Professional Documents
Culture Documents
This article examines the forms of power brought into play by the
deployment of biometrics under the lenses of Foucault’s notions of
discipline and biopower. These developments are then analyzed from
the perspective of governmentality, highlighting how the broader
spread of biometrics throughout the social fabric owes not merely to
the convergence of public and private surveillance, but rather to a
deeper logic of power under the governmental state, orchestrated by
the security function, which ultimately strengthens the state. It is asso-
ciated with the rise of a new governmentality discourse, which operates
on a binary logic of productive/destructive, and where, in fact, the very
distinctions between private and public, guilty, and innocentFclassic
categories of sovereigntyFfind decreasing currency. However, bio-
metric borders reveal a complicated game of renegotiations between
sovereignty and governmentality, whereby sovereignty is colonized by
governmentality on the one hand, but still functions as a counterweight
to it on the other. Furthermore, they bring out a particular function of
the ‘‘destructive body’’ for the governmental state: it is both the key
figure ruling the whole design of security management, and the blind
spot, the inconceivable, for a form of power geared toward producing
productive bodies.
(. . .) Political power is like the sun; everyone can see it, nobody can look straight at
it, it has taken centuries to ‘‘discover’’ it, and it’s not finished yet! (Henri Lefebvre
1987:18).
Biometrics are at the borders: the discussion on biometrics has been fueled by the
series of deadlines imposed by the U.S. government upon the 27 countries par-
taking in the ‘‘U.S. Visa Waiver Program’’ for their adoption of the biometric
passport.1 It also brought out a host of new anxieties associated with the experience
of traveling, in the face of forms of control that have become increasingly close,
increasingly invasive, even promiscuous (Big Brother is Looking After You 2006;
Jeffrey 2006). Biometric passports have changed the way we travel. For travelers
Author’s note: I would like to thank the participants of the ISA workshop Governing by Risk in the ‘‘War on
Terror,’’ Mark Salter, Mick Dillon, Vivienne Jabri, as well as two anonymous reviewers for the journal for their
helpful comments on this article.
1
The U.S. mandated the inclusion of a digital photograph in the passport by October 2005, and of the ‘‘e-chip’’
(to store digital data) by October 2006 (U.S. State Department 2006b).
who are pressing their index fingers on biometric scanners at U.S. airports are
coming into contact with power, in a way that is more direct, more physical than ever
before. Power is felt, quite literally, right at the fingertips; the experience is of an
encounter with power, of a new kind: immediate and sensory, and yet harmlessFat
least physically. But encountering power is seldom completely benign; indeed the
very real possibility of being stopped in one’s tracks may conceivably generate some
anxieties about being misrecognized, or not recognized at allFand thus denied
entry. Airports are places suffused with anxiety, as Salter (2003) points out, an
anxiety that also helps ensure the travelers stand in line. These traveling experi-
ences are a central albeit indirect motivation for this article; its main object is to
explore the new technologies of power deployed by the use of biometrics at the
borders and the type of state with which they are associated.
