Hegemony, Discourse, and Ontological Security: A Post-Foundational Approach to Political Analysis

The four published articles composing this dissertation highlight the role of hegemony, discourse, and discursive struggles in explaining different political phenomena, drawing from a range of case studies from the United Kingdom, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The common thread binding this diverse set of research articles into a unified body of research is the novel cross-fertilization of the main arguments and central concepts of Post-foundational Theory of Discourse (PTD) with those of other theoretical frameworks employed in each paper. In this way, the dissertation makes a threefold contribution. Theoretically, the first article incorporates PTD with Bourdieusian Practice Theory (BPT) to critically examine the convergence of political discourse on terrorism and extremism in the United Kingdom. The subsequent articles integrate PTD with Ontological Security Theory (OST) in a more comprehensive and systematic manner by developing the concept of ontological security regime. This concept foregrounds how ontological security is embedded in hegemonic articulations and power struggles that revolve around a regime of practices and fantasmatic narratives. Methodologically, the dissertation articulates an empirical model for post-foundational political analysis. The model translates the abstract concepts and tools of post-foundational thought into a practical and replicable framework, offering a systematic methodology for applying post-foundational concepts in empirical research. While Article 1 in this dissertation demonstrates a comprehensive application of this model in the field of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS), the model also constitutes the underlying logic that structures the empirical analysis of ontological security regimes in Articles 2, 3, and 4 across various contexts. Empirically, drawing on these theoretical articulations, each article introduces an original contribution to political analysis, offering a novel analytical framework and in-depth empirical analysis on security policies and practices at both the intra-state and inter-state levels and in different contexts.