Freezing time, preparing for the future: The stockpile as a temporal matter of security

Abstract

This article analyses stockpiling as a security device that hoards time, stores power and buffers disruptions. The stockpile is a temporal matter of security by virtue of its ability to freeze time and to prepare for future emergencies. Stockpiling is informed by anticipations of threats but also materially underpins expectations. After unpacking the temporal ontology of stockpiling, the article traces its history as a security device and technology of power. Stockpiling enabled the emergence of the earliest states by establishing the means to store surpluses and centralize power. In modernity, stores became more dispersed as money, commodity exchange and new infrastructures made it possible to procure resources through circulation. In the 20th century, stockpiling became a reflexive security device reactive to risks associated with the disruption of these circulations. Finally, the article illuminates the role of reserves in contemporary German catastrophe preparedness to show that stockpiling remains an important security technique. Yet fiscal austerity and budgetary constraints limit security stockpiling. To compensate for the absence of public security stores, the government is prompting citizens to establish emergency stockpiles. The article offers a theoretical, historical and empirical engagement with stockpiling and thereby further elucidates the material politics of anticipation.

The past shall not begin: Frozen seeds, extended presents and the politics of reversibility

“…But here, too, the politics of reversibility further pushes back the temporal point of intervention. While stocks are intended to help bridge the interruption of circulation in the course of a disaster by providing medicine, food or energy provision (Folkers, 2019; Keck, 2017), the SGSV aims at the timeline after the catastrophic event. This can also be seen from the fact that in the event of a disaster, the SGSV would be completely unsuitable both as a plant breeding facility and as a food production site.…”

“…As Andreas Folkers (2019) has shown recently in his work on stocks, one of the central problems in creating stocks and backups is the transformation of materiality into a ‘standing reserve’ (Heidegger, 2013) that lasts and can be reckoned with in the future. According to this perspective, materiality must be altered in a certain way so that it can survive through time and will remain present at an unknown time in the future (Folkers, 2019). For the SGSV, the problem of creating a standing reserve arises with particular force because of the specific ontology of the stored material.…”

“…7 Michel Serres’ remark that stocks are places where ‘time is frozen’ (Serres, 2016: 179) can be taken literally in this case. The recalcitrant and unpredictable processes of life are ‘suspended’ (Hayden, 2003; Hoyer, 2017; Lemke, 2019) or ‘arrested’ (Chrulew, 2017) to transform the plants into a manageable stock that remains permanently available and can be relied upon in the future (see also Elbe et al, 2014; Folkers, 2019; Keck, 2017).…”

“… 1. Important exceptions, but with a focus on the general practice of stockpiling, are Folkers (2019) and Keck (2017). …”

Fossil modernity: The materiality of acceleration, slow violence, and ecological futures

“…Although there are relatively few scholarly accounts so far that explicitly analyze the entanglement of time and matter (Folkers, 2019; Hawkins, 2018; Lewis and May 2020), new theoretical approaches on “materiality” and “things” have much to offer in rethinking temporality. Instead of conceptualizing matter as inert res extensa that occupies geometric space but remains identical through time, new materialist theories emphasize the processuality of the material world (Connolly, 2011; Bennett, 2010).…”