Securing swiss futurity: The gefährder figure and Switzerland’s counterterrorism regime

Abstract

This article explores the notion of the Gefährder, the German term for a ‘potentially threatening individual’, in the context of the latest expansion of both the spaces of prevention and preemption, particularly through the new anti-terror law (PMT) in Switzerland that drew widespread criticism from the international community for its wide judicial reach and vague terminology around terrorist activities, thereby breaching a series of international legal norms and treaties. The term Gefährder represents a historical and political assemblage that exists across space and time in various iterations based on the colonial and racialized Other. This article argues that the latest prototype emerging out of the current Swiss counterterrorism architecture has unique qualities. The Gefährder serves as a bio-and ontopolitical governance tool, through its bodily and affective qualities, that exerts Swiss state control, and reaffirms Swiss national identity and national conservative underpinnings to preserve a particular kind of Swiss futurity. This research aspires to contribute to a body of research on counterterrorism regimes and its affective and bodily subjects in post-imperial nation-states.