ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to explore the politics of producing the historical event. The question of politics in this context becomes relevant not least when considering how the paradoxes and movements of the pure event appear to have been captured by the historical event. The ambiguities and uncertainties of the former have been translated in order to fit the borders and limits of the latter. As we saw in the previous chapter, the particular beginning that the doctrines of Preemption, Homeland Security, and the Patriot Act call for is one in which an unknown and unspecified threat or enemy must be dealt with before they even emerge as threats or enemies. In this way, while the paradoxes and movements of the pure event appear to have been captured by the historical event, this production can also be said to rely upon a process of incorporating some of those paradoxes and movements. In the “war on terror,” the latter have been incorporated as elements of uncertainty and contingency that must be actively dealt with in order to respond to an unknown and unpredictable future in which anything can happen and nothing can be ruled out as improbable or unrealistic. It is precisely the inclusion of such elements of uncertainty and contingency that the doctrine of Preemption draws upon when articulating the need to respond to something that is yet to emerge and yet to be known: the unknown unknowns.
