The time of emergency. On the governmental logic of preparedness

The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has elicited renewed attention to an approach to emergency which has come to the forefront in recent years, namely preparedness. Scholars have argued that its rationale is profoundly divergent from the securitarian outlook of prevention and precaution, entailing different techniques and ostensibly also a different, non- (or less) dominative, way of relating with the biophysical world. In this paper I argue that, to grasp its logic and import, preparedness has to be considered from the vantage point of the evolution of the anticipatory governance of future, the main forms of which are discussed before looking at how the rise and use of preparedness has been accounted for. Preparedness turns out ambiguous in its implications, as innovative but also consistent with the governmental rationality of late capitalism, with special reference to the latter’s commitment to pre-empt any actual change.