ABSTRACT
The closing remarks on materialization and the discussion on risk in the security chapter both point to the work of Foucault and a question: if we see security as a performative practice that shapes a messy materialdiscursive world, then how can we make sense of the politics and power behind it, not just the politics within security but also the politics of security? This chapter continues the discussion on the relationship between politics, security, knowledge and the materialdiscursive world, by turning to Foucault’s insights on power/knowledge and governmentality. It pays special attention to the exercise of power that Foucault describes in terms of the indirect governing of processes of circulation (goods, people and so on) by influencing the milieu of these circulations. After this chapter we can read energy security in terms of a political process that (1) is productive, (2) is based on knowledge gathering practices, (3) acts as a form of governance and materialization and (4) not only interprets events but helps draw deeper social boundaries by differentiating nature, economics, the political and society. Energy security is thus translated into a governing technique aimed at energy circulations that consist of a set of materialdiscursive relations which are constantly performed and disrupted and which consist of humans, things, knowledge, morality, practices and so on. In this reading, each call for energy security is a performative act that both produces and is producing a particular understanding of energy security and the materialdiscursive world around it.