A key factor in this ‘‘biometricization’’ of borders is the increasing convergence of
public and private sectors.2 The private biometrics technology industry, for one, is
flourishing: a U.S.$1.56 billion market in 2005, it is predicted to double to U.S.$3.4
billion in 2007, and to further expand to U.S.$5.26 billion by 2010 (Laferty Bank
Managing International 2005; M2 Presswire 2005). This much-touted trajectory of
success owes in great part to states increasingly turning to biometrics to secure their
borders. But what exactly motivates this convergence? On the one hand, it sits
easily with a broader neoliberal emphasis on cutting government spending and,
more generally, rolling back the state. From this perspective, biometric borders
appear as merely one of the many offshoots of a broader tendency of the state to
devolve its defense and security functions upon the private sector (Mandel 2002;
Singer 2004; Avant 2005). On the other hand, it seems an adequate response to the
heightened demand for security since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
and the need to find the most efficient security technologies. Yet the state’s turn to
biometric technologies in fact precedes 9/11: the first large-scale use of biometrics
by U.S. law enforcement agencies occurred at the January 2001 Superbowl in
Tampa, FL (Woodward, Orlans, and Higgins 2003:248). Furthermore, the state is
actually spending more on security, not less; not least in choosing expensive se-
curity technologies such as biometrics. However, the main problem with this line of
argument is that the state tends to fade out of sight, eclipsed by a process of
privatization that appears to be taking place at its expense. Yet what is lost to such
descriptions is what the process itself does for the state: not only does it require the
state but the state, in allowing it to happen, is also doing something for itself: it is
deploying new forms of power. Hence, the argument in this article runs the other
way. It takes a certain kind of state, a certain way of governing, to enable this process
in the first place. In other words, something much bigger is taking place, beyond a
succession of punctual privatizations encouraged by certain administrations more
amenable to private enterprise; something that lies beyond political preferences, as
the convergence of government practices on either side of the political spectrum
and the Atlantic tends to indicate. Rather, it has to do with a specific way of gov-
erning that takes shape at a particular historical moment. Michel Foucault’s concept
of ‘‘governmentality’’ is especially relevant for capturing the kind of state under
which biometrics are deployed; and his notions of ‘‘discipline’’ and ‘‘biopower’’
lend themselves to exploring these new security practices centered on biometrics.
Conversely, biometric borders may shed new light on the logic of governmentality
as well as on the concrete workings of biopower. The article thus begins by intro-
ducing the key concepts wielded throughout the arguments. This first part,
however, is not intended as a rigid framework binding the argument to
2
Conversely, the difficulty of this convergence has stalled the adoption of the biometric passport in France in time
to meet the October 2005 deadline: the French government, who had contracted out the new biometric passports to
a private company (Oberthur), was taken to court by the Imprimerie Nationale, a public institution detaining
exclusive rights to make all official documents of the state.
CHARLOTTE EPSTEIN 151
Foucault’s concepts. Rather, these provide a starting point and the paper itself seeks
to establish a conversation between these theoretical notions and this new field of
practice to yield further insights into the workings of power. In line with an ‘‘as-
cending analysis of power’’ (Foucault 1976a:30), the second part examines the ways
in which biometric systems exert power upon individual bodies under the lenses of
discipline and biopower. It shows how the logic of governmentality has enabled a
broader penetration of biometrics throughout the social fabric, via the security
imperative which ultimately serves to strengthen the governmental state. While
generic biometric systems provide the material analyzed in the second part, the
third part turns to a practical application. It unpacks the first comprehensive bio-
metric border protection system, the U.S.-VISIT Program. Biometric borders
underscore the continued importance of borders, the old markers of sovereignty,
for the governmental state. Yet sovereignty also shows its enduring capacity to act as
a counterweight to governmentality, as it has effectively thwarted the full deploy-
ment of biometrics across the globe. The object of the analysis is thus to open up to
inquiry the complicated play of tensions between sovereignty and governmentality
that is taking place around the biometric borders, so as to begin to understand how
the state is shaping out today. I suggest that this distinction between sovereignty
and governmentality may help to make sense of the growing misunderstanding
between states that are ‘‘merely’’ working to protect us and the citizens’ increasing
anxiety, before these increasingly invasive techniques of control (Lodge 2005). It is
best accounted for as two discourses talking past each other.
