Securing the future

Past Convenor: Dr Claudia Aradau

This thematic cluster focused on the turn to the future in security practices through the invention of new discourses and practices: precaution, preparedness, speculation, catastrophic risks, simulations and exercises. Conceptually, security studies - particularly in its analyses of securitising processes - have focused on unpacking practices deployed in the present. The past was of interest inasmuch as past knowledge, memory and habitus intervened in the present. The problematisation of the future through unexpected and disruptive events requires a different conceptual toolbox, which can allow us to understand how the linearity of past-present-future has been not only reversed, but also radically disrupted. The future has become the 'reality' of security practices, while the present is a performative rehearsal of the future.

Two workshops have been organised in this cluster:

• Governing through the future workshop
• Enacting resilience in an uncertain world