Forum: Foreign Policy, Emotions and Ontological Security

Abstract This forum, as a part of the special issue on New Directions for Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), provides a diversity of answers to the question of how affects and emotions, and the search for ontological security, relate to foreign policy. By foregrounding the various ways to conceive the relationship between foreign policy, ontological security, collective identities, states’ autobiographical narratives, emotions and affective investments, the contributors to this forum examine and chart fruitful directions in FPA. Resende explores the analytical potentials of combining the theory of Ontological Security, Foreign Policy Analysis and Memory Studies to investigate how states invest in practices of ontological security by creating, remaking and defending their national narratives through historical memory. Solomon recollects how the September 11th attacks and the ensuing War on Terror contributed to his search for approaches which took affects and emotions seriously in IR, and which could help make sense of why some discourses, including foreign policy discourses, resonate with and are accepted by the audience in certain contexts. Finally, Sandrin provides an account of her encounters with the literature on the role of emotions in foreign policy and conveys how these texts helped her make sense of some puzzling aspects of Turkish foreign policy. Jimmy Casas Klausen served as lead editor of this forum. The manuscript passed through the regular double-blind peer review process to insure anonymity.