ABSTRACT
Security and insecurity are essentially empty vessels, driven first and foremost by absence. Three kinds of security are found in the history of political theory and practice: 'security from' threats such as enemies; 'security to' – or access to – basic goods and rights; and 'security of' states of being, such as certainty or peace. Foucault conceives of security as a technology of government, analytically distinct from, though interacting with, the mechanisms of panoptic discipline and sovereignty. Foucault's work thus also points to present-day experiments in various kinds of autonomous social movements. Such movements should attend to possibilities in the counter-conduct of security, a counter-security, rather than re-energize the dialectic of the security–insecurity monster in the service of 'anti-security'. Instead counter-security offers a different kind of security, one in which the nihilism of the security–insecurity couple evaporates – perhaps to the extent that the very word security will one day dissolve itself in front of our eyes.
