or ordinary emergency measures: What, and who, defines the “success” of securitization?’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 29:2 (2016), pp. 677–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Aradau, Claudia, ‘Security and the democratic scene: Desecuritization and emancipation’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 7:4 (2004), pp. 388–413 (pp. 392, 405)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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30 Jef Huysmans, The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, Migration, and Asylum in the EU (London, UK: Routledge, 2006); Jef Huysmans, Security Unbound: Enacting Democratic Limits (London, UK: Routledge, 2014).

31 Jef Huysmans, ‘Dire et écrire la sécurité: le dilemme normatif des études de sécurité’, Cultures & Conflits, 31–32 (1998), pp. 164–82.

32 Roxanne Lynn Doty, ‘Immigration and the politics of security’, Security Studies, 8:2–3 (1998), pp. 71–93; McDonald, ‘Securitization and the construction of security’; Sabine Hirschauer, ‘For real people in real places: The Copenhagen School and the other “little security nothings”’, European Security, 28:4 (2019), pp. 413–30.

33 Ken Booth, Theory of World Security (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 165.

34 Sian Tomkinson, Tauel Harper, and Katie Attwell, ‘Confronting Incel: Exploring possible policy responses to misogynistic violent extremism’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 55:2 (2020), pp. 152–69 (p. 153).

35 Sara Meger, ‘The fetishization of sexual violence in international security’, International Studies Quarterly, 60:1 (2016), pp. 149–59.

36 Ibid., p. 156.

37 Schmittian exceptionalism is taken for granted in Lise Philipsen, ‘Performative securitization: From conditions of success to conditions of possibility’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 23 (2020), pp. 139–63; and in Balzacq, ‘Securitization theory: Past, present, and future’. Agambenian exceptionalism is one in which the state of exception becomes the norm. This form of exceptionalism may be jarring for classical securitisation theory, which separates normal and exceptional politics, but what matters here is that Agamben sees it as characteristic of the modern liberal state. See Jef Huysmans, ‘Minding exceptions: The politics of insecurity and liberal democracy’, Contemporary Political Theory, 3:3 (2004), pp. 321–41; Michael Lister, ‘Explaining counter terrorism in the UK: Normal politics, securitised politics or performativity of the neo-liberal state?’, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 12:3 (2019), pp. 416–39; Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

38 Mark Neocleous, Critique of Security (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, The Liberal Way of War: Killing to Make Life Live (London, UK: Routledge, 2009).

39 Aradau, ‘Security and the democratic scene’, p. 392.

40 Ulla Holm, ‘Algeria: Securitization of state/regime, nation and Islam’, in Stefano Guzzini and Dietrich Jung (eds), Security Analysis and Copenhagen Peace Research (London, UK: Routledge, 2004), pp. 217–28; Holbraad and Pedersen, ‘Revolutionary securitization’; Monika Barthwal-Datta, Understanding Security Practices in South Asia: Securitization Theory and the Role of Non-State Actors (London, UK: Routledge, 2012); for a reply, see Maja Touzari Greenwood and Ole Wæver, ‘Copenhagen–Cairo on a roundtrip: A security theory meets the revolution’, Security Dialogue 44:5–6 (2013), pp. 485–506.

41 Michael C. Williams, ‘Securitization as political theory: The politics of the extraordinary’, International Relations, 29:1 (2015), pp. 114–20; Balzacq, ‘Securitization theory: Past, present, and future’.

42 Andreas Kalyvas, Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 7.

43 Ole Wæver, ‘The EU as a security actor: Reflections from a pessimistic constructivist on post sovereign security orders’, in Morton Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams (eds), International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration (London, UK: Routledge, 2000), pp. 250–94 (p. 286).

44 Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security, p. 25.

45 Vuori, ‘Illocutionary logic and strands of securitization’, p. 77.

46 Holger Stritzel, ‘Towards a theory of securitization: Copenhagen and beyond’, European Journal of International Relations, 13:3 (2007), pp. 357–83 (p. 360), emphasis added.

47 Huysmans, The Politics of Insecurity, p. 48; Barry Buzan, People, States & Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (Hemel Hempstead, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991).

