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Reactions to the Future: the Chronopolitics of Prevention and Preemption

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Abstract

How do we react to uncomfortable futures? By developing the notion of chronopolitics, this article presents two ways that we typically react to future challenges in the present. At the core of the chronopolitics of prevention, we find a striving for normalization and conservation of the present vis-à-vis dangerous futures. In contrast, the chronopolitics of preemption are geared towards a reformation, if not even a revolution of the present. Two case studies in the field of science and technology policy illustrate the difference between prevention and preemption. The debate on human embryonic stem cells illuminates prevention. The debate on nanotechnology clarifies preemption.

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Notes

  1. In an interview, Michel Foucault described the dispositif as “a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions” [1]. The extension of this notion is almost limitless and is of little help when it comes to identifying a particular dispositif. Foucault, however, adds, that a dispositif “has as its major function at a given historical moment that of responding to an urgent need” [1]. Against the background of a dispositif’s strategic function, we may indeed characterize preemptivity as dispositif, because it is an answer to a variety of temporal problems, which slowly amalgamated in the 1990s of the last century: the fear of scarce resources in the future, the perception of slowly acting public authorities, the experience of fast-spreading pathogens in a globalized society, etc. As an allied answer to these and similar problems, the dispositif emerged in the 1990s; however, it became visible in its entirety only after 9/11.

  2. Attentive readers will immediately notice the omission of the past. In fact, there is no reason to exclude the past from the domain of chronopolitics except this: Concerning the past and its difference to the present, historians have presented by far more elaborated concepts such as politics of memory, identity politics, and politics of traditions. The past and its relation to the present constitute such a finely chiseled terrain of reflection, research, and theory that describing and analyzing it in the name of chronopolitics would be comparable to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

  3. One more plausible, but empirically not yet proven form is evitation. It would consist of a kind of intentional ignorance towards risky futures with the aim to avoid any actions in the present. If Jack Bauer is the epitome of preemption, Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov might exemplify such a refusal of the future.

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Acknowledgments

For helpful comments, I thank Corinna Virchow, Beatrix Rubin, Andreas Lösch, Marcus Müller, Christopher Coenen, two anonymous reviewers, and notably Colin Milburn. The paper is a revision and extension of a short draft published in Technikfolgenabschätzung—Theorie und Praxis 23:2 (2014) entitled Chronopolitik: Prävention und Präemption.

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  1. Centre for Religion, Economy and Politics, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Mario Kaiser

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Kaiser, M. Reactions to the Future: the Chronopolitics of Prevention and Preemption. Nanoethics 9, 165–177 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-015-0231-4

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