Conceptual Groundings
In 1978, Michel Foucault, a historian of political thought, offered the term ‘‘gov-
ernmentality’’ to capture a conceptual framework that took shape very gradually, as
of the sixteenth century, as a counterpart to the theories of sovereignty (Foucault
1978). For sovereignty had provided the initial framework for the emergence of the
modern state. It had consolidated the form of the state, both externally, vis-à-vis
other states (with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia), and internally, through the pro-
gressive reinforcement of legal apparatuses throughout Western Europe in the
sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Territory and the law were thus constituted as
the main attributes of sovereignty. However, in the exercise of state power, a new
cluster of functions began to form, in relation to the irruption of what Foucault
called ‘‘the population question.’’ Through the twin historical processes of dem-
ographic explosion and industrialization, ‘‘the population’’ had emerged in the
eighteenth century both as an object of study, circumscribed by new forms of
knowledge (such as statistics), and as the ‘‘thing’’ in need of being governedFand
thus as the point of convergence of knowledge and power. The population was no
longer merely the attribute of the sovereign (his or her ‘‘people’’), but a huge
productive force, key to developing the wealth of nations. Governing, under these
circumstances, meant harnessing the population into the new capitalist machine; it
required finding new ways to optimize these productive capacities. ‘‘Governmen-
tality’’ thus provides a vantage point from which to observe the state other than the
state-as-sovereignty, and it highlights the modern state as essentially managerial. It is
a broad term under which to regroup the multiple and polymorphous ‘‘tactics and
strategies’’ of population management. It also indicates a new economy of state
power, an increasingly rationalized and indeed economical power, steeped in the
same logic of productive growth. It ‘‘spends’’ itself less and less (by contrast with the
costly displays of sovereignty), and enables production more and more. ‘‘Govern-
mentality’’ thus points to an overall tendency toward increasingly efficient forms of
population management. Although the term was coined to mirror ‘‘sovereignty,’’ it
is not meant to evoke a similarly fixed set of theories, but rather a process, a general
orientation of the modern state, which is indissociable from an incremental
152 Guilty Bodies, Productive Bodies, Destructive Bodies
Biometric Power
Biometric power operates as a form of power/knowledge applied upon masses of
‘‘live’’ bodiesFalready in its etymology, ‘‘the measurement of life’’ (biometry), it
rings of biopower. Indeed, it is functionally concerned with the life of these bodies
in that it needs to ensure these are ‘‘alive’’ for the system to be optimized, as one
biometric manual emphasizes.4 In another one, significantly, the iris is considered
one of the most reliable biometrics, one of the least easy to fake, because it requires
the body to be aliveFunlike the fingerprint, which can be chopped off a dead body
(Bolle et al. 2004:148). The ‘‘biometric’’ itself is the measurement obtained from a
print or photo of the body part (face, finger, hand, iris, or retina),5 which is then
used to ‘‘authenticate’’ (or identify) the individual. This process is becoming
3
For another historical (pre-Foucauldian) take on an incremental trajectory of state power, cf. Bertrand de
Jouvenel (1945/1972).
4
Smith (2003:8) thus specifies: ‘‘accurate authentication depends in part on whether the system can ensure that
biometric authenticators are actually presented by live people.’’
5
The use of behavioral traits (voice, keystroke, gait, skin reflectance) is under development (Bolle et al., 2004:7).
CHARLOTTE EPSTEIN 153
6
Foucault draws this distinction in his January 14, 1976, lecture to emphasize the dynamic movement of power,
the fact that it does ‘‘stop at’’For indeed stopFone individual, but that it circulates between individuals. Thus, the
term ‘‘applying to’’ is not to be taken absolutely, as meaning that power simply does not apply to individual bodies,
but rather in this particular play of opposition with ‘‘passing through.’’ Otherwise, it would be inconsistent with his
other work on discipline (Foucault 1975), in a text whose focus is disciplinary power (Foucault 1976a:29).
7
The retina illustrates how just intimately the body can be known, and how this form of knowledge may spill over
into medical knowledge: one of the most ‘‘controversial’’ biometrics, it can yield information about medical con-
ditions (Bolle et al. 2004:7).
154 Guilty Bodies, Productive Bodies, Destructive Bodies
Should this yield a match, the individual cannot be positively enrolled (without
further checks).
