Das Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin (ZfL) vergibt ...

Gerda Henkel Foundation, Special Programme Security, Society, and the State
Topic Focus 5: “Security Strategies between Doctrine Formation and Implementation”
Security and the Future:
A Cultural Studies Approach
Applicants: PD Dr. Stefan Willer (Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin), PD Dr.
Benjamin Bühler (Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin /University of Constance)
1. Problem Statement and Research Interest
Problem Statement
The planned project investigates, from a cultural studies perspective, the connection between
security and futurity. It analyzes the epistemic and cultural presuppositions of ‘security’ by
focusing on I.) military scenarios since 1945, II.) debates on political ecology and risk prevention
since 1970 and III.) representations of security and prevention in contemporary literature
and film. By drawing on these cultural phenomena that have a broad impact on contemporary
Western societies, the project aims to broaden both scientific research and public debate on
security issues.
Concepts as well as practices of security grow from their specific linkages to the future. Just
like the term ‘security’ connotes strategy and planning, the very notion of security is prospective
– prospective in a two-fold manner: For one, ‘security’ denotes our present-day management
to reduce the potential of risk in the future, or to at least prolong the current, assessable
situation into the future. At the same time, the term implies we possess assured knowledge of
the future: It thus assumes a kind of presupposed certainty about the future. However, when it
comes to debates of security within political, economical and technical domains, this presupposition
of a certified knowledge about the future remains largely unheeded, as do its
constitutive, legitimizing and organizing qualities. The role of climate research for the present
debate on climate change can be understood as an example for this blind spot within current
discussions of security issues: Politicians expect concrete statements from climate researchers
concerning future changes of climate and suggestions as to what kind of preventive measures
may be taken. Climate researchers, however, cannot meet these expectations, since they are
only able to deliver prognoses of probability. The social significance of these prognoses lies
precisely in the production and communication of uncertainty (Hulme 2009).
Due to these often unrecognized, varying forms of assumptions about the future and the conflicts
resulting from them, our project aims to investigate, from a cultural studies perspective,
the connection between security and futurity. We will systematically examine the ambivalence
tied to the concept of ‘security’: being secure and being sure. The project’s epistemological
research trajectory thus aims at the issues and questions raised in topic focus 5, “Secu-
2