48 Rita Floyd, The Morality of Security: A Theory of Just Securitization (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), p. 75.

49 Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security, p. 21.

50 Lene Hansen, ‘The politics of securitization and the Muhammad cartoon crisis: A post-structuralist perspective’, Security Dialogue, 42:4–5 (2011), pp. 357–69.

51 Myriam Dunn Cavelty, ‘The materiality of cyberthreats: Securitization logics in popular visual culture’, Critical Studies on Security, 7:2 (2019), pp. 138–51.

52 Quoted in Robert Young, ‘Going fifth freedom: Fighting the War on Terror in the Splinter Cell: Blacklist video came’, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 8:1 (2015), pp. 147–62 (p. 153).

53 Daniel H. Nexon and Iver B. Neumann (eds), Harry Potter and International Relations (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield: 2006); Abigail E. Ruane and Patrick James, ‘The international relations of Middle Earth: Learning from The Lord of the Rings’, International Studies Perspectives, 9:4 (2008), pp. 377–94; Kyle Grayson, Matt Davies, and Simon Philpott, ‘Pop goes IR? Researching the popular culture—world politics continuum’, Politics, 29:3 (2009), pp. 155–63; Jutta Weldes and Christina Rowley, ‘So, how does popular culture relate to world politics?’, in Frederica Caso and Caitlin Hamilton (eds), Popular Culture and World Politics: Theories, Methods, Pedagogies (Bristol, UK: E-International Relations Publishing 2015), pp. 11–34.

54 Charli Carpenter, ‘Rethinking the political / -science- / fiction nexus: Global policy making and the campaign to stop killer robots’, Perspectives on Politics, 14:1 (2016), pp. 53–69.

55 Nexon and Neumann (eds), Harry Potter and International Relations, p. 12.

56 Kevin C. Dunn, ‘Never mind the bollocks: The punk rock politics of global communication’, Review of International Studies, 34:1 (2008), pp. 193–210; Erin Hannah and Rorden Wilkinson, ‘Zombies and IR: A critical reading’, Politics, 36:1 (2016), pp. 5–18.

57 Jennifer Sterling-Folker and Brian Folker, ‘Conflict and the nation-state: Magical mirrors of muggles and refracted images’, in Nexon and Neumann (eds), Harry Potter and International Relations, pp. 103–26; Priya Dixit, ‘Relating to difference: Aliens and alienness in Doctor Who and international relations’, International Studies Perspectives, 13:3 (2012), pp. 289–306; Christina Rowley and Jutta Weldes, ‘The evolution of international security studies and the everyday: Suggestions from the Buffyverse’, Security Dialogue, 43:6 (2012), pp. 513–30; Craig Hayden, ‘The procedural rhetorics of Mass Effect: Video games as argumentation in international relations’, International Studies Perspectives, 18 (2017), pp. 175–93.

58 Marco Fey, Annika E. Poppe, and Carsten Rauch, ‘The nuclear taboo, Battlestar Galactica, and the real world: Illustrations from a science-fiction universe’, Security Dialogue, 47:4 (2016), pp. 348–65.

59 Ibid., pp. 349, 351.

60 Among others, see Roger Stahl, ‘Have you played the War on Terror?’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 23:2 (2006), pp. 112–30; Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Paine, Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games (London, UK: Routledge, 2009); Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter, Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Souvik Mukherjee, Video Games and Postcolonialism (London, UK: Palgrave Pivot, 2017); Michelle Lee Brown, ‘Never alone: (Re)coding the comic holotrope of survivance’, Transmotion, 3:1 (2017), pp. 22–44.

61 Nick Robinson, ‘Videogames, persuasion and the War on Terror: Escaping or embedding the military—entertainment complex?’, Political Studies, 60:3 (2012), pp. 504–22; Nick Robinson, ‘Militarism and opposition in the living room: the case of military videogames’, Critical Studies on Security, 4:3 (2016), pp. 255–75; Brandon Valeriano and Philip Habel, ‘Who are the enemies? The visual framing of enemies in digital games’, International Studies Review, 18:3 (2016), pp. 462–486; Nicolas de Zamaróczy, ‘Are we what we play? Global politics in historical strategy computer games’, International Studies Perspectives, 18 (2017), pp. 155–74; Hayden, ‘The procedural rhetorics of Mass Effect’; Helen Berents and Brendan Keogh, ‘Virtuous, virtual, but not visceral: (Dis)embodied viewing in military-themed videogames’, Critical Studies on Security, 6:3 (2018), pp. 366–69; Aggie Hirst, ‘“Videogames saved my life”: Everyday resistance and ludic recovery among US military veterans’, International Political Sociology, 15:4 (2021), pp. 482–503.