‘‘Enrolling’’ in biometric language is the process of selecting ‘‘trusted’’ individuals
from the wider population in order to constitute the system’s finite yet expandable
‘‘database M’’ (Bolle et al. 2004:157). Yet when picking out individuals from the
wider population to form database M, it relies on a fully operational disciplinary
power. In other words, it presumes that these are well-disciplined individuals, in-
dividuals who have so completely internalized social norms that punishment can be
dispensed with. In fact, given that undisciplined individuals have been previously
weeded out through negative enrollment, it rests on the assumption that the ma-
jority of individuals, those who are not yet in database M nor in database N, are fully
disciplined. If they are not in database N, they are eligible: this logic inherently
presumes a fully disciplined society. For only a disciplinary society will truly guar-
antee that the individuals selected by the system will ‘‘naturally’’ toe the institutional
line and ‘‘voluntarily’’ submit their private details, including images of their body
parts, because it has been constituted as part of the ‘‘normal’’ procedure to obtain
this or that employment. Of course, the degree to which these individuals actually
have a choice is itself questionable. Nonetheless, from the point of view of discip-
line, obtaining that individuals act ‘‘voluntarily’’ in submitting their intimate details
about their bodies is a complete success.
A biometric system controls the movement of disciplined bodies in and out of a
space, to protect both the space and the bodies within it. Hence, while in its design
the system evokes both forms of surveillance, it ultimately subsumes the punishing
aspect of surveillance under the security objective, all the while relying centrally on
the successful operation of discipline. In this it exemplifies the movement from
discipline to biopower, which eventually ‘‘uses [discipline] by sorting of infiltrating
it, embedding itself in existing disciplinary techniques’’ (Foucault 1976a:242). Salter
(2003:126), for his part, marvels at the degree to which discipline is implicated in
the very architecture of passport-control areas in airports: these are generally open
spaces, where no physical barrier actually prevents anyone from running past the
passport-control booths and entering unchecked into the country, and yet where
such gesture is inconceivable (or conceivable only as ‘‘mad’’) and where most peo-
ple tend to stand docilely behind the yellow line. This is surveillance as securing,
enabled by discipline.
However, biometric power has developed essentially as a private surveillance,
deployed around private spaces and spurred by private interests. Thus, far
from an imposition from above, this form of surveillance has progressively cropped
up in one social setting after another (offices, sports stadiums, casinos; Woodward,
Orlans, and Higgins 2003:329–352), slowly impregnating the society from
the bottom-up, as a ‘‘need’’ generated from within. In the industry’s own analy-
sis: ‘‘we saw a steadily, but slowly increasing trickle of adoption in specific appli-
cation areas’’ (Ashbourn 2004:143). Only subsequently did states turn to it
for their borders. Even there, the use of biometrics in airports first developed
as a series of private/public partnerships deployed sporadically and to address
local concerns about the cost to commerce of heightened security measures,
with various ‘‘voluntary’’ frequent traveler schemes, such as the U.S. Transport
and Security Authority’s Registered Traveller Program or the Privium scheme at
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (Woodward, Orlans, and Higgins 2003:295).
Nor was it triggered by the airplane attacks of September 11, since such
programs have been in place in U.S. airports since 1993 (e.g., the INSPASS
program; Woodward, Orlans, and Higgins 2003). How, then, can we account
for the state’s needing to resort to a private power? Is this an indication
of a relative ‘‘disempowerment’’ of the state and an increasingly powerful private
sector, such that the state is belatedly scurrying after forms of control long in place
in the latter?
CHARLOTTE EPSTEIN 155
8
In fact, the failure to do so brought about the defeat of a right-wing government in Spain, illustrating that this
lies beyond party political distinctions, as indeed does the Democrats aggressive attempt to take on the theme of
‘‘homeland security’’ in the United States.
