Human Others

This event is free and open to all but booking is required.

Launching ‘Governing through Biometrics: the Biopolitics of Identity’ by Btihaj Ajana
Processes of ‘othering’ and ‘inhumanising’ continue to be at the heart of modern political discourses and practices. Nowhere is this more visible, more radical, more systematic than in the domains of immigration, asylum and border governance and policy. For such domains have long exposed the enduring tension between the universality of the human and the particularity of the citizen, while illustrating the State’s continuous monopoly over the socio-political dimension of both of these categories. Recent schemes such as the controversial government-sponsored immigration arrest adverts, together with the UK Border Agency immigration spot-checks targeting ethnic populations in London, are yet another example and instantiation of the cirminalisation and systematic (racial) profiling of those conceived as ‘others’. Added to that the development of a host of technologies and techniques such as those of biometrics, whose chief purpose is the control of movement and the securitisation of identity through the use and manipulation of one of our most intimate aspects: our bodies.
Unsurprisingly, and at least politically if not also ontologically, ‘being other’ inevitably calls into question the often taken-for-granted category of ‘being human’. For, as Arendt and Agamben remind us, only when looked at through the lens of that which is marginal, liminal and outsider could we see and fathom the myriad aporias and failures of current political practices and the fragility, if not even futility, of human rights systems in the so-called democratic states.
This panel covers precisely this question by addressing issues of immigration, humanness and technology from different perspectives including photography and poetry, academic and policy research, and advocacy and activism.
The event also launches the book Governing through Biometrics: The Biopolitics of Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) by Dr Btihaj Ajana from the departments of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, and Digital Humanities at King’s College London. This work interrogates what is at stake in the merging of the body and technology for security and governance purposes. It draws on a number of critical theories, philosophies and empirical examples, offering a multi-level and timely analysis of the socio-political and ethical implications of biometric identity systems.
Speakers include:
Lisa Doyle (Refugee Council), Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths College) and Anthony Joseph, a poet and a novelist.