Forget Equality? Security and Liberty in the “War on Terror”

Abstract

The “war on terror” has triggered intense debates about the role of security and liberty, the trade-off between security and liberty, the meaning of security and the power of civil liberties. Nonetheless, while security has been closely dissected either as a governmental or exceptional practice, liberty has been largely shrouded in silence. Rather than contesting practices of security, liberty appeared degraded, a fetish, justifying restrictions and regulating conduct. This article unpacks the conditions of possibility for the degradation of freedom in the “war on terror,” and argues that freedom degenerates when its relation with equality is severed and it is instead tied up with security. Rather than the dichotomy liberty/security, I consider the triadic relationship with equality and the implications of the double demise of equality: On the one hand, the demise of equality from theories of security (starting with Hobbes); and on the other, the demise of equality in contemporary social and political thought.