Boredom, excitement and other security affects

Abstract

Expanding from Barnett’s critique of the emphasis in critical security work on ‘subjectivity through subjectification’, this response explores some of the ways in which geographers and others might attend to the diversity of security affects. Fear and anxiety do not exhaust the affective expressions of security, and affect is not simply another medium for the successful implementation of programmes of rule. Rather, affects are imbricated in the ordinary work of securing and publics are formed in and through encounters with the devices, techniques, objects and people that make up ‘security’. Securing and encounters with security are themselves enveloped, pressured and otherwise conditioned by collective affects.