156 Guilty Bodies, Productive Bodies, Destructive Bodies
Congress 2006); a threat that is no longer an attack upon the borders, but rather a
threat of disruption of the productive fabric, whether targeting productive bodies
and/or the productive infrastructure.9 This ‘‘threat’’ has become the third term in
the relationship between the government and its population. By the same token, a
new correlation is established between the degree to which the threat is wielded and
that to which it is responded to such that more insecurity leads to more re-
sponseFand thus to more governmental state. In a context where governing has
come to mean containing the risk of a terrorist attack, biometric systems provide
the perfect technology for such risk management not least because it defines the risk,
or rather it embodies it, in the risky body. Hence the biometricization of society, of
which the borders are but one instance, has been enabled by governmentality’s own
incremental logic. Not privatization, but governmentalization. By the same token,
the risky body has become the central figure determining the entire design of
security management, for this is a management ruled by the exception.10 It is not
meant to stop the flow of ‘‘normal’’ travelers, the productive bodiesFthrough
which power merely passes, as we have seen; it aims to spot the ‘‘risky’’ traveler.
This explains the development of systems of surveillance built entirely around a
statistical improbability, the possibility of an attack. In fact, this is how protection
turns into surveillance: the system is looking for the risky body. Ironically enough,
in a system that tends toward total visibility, the normal traveler has become in-
visible, unremarkable. The exception is the visible, or at least it is what the system
seeks to render visible, by, literally, putting a face (or a fingerprint) to a name.
9
It is significant that during the Senate Committee hearing both he and Senator Levin emphasized the fun-
damental transformation of NATO, an alliance founded entirely to address a sovereignty-type threat, from a defense
to a security function (including helping in cases of pandemics, the biopolitical issue par excellence).
10
The risky body appears as an embodiment of the exceptional politics that Georgio Agamben (2005:2) has
identified as ‘‘the dominant paradigm of government in contemporary politics.’’ The state of exception under which
democratic governments are increasingly operating in the context of the ‘‘war on terrorism’’ is marked by an
indefinite suspension of the normal rule of law and associated rights. Just as the state of exception becomes an
organizing feature of government today, this exceptional figure (the risky body) becomes the organizing principle of
the new security systems.
CHARLOTTE EPSTEIN 157
scrutinized body is ranked as either one (and let through) or the other (and
stopped). It is also ‘‘just’’ a body; it is no longer so clearly a holder of rights: the
figure of the body as the subject of rights has faded out of sight, as we saw in the
previous section. In fact, only once (and if) the body has been deemed ‘‘productive’’
at the borders does it become once again a subject of rights. As Salter (2003:127)
has shown, the airports are spaces of rightlessness, where the traveler is granted
rights only after he has been admitted into the territory. In a different vein, Judith
Butler (2004) analyses how whole new, extra-legal categories have been carved out
for those bodies effectively treated as ‘‘destructive,’’ and from whom rights are
withheld, such as ‘‘enemy combatants.’’
Consequently, these two discourses, that of lawyer or the civil rights advocate and
that of the biometric engineer, are simply talking past each other. The biometric
manuals themselves provide a good gauge of the rift between the two discourses.
For example, here is how one manual (Bolle et al. 2004:163–164) explains how
biometric engineers envisage the population: the population, better known as ‘‘the
zoo,’’ is subdivided into five groups, sheep, goats, wolves, lambs, and chameleons.
Sheep, which comprise the majority, are ‘‘the well-behaved subjects.’’ Goats are
‘‘particularly difficult to identify (. . .) perhaps due to physical damage to body
parts.’’ Wolves are ‘‘the subjects that attack other subjects in the population’’ by
‘‘imitating, impersonating or forging a biometric.’’ Lambs are ‘‘easy to imitate’’ and
thus ‘‘the subjects that are attacked by other subjects.’’ As for chameleons, they are
‘‘the subjects that both attack and are being attacked’’ because they are ‘‘both easy
to imitate and good at imitating.’’ As Ben Muller (2004) has already underlined
a propos these manuals, these categories are described with neither the slightest
touch of irony nor, for that matter, malignant intent, in a language that would
nonetheless leave the civil rights advocate musing. What this really amounts to is an
incommensurability of discourses: these two sorts of people are simply located
in two different discursive terrains.
