Taming an Uncertain Future: Temporality, Sovereignty, and the Politics of Anticipatory Governance

A popular cliché in contemporary public discourse holds that we live in a time of increasing uncertainty; that the next catastrophe is perpetually imminent and yet increasingly beyond our capacity to foresee. The future, in short, is becoming much more difficult to control. One consequence of this increasingly widespread understanding of the future is that societies have turned to anticipatory governance strategies based on such concepts as risk management, the precautionary principle, and ...