62 Marcus Schulzke, ‘The critical power of virtual dystopias’, Games and Culture, 9:5 (2014), pp. 1–20; Erin O'Brien and Helen Berents, ‘Virtual saviours: Digital games and anti-trafficking awareness-raising’, Anti-Trafficking Review, 13 (2019), pp. 82–99.

63 Felix Ciută, ‘Call of duty: Playing video games with IR’, Millennium, 44:2 (2016), pp. 197–215 (pp. 199–200).

64 Nick Robinson, ‘Videogames and IR: Playing at method’, in Frederica Caso and Caitlin Hamilton (eds), Popular Culture and World Politics, pp. 91–100; Ciută, ‘Call of Duty’.

65 Tanya Krzywinska, ‘Blood scythes, festivals, quests, and backstories: World creation and rhetorics of myth in World of Warcraft’, Games and Culture, 1:4 (2006), pp. 383–96.

66 A game designer noteworthily criticised the fact that World of Warcraft does not allow the player to reject a securitising move. See Richard Bartle, ‘Torture’ (19 November 2008), available at: {www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2008/QBlog191108A.html} accessed 31 August 2021; Richard Bartle, ‘Tortuous Replies…’ (26 November 2008), available at: {www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2008/QBlog261108A.html} accessed 31 August 2021.

67 Nick Robinson, ‘Have you won the War on Terror? Military videogames and the state of American exceptionalism’, Millennium, 43:2 (2015), pp. 450–470 (p. 453); see also Cynthia Weber, International Relations Theory: A Critical Introduction (London, UK: Routledge, 2005).

68 Katherine Bessière, A. Fleming Say, and Sara Kiesler, ‘The ideal elf: Identity exploration in World of Warcraft’, CyberPsychology and Behavior, 10:4 (2007), pp. 530–5; Bonnie Nardi, My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009); Luke Cuddy and John Nordlinger (eds), World of Warcraft and Philosophy: Wrath of the Philosopher King (Chicago, IL: Carus Publishing Company, 2009); William Sims Bainbridge, The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012);

69 Lina Eklund, ‘Doing gender in cyberspace: The performance of gender by female World of Warcraft players’, Convergence, 17:3 (2011), pp. 323–42; Lisa Nakamura, ‘Don't hate the player, hate the game: The racialization of labor in World of Warcraft’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 26:2 (2009), pp. 128–44; Melissa J. Monson, ‘Race-based fantasy realm: Essentialism in the World of Warcraft’, Games and Culture, 7:1 (2012), pp. 48–71; Scott Rettberg, ‘Corporate ideology in World of Warcraft’, in Hilde Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg (eds), Digital Play, Culture, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 19–38. Literature on colonialism and imperialism, which are perhaps more directly relevant to IR, mostly consists in master's theses. See Beth K. Fukumoto, ‘The Infinite Frontier: Imperialism, Fronterism and Nostalgia in World of Warcraft’ (Master's thesis, English, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2013); Levi Pressnell, ‘Building a World of Warcraft: Cyber-Colonialism Through “Othering” Strategies’ (Master's thesis, Communication Studies, University of Alabama, 2013).

70 Esther MacCallum-Stewart, ‘“Never such innocence again”: War and histories in World of Warcraft’, in Corneliussen and Rettberg (eds), Digital Play, Culture, and Identity, pp. 39–62; Lisbeth Klastrup, ‘What makes World of Warcraft a world? A note on death and dying’, in Corneliussen and Rettberg (eds), Digital Play, Culture, and Identity, pp. 143–66; Christian Hoffstadt and Michael Nagenborg, ‘The concept of war in World of Warcraft’, in Stephan Günzel, Michael Liebe, and Dieter Mersch (eds), Conference Proceedings of the Philosophy of Computer Games 2008 (Potsdam, Germany: University Press, 2008), pp. 126–41; Elizabeth Losh, ‘Regulating violence in virtual worlds: Theorizing just war and defining war crimes in World of Warcraft’, Pacific Coast Philology, 44:2 (2009), pp. 159–72.

