| Summary/Abstract |
This paper provides a detailed study of the liquid bomb plot from 2006, focusing on the ways in which the plot was constituted as “an event unlike others” (Adey, Anderson, and Lobo Guerrero 2011, 340). Engaging with a critical body of scholarship that examines how events are assembled and governed as emergencies, disasters, or catastrophes, the paper explores two sets of questions. First, the paper engages with the temporal dimension of the event, asking how the liquid bomb plot was mediated as a particularly risky event that required immediate action. Second, the paper focuses on the spatial dimension of the event and asks how the plot also threatened a seemingly interconnected system of global airline movements and a mobile form of life. Drawing on Cowen’s (2010) analysis of the “seam space,” I am particularly interested in developments of reform and experimentation at the airport and in how newly emerging technologies are targeted at keeping airports both secure and open. Ultimately, by examining the liquid bomb plot “in the middle of events” (Barry 2006, 244), the paper goes beyond an understanding of the security event as something that happens abruptly and by surprise, and sheds light on the ongoing work that is involved in constituting and governing events.
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