The aim of Philosophy and the Critiques of Security – a working group organized as part of a ‘Philosophy in a Time of Crisis’ [www.philosophyx.co.uk] - will be to explore, compare and create a dialogue between several theoretical and philosophical sources of “security critique”: a term by which we may refer to the complex nexus of critical reflections on and against the increasingly important role played by ‘security’- as a politico-legal concept and as a technology of power - in modern (neo)liberal societies. In particular, the workshop will explore lines of divergence and convergence across different critiques of liberal security including those emerging from the work of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Evgeny Pahukanis, Carl Schmitt, Michel Foucault, Paul Virilio and Giorgio Agamben.

Despite the exponential growth of ‘security studies’ - and the many fundamental critical works currently available – this may be the first collective work bringing together multiple critical traditions with the explicit aim of: reflecting the multiple forms taken by ‘security’ and by the ‘critique of security’ since the nineteenth century; exploring the lines of convergence and divergence that compose the foundational theoretical landscape on which ‘critical security studies’ is currently growing as a discipline; reconstruct the multi-dimensional nature of ‘liberal security’ through the mobilization of different optico-theoretical perspectives and parallax views.

Confirmed participants - including speakers and discussants: Miguel Beistegui (University of Warwick), Arthur Bradley (Lancaster University), Antonio Cerella (Kingston University), Oliver Davis (University of Warwick), Michael Dillon (Lancaster University), Jean-Francois Drolet (Queen Mary University), Tor Krever (University of Warwick), Amedeo Policante (University of Warwick), Martina Tazzioli (Swansea University).