71 Accessible at: {wow.gamepedia.com}.

72 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 33.

73 Ibid., p. 48.

74 Ibid., p. 49.

75 Quoted in ibid., p. xvii.

76 Sprite Fight, MoP.

77 Slave Hunters, WoD.

78 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 48.

79 Obsidian Warbeads, TBC; Halo Drops, Cata; When Science Attacks, Cata; Avoiding Lawsuits 101, BfA.

80 Huysmans, ‘The question of the limit’, p. 571.

81 Roe, ‘Is securitization a “negative” concept?’, p. 258.

82 Wæver, ‘Securitization and desecuritization’, p. 47.

83 Wæver, ‘Security, the Speech Act’, p. 37. Wæver's scepticism of denunciation as a mode of critique today finds echo around actor-network theory and other parts of science and technology studies. See Bruno Latour, ‘Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern’, Critical Inquiry, 30:2 (2004), pp. 225–48; Jonathan Luke Austin, ‘A parasitic critique for International Relations’, International Political Sociology, 13:2 (2019), pp. 215–31; Marieke de Goede, ‘Engagement all the way down’, Critical Studies on Security, 8:2 (2020), pp. 101–15. For a discussion of Derrida specifically, see Aggie Hirst, ‘Derrida and political resistance: The radical potential of deconstruction’, Globalizations, 12:1 (2015), pp. 6–24.

84 Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie (Paris: Éditions de minuit, 1967), pp. 25–6; translation my own.

85 Ibid., p. 38.

86 Derrida, Positions, p. 35; translation my own.

87 Ibid., p. 21.

88 Wæver, ‘Security, the Speech Act’, p. 38. Rita Floyd, possibly confusing poststructuralism with Frankfurt School-inspired critical approaches, regrets that ‘Wæver has been influenced by … deconstruction only in so far as the possibility of the “event” of deconstruction made him think beyond the horizon of mainstream IR theory.’ Furthermore, ‘he offers no theory’ on how to spot this event – a strange point, given that deconstruction is always already at play in all concepts and has no need to be spotted. See Floyd, Security and the Environment, pp. 27–8.

89 Wæver, ‘Securitization and desecuritization’, p. 47, emphasis added.

90 Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security, p. 24.

91 Wilkinson, Cai, ‘The Copenhagen School on tour in Kyrgyzstan: Is securitization theory useable outside Europe?’, Security Dialogue, 38:1 (2007), pp. 5–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 Those familiar with actor-network theory will recognise the referent object as an ‘obligatory passage point’ that allows meaning to be translated between different parts of the assemblage. This meaning is material-semiotic, not just discursive. See Michel Callon, ‘Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay’, The Sociological Review, 32:1 suppl. (1984), pp. 196–233; John Law and Annemarie Mol, ‘Notes on materiality and sociality’, The Sociological Review, 43:2 (1995), pp. 274–94.

93 A focus on the future is admittedly more commonly associated to risk than to securitisation; see Louise Amoore, The Politics of Possibility: Risk and Security Beyond Probability (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013).

94 Reading the Meters, WotLK.

95 Such as the End of Times dungeon, Cata; the Visions of N'Zoth events, BfA; or the entire Warlords of Draenor expansion.

96 For example, green for demons (TBC, WoD, and Legion), orange for the undead (WotLK), black and white for Sha spirits (MoP), or red for the druidic Nightmare (Legion).

97 Hansen, Lene, ‘Theorizing the image for security studies: Visual securitization and the Muhammad cartoon crisis’, European Journal of International Relations, 17:1 (2011), pp. 51–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Many thanks to Philippe Beaulieu-Brossard for this point.

