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logical disasters serves to legitimate present-day strategies of security, which are implemented solely for the purpose of preventing such a disastrous future from happening. We will look at documents from the 1970s depicting scenarios of disaster and check for their relation to the budding environmental movement of the time. Documents to be analyzed are the political essays by Carl Amery and Heinrich Gruhl, the public and scientific discussions around Denis Meadow’s study Limits to Growth, as well as manifestos like A Blueprint for Survival (1972). We will also include novels such as Amery’s Der Untergang der Stadt Passau (1975) or Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975) and Ecotopia Emerging (1981). In a second step, we will focus on today’s debate on climate change and evaluate the strategies of security that might become vital if the effects of climatic change should become more drastic. As a theoretical bracket bringing these two research foci together we will contemplate the question as to where exactly the interpretative dominance lies these days; in other words, who has the power to determine what the future will look like? It is significant in this respect that at the moment scientific and fictional forms of representation seem to intersect in a wholly novel way. While Roland Emmerich’s movie 2012 (2009) creates scenarios of disaster in a spectacular fashion, Michael Crichton’s novel State of Fear (2004) claims climate change to be a fantasy created by eco activists – a claim which led to an official hearing at a committee of the U.S. American Senate. And while politicians hope to receive concrete instructions from climate researchers as to how to proceed, scientists in this field refuse to be politically exploited. This subproject is already well prepared and is funded as part of Benjamin Bühler’s Heisenberg stipend (see paragraph 3). We envisage publishing two studies (essays) on the topic as part of a planned monograph Regierungswissen. Politische Ökologie im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Subproject III: Fantasies of Prevention. The Representation of Security Doctrines in Contemporary Literature and Film (Dissertation project) The notion of prevention may count as one of the most effective doctrines of security today. Prevention means to be prepared for the future in a way to outsmart it, that is, to make sure something does NOT happen in a certain way. This also means that the notion of prevention is characterized by a strange negativity: Future itself turns into the “causa finalis of its own prevention” (Fuchs 2008). The doctrine of prevention is seen as the standard for a responsible way of dealing with one’s life and that of the next generation. This applies similarly to precautionary actions by domestic and foreign affairs against potential terrorist attacks, but also on a ‘biopolitical’ level to the exploding number of medically prophylactic offers. Such complex (and slightly paradoxical) thinking in negative anticipations has turned into an extremely normative handling of futurity. 8
Due to its social relevance, the concept of prevention has gathered distinct momentum in literature and film alike over the course of these past years. Subproject III focuses on these fictional representations of the concept. We will determine the basis for doctrines of prevention by studying current discussions in sociology (Bröckling 2008) and analyze the origins of the idea of prevention by looking at practices of insurance and precaution; by following its theorization within the sociological framework of risk; and by analyzing its current role in medical, military, and political debates. The main body of research will be a close reading of several examples of contemporary literary and filmic representations of prevention: How do these fictionalizations deal with the prospective structure of preventive thinking? How do they contemplate the notion’s current power and its potential consequences? Examples to be discussed are the fictitious pre-cognitive “Precrime” Office in Steven Spielberg’s movie Minority Report (2002), the dystopia of a medical-prophylactic dictatorship in Juli Zeh’s novel Corpus Delicti (2009) or the technological fantasies of surveillance and military pre-emption in Daniel Suarez’ novels Daemon (2006) and Kill Decision (2012). The dissertation project will argue that the novels and movies do not only incorporate the concept of prevention into their narrative structure, but represent narratologically what they transport on a topical level, thereby problematizing the very concept. The project reviews the narratological aspects of the discourse of prevention in detail: The advantage of knowledge on the side of the narrator, insinuation and overtones, directional conventions for reader guidance, techniques of narration as anticipation of the plot etc. Such a literary and mediatheoretical analysis can clarify the structure of preventive thinking. The doctoral stipend shall be openly announced and filled with a student of literature or media science. The goal of the overall research project is to offer a cultural-theoretical reflection of the problems attached to questions of state, security and society. We strive to explicate the theoretical preconditions of the multidimensional and ambivalent domain of security issues. By conjoining three exemplary research set-ups we aim to explore the linkage between doctrines of security and futurity. While the implementation of doctrines follows largely pragmatic reasoning (and has to do so), our project wants to unearth the hidden epistemic presuppositions that significantly shape these doctrines, yet are mostly overlooked. We target the conceptual grounds and the suppressed mechanics of the implementation process, thereby helping to shed light on the often rogue systematic of security strategies. Thus if supported, our project will present a valuable input from a cultural studies angle to the controversial topic of security studies. Bibliography: Beck, Ulrich: Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, Frankfurt/Main 1986. 9
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