1. Documents, Constellations, Prospects
        2. Contributions
        Insurgent Cosmopolitanism, Lecture

        Age of Insecurity

        Homi K. Bhabha

        23 March 2013

      1. Homi K. Bhabha, Age of Insecurity, Lecture. Photo: Marcus Lieberenz/bildbuehne.de
      2. How do the formations of an “insurgent cosmopolitanism” address the conditions of an Age of Security? My talk frames the concept of security as a cultural form profoundly implicated in the ethical and aesthetic practices that designate, as Jacques Ranciere writes in Dissensus: On Politics and Togetherness, the “togetherness of our communities and the conflicts facing them.” Exploring security as a cultural form, read for its affective and relational affiliations, distances it from discourses of global governmentality with their patriotic networks of protection and precaution. How do the cosmopolitan frameworks of rights and representations—the pillars of an international civil society—both withstand and stand against the privations of the security complex? How does our understanding of the “population”—the political object of the security apparatus according to Michel Foucault—change when it is rendered precarious by the presence of terror? How do we derive an ethic and an aesthetic of neighborliness that articulates a sense of solidarity and security in the very midst of our own Age of (In)Security?