‘The body does not lie’: Identity, risk and trust in technoculture

Item Type Book Section Author Katja Franko Aas Publisher Routledge ISBN 978-1-315-09520-2 Date 2011 Extra Num Pages: 16 Abstract The article suggests that surveillance of the body is gradually becoming a major source of identification, as well as a vital element of late-modern mechanisms of social exclusion. The increasing demand for technological verification of identity is a result of intricate connections between our notions of the self, order, efficiency and security. Behind the growing acceptance of these new technologies, such as biometric passports, biometric ID cards, drug testing, and DNA databases, are fears connected to those who may have a ‘stolen identity’, are unidentified, or ‘identity-less’, such as potentially fraudulent welfare recipients, ‘identity thieves’, terrorists, immigrants and asylum seekers. However, unlike Foucault’s disciplinary power, the latest technologies no longer see the body as something that needs to be trained and disciplined, but rather as a source of unprecedented accuracy and precision. Bodies become ‘coded’ and function as ‘passwords’. This form of identification is particularly relevant since its mode of operation enables identification and denial of access at-a-distance, thus fitting perfectly into the contemporary modes of disembedded global governance. Book Title Cultural Criminology Short Title ‘The body does not lie’