(Anti) Terrorism: Transformations of the Security Apparatus and Depictions of the Enemy in the United States since 1945

Far from being opposites, “terrorism” and “antiterrorism” are on the contrary both reflections of a new distribution of violence and represent the privileged site of profound transformations of political modernity. This is the lesson that is to be drawn from the archeo-genealogical research that has been carried out in regards to the fight against terrorism as it has been implemented in (and by) the United States over the past fifty years. From this perspective, the terrorism/antiterrorism pair appears to be the disparate and radically heterogenous site of the advent of a renewed government technology : traceability. The present article offers a detailed examination of the twofold transformation -- that of the modern state’s security architecture and of the Schmittian figure of the enemy – set in motion by this renewal in the art of governing. ■