The normalisation of exception in the biopolitical security dispositif

In this article, I attempt to analyse the way in which the world order that resulted from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 has altered the relationship between security and the future. Security entails an epistemological relation to the future, on the basis of which the present is shaped. The radically unprecedented nature of the new terrorism has called into question the possibility of ordering the present in relation to knowledge of the future. The terms of the political have, since 2001, been redefined due to a fear and uncertainty that have modified even the logic of criminal law. That the contemporary preventive state exercises excessive control over civil society, in which security and rights enter into conflict, is a fact that the social sciences have been dealing with in the past few years. The specificity of my approach in this article lies in an understanding of the present and of the organising capacity of politics on the basis of the type of epistemological relation that is established with respect to the future.

The normalisation of exception in the biopolitical security dispositif Articles