Protocol and the post-human performativity of security techniques

Abstract

This article explores the deployment of exercises by the United Kingdom Fire and Rescue Service (FRS). Exercises stage, simulate and act out potential future emergencies and in so doing help the FRS prepare for future emergencies. Exercises, specifically, operate to assess and develop protocol; sets of guidelines which plan out the actions undertaken by the FRS in responding to a fire. In their assessment and development of protocol, I assess the forms of knowledge and technologies, what I call the 'aesthetic forces', by which the exercise makes present future emergencies. By critically engaging with Karen Barad's notion of post-human performativity, I argue that exercises make present future emergencies by providing a site for the performance of intersections between these aesthetic forces. This understanding of exercises allows also for critical appraisal of protocol both as phenomena that are produced through the enmeshing of different aesthetic forces and as devices which premise the operation of the security appratus on contingency

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics