ABSTRACT
The deep dive into the illustrative material of the book begins with Chapter 5. The chapter explores the three variations of the securitarian imagination: the Defense, Unity, and Stability root narratives. The chapter uses the structure of the story system to show how root narratives work in live conflict data with excerpts drawn from history and political philosophy. The root narratives in support of security are commonly used on the political right, in various forms of realism, in defense of community, and in almost all attempts to protect, develop, and preserve. Each of the three root narratives shares a common protagonist function: to create physical deprivation in the State. The form of injustice is the physical deprivation and the victim/hero is the State, which is a flexible representation of the political community. What differentiates the three securitarian root narratives is the antagonist function, who and what power is to blame for the injustice suffered by the collective (war, crime, famine, chaos, instability, paralysis, confusion). In the Defense narrative, the antagonist is a foreign entity. In the Unity narrative, the antagonists are elite partisans within the political community. In the Stability narrative, the antagonists are the disorganized masses, the people themselves.
