Abstract
This article discusses the role of private actors in the finance–security nexus. It analyses how the delegated authority bestowed upon private actors in anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing (AML/CTF) may be perceived not as empowerment but as an expression of a threatening invasive and hegemonic order: To reap the possible benefits offered by the security paradigm in the ‘war on terror’, private actors must relinquish a degree of self-determinacy. This threat to self-determinacy, it is argued, foregrounds (affective) resistance among for-profit professionals. The article probes how for-profit professionals engage in (affective) resistance through self-authorship. Evoking Hansen’s discourse analysis on linkages and differentiation, the empirical analysis delineates how lawyers in the UK and France resist being resilient subjects in AML/CTF. It shows how for-profit professionals use self-authorship for purposes of (affective) resistance. Specifically, it finds that the linkages and counter-values subjects pin to the perceived invasive order of AML/CTF serve as poles in the fence protecting a space where professional identity is safeguarded. In this way, actors became resisting subjects when faced with obligations to be resilient. In conclusion, the article affords nuance to the role of private actors in the finance–security nexus by outlining how the forging of the first link in De Goede’s security chain is undermined.
