Security and the Future. A Cultural Studies Approach

Through the anticipation of future events, the military attempts to predict the consequences that follow interventions, to calculate the behavior of an opponent or enemy, to detect potential flashpoints, and to avert threats such as terrorism. The subproject investigated the quantitative predictive methods used in the context of military strategy and policy advice with regard to their implications for terms such as security, uncertainty, and the unknown. It also looked at the time frames established by these methods. The study initially utilized the works of the US-American Herman Kahn, who during the Cold War developed detailed, calculated future scenarios regarding the political capacity to act in the face of the threat of nuclear war. Furthermore, the subproject concentrated on the current changes taking place in the area of digital forecasting based on the collection of so–called big data. It pursued the implementation of new forecasting practices within the framework of security concepts and programs.

Since the 1970s, statements about ecological issues have become an integral part of social self-conceptualizations. The discourse of political ecology works with all kinds of references to the future, which, however, always serve the legitimization and organization of political agency in the present. Painting pictures of future ecological disasters serves to legitimate present-day strategies of security, which are implemented solely for the purpose of preventing such a disastrous future from happening. As a first step, the project examined documents from the 1970s that depict disaster scenarios and reflect upon their relation to the budding environmental movement of the time. The documents analyzed include political essays, the public and scientific discussions around Denis Meadow’s study Limits to Growth, as well as manifestos and novels. As a second step, the project focussed on today’s climate change debate and evaluated the security strategies that might become vital if the effects of climatic change become more drastic. It is significant in this respect that scientific and fictional forms of representation seem to be intersecting in an entirely novel way at the moment.

Through the lens of prevention, ideas about security and the future come together in a paradoxical way: future disasters (whether diseases, terror attacks, or nuclear disasters) shall be pre-empted, in order to prevent them. Particularly in acute crisis situations, the demand for preventative security policy gains vehemence while serving to excuse far-reaching standardization and control measures. This subproject dealt with the nature and manner in which social communication concerning upcoming disasters (along with the likelihood of prevention) is and might be presented in the medium of fiction. The subject matter consists of novels and films, which fictionally revise and thereby intervene in current security and prevention discussions. On a theoretical level, the study further explored the conditions and limitations of direct thematic or mimetic access to such discussions in fiction as well as the resulting prospects of transforming the social self-understanding of security and the future.