| dc.description.abstract | The US declared itself at war on terrorism as a response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. These attacks changed the US’s perception of security as the threats did not originate from a confined geographical space, but rather from a space of ideas. Instead of only going after the perpetrators of the attacks, the US declared that they would fight to defeat all terrorism. Ontological security theory can provide an alternative explanation to the US’s security seeking after the attacks, as it is concerned with security as being, rather than security as survival. This thesis seeks to investigate how we can understand the US as an ontological security seeker after the attacks of 9/11, how the attacks could destabilize the US’s sense of ontological security, and how the American narrative and ‘self’ was affected. | |