99 On representational politics in popular culture, see Laura J. Shepherd, Gender, Violence and Popular Culture: Telling Stories (London, UK: Routledge, 2012).

100 Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security, p. 25.

101 Vuori, ‘Illocutionary logic and strands of securitization’, p. 69.

102 Huysmans, Security Unbound, p. 69.

103 The ‘speech act’ element of classical securitisation theory has generated abundant controversies. This article will not partake in these discussions and will remain concerned with security ‘discourse’ in the general sense, without engaging with either speech act theory or issues of audience and context – the latter two which would be impractical to develop in a fictional video game setting. See Ciutǎ, Felix, ‘Security and the problem of context: A hermeneutical critique of securitisation theory’, Review of International Studies, 35:2 (2009), pp. 301–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thierry Balzacq, ‘A theory of securitization: origins, core assumptions, and variants’, in Thierry Balzacq (ed.), Understanding Securitisation Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (London, UK: Routledge, 2010), pp. 1–30; Stritzel, Security in Translation.

104 Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security, p. 27.

105 Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, ‘Macrosecuritisation and security constellations: Reconsidering scale in securitisation theory’, Review of International Studies, 35:2 (2009), pp. 253–76 (p. 275).

106 Poststructuralist scholars have argued that otherisation is a core aspect of securitisation; see Croft, Securitizing Islam, pp. 86–92; Eroukhmanoff, Clara, ‘The remote securitisation of Islam in the US post-9/11: Euphemisation, metaphors and the “logic of expected consequences” in counter-radicalisation discourse’, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 8:2 (2015), pp. 246–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Julie Wilhelmsen, ‘How does war become a legitimate undertaking? Re-engaging the post-structuralist foundation of securitization theory’, Cooperation and Conflict, 52:2 (2017), pp. 166–83. The fact that WoW's logic of justice relies heavily on otherisation does not mean that WoW securitisation is ‘not otherising’; however, it underlines that extreme otherisation can occur without any securitisation.

107 Karuk's Oath, WotLK; The Sunfury Garrison, TBC; Cry Thunder!, Legion; Howling Mad, Cata; emphasis added in all.

108 No Pack Left Behind, MoP.

109 Breaking Broketooth, MoP; emphasis added.

110 The Avatar of Terokk, WoD.

111 Freya's Pact, WotLK.

112 The Ritual, MoP; emphasis added.

113 Huysmans, Security Unbound.

114 Jonas Hagmann, (In)Security and the Production of International Relations: The Politics of Securitisation in Europe (London, UK: Routledge, 2014), pp. 8–9.

115 Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear (Brighton, UK: Wheatsheaf, 1983).

116 Carsten Bagge Laustsen and Ole Wæver, ‘In defence of religion: Sacred referent objects for securitization’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 29:3 (2000), pp. 705–39; Lene Hansen and Helen Nissenbaum, ‘Digital disaster, cyber security, and the Copenhagen School’, International Studies Quarterly, 53:4 (2009), pp. 1155–75.

117 In the following, in-game references will come from Legion unless otherwise specified.

118 Ryura, ‘Which is your favourite expansion?’, Blizzard EU forums, available at: {https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/which-is-your-favorite-expansion/77449} accessed 22 February 2021.

119 Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security, p. 22.

120 In a purely military form, this can be seen in the Terokkar Forest quests, TBC.

121 Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, Security, p. 121.

122 Leyline Abuse.

123 The Last of the Last.

124 The Emerald Queen.

125 Return to the Grove.

126 Hagmann, (In)Security and the Production of International Relations, p. 28.

127 Assault on Broken Shore.

128 Defending Broken Isles.

129 The Troggs that Fell to Earth.

130 The Burning Legion and the demon hunters, both of which owe their existence to extreme supranational securitisation, are the main antagonists of Legion and TBC, respectively.

131 Suramar Intro cinematic.

132 Battle against Grand Magistrix Elisande, Nighthold raid; emphasis added.

133 Battle against Grand Magistrix Elisande, Nighthold raid.

134 All In.

135 Battle against the Chronomatic Anomaly, Nighthold raid.

136 Victoire farewell quote, emphasis in the original.

137 Barkawi, ‘Decolonising war’.