What’s Happening

Expanding from a traditional biopolitical critique of governance, Greg Elmer and Andy Opel write brief, accessible volume on how the ostensible fight against the “War on Terror” supplies a new logic that creates a space for what they call “an inevitable future.” A circulation of fear that asserts an unavoidable terrorist attack marks the argument forwarded by Preempting Dissent: The Politics of an Inevitable Future. The authors are less interested in writing about the self-disciplined subject that results from this fear, and instead, provide a series of claims warning us of a new justification for policing the population directly-a specious reinterpretation and application of the law that demonstrates that sovereign power continues to effectively preclude dissent and dialogue. The inevitability doctrine, supported by a rhetoric of fatalism, advances an agenda displacing “rational free will” for visions of a determined, futile future, where debilitating effects of attacks can only be managed and mitigated but not prevented. Thus, as a liberal democratic polity, we are asked to succumb to a new “faith-based politics” as our only recourse to an inevitably horrific future. Elmer and Opel refer to this as a “when, then” logic that overtakes the more familiar, “what if” rationale. Significantly, Elmer and Opel highlight the limitations of both Foucauldian disciplinarity and Deleuzian decentralization for their analysis. – Daniel H. Kim