11
Hence the face is the ‘‘recommended’’ biometric for the ICAO; the iris and fingerprints are ‘‘optional’’ (ICAO
2006).
12
This is of some practical importance from the U.S. perspective, in that the passports of travelers from Visa
Waiver Countries sojourning under 3 months are the only passports that do not come into contact with U.S.
authorities before the border. All other passports can be physically checked by the local U.S. embassy when its owner
applies for a visa. Mark Salter (2003:130–131) also emphasizes this U.S. sensitivity to fraudulent documents as a
basis for ‘‘risk profiling.’’
13
This disappointment is tangible throughout the June 22nd House Committee Hearing, where the Senators
urged the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials for ‘‘more’’ rather than less biometrics. Several sen-
ators deplored that the ICAO chose the face only. Senator Lungren, for one, puzzled at the ‘‘cultural and political’’
difficulties that came in the way of other countries’ acceptance of fingerprints: ‘‘yet 9/11 changed the world!’’ (U.S.
Congress 2005).
14
Thus, the registry was rapidly de facto expanded to include the following nationalities: Afghanistan, Algeria,
Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, North
Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
(U.S. State Department 2003a).
The legal basis for this national registry is the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which requires ‘‘any alien
over 14 years old who remains in the United States for more than 30 days’’ be registered. Thus, technically, the new
system merely requires cancelling the exemptions that were in place in practice, for those five ‘‘suspicious’’ na-
tionalities enumerated above (U.S. State Department 2002).
CHARLOTTE EPSTEIN 159
individual amid the fray of travelers, rather than operate in terms of broad
‘‘groups’’ of potentially risky travelers who were ranked according to their nation-
ality or race. Indeed, an important weakness of the system was that it was left open
to considerable criticism as to how these generic markers of ‘‘untrustworthiness’’
were determined: why certain nationalities were included and not others, such as
Cuba or North Korea.15 Or indeed Saudi Arabia, given that the stated rationale
was, in the words of one official: ‘‘these are places where al Qaeda or other terrorist
organizations have been active’’ (U.S. State Department 2003a). The supplemental
list of individuals was one step closer to being able to hone in directly on the risky
body; however, it too relied on categories that were uneasily defined and exposed
to injunctions of racial or religious profiling. In short, the system was discrimin-
atory, as well as inefficient, since it could be defeated by individuals defying coarse
categorizations. One such individual was Richard Reid ‘‘the shoe bomber,’’ who had
passed border controls undetected on his (unstolen) British passport: Mark Salter
(2003:129) describes the subsequent coining of the awkward new category of
‘‘British Muslims of this militant stripe.’’ In fact, NSEER’s main function lay else-
where: in the constitution of the database N of ‘‘risky bodies.’’ From this perspec-
tive, it was more than an imperfect scheme hastily thrown together while
a better one was under way; it was the preliminary phase in the implementation of
a comprehensive biometric system. For the 16 months where it was operational
allowed for the orchestration of all the discrete biometric databases into one im-
mense dataset accessible to a vast array of U.S. government agencies for a variety of
purposes, including law enforcement within the U.S. territory (a stated objective of
NSEER; U.S. State Department 2002). Indeed, the new database of registered
travelers was compiled with existing criminal records, both national (FBI) and
international (Interpol), as well as a new database, created by the U.S. military, who
collected ‘‘unnamed’’ fingerprints in identified sites of danger abroad, such as al
Qaeda training camps, which provided a real ‘‘mine of fingerprints,’’ according to
the one official from the Justice Department (Korbach 2003).
Under U.S.-VISIT, everybody is fingerprinted and photographed indiscriminate-
ly.16 First, visitors from nonvisa waiver countries, as well as those visitors from visa-
waiver countries who intend to stay over 3 months, are fingerprinted and pho-
tographed at the American Embassy where they apply for the visa (under the
‘‘BioVisa program’’) (Williams 2006). Second, short-term visitors from visa-waiver
countriesFdespite the biometric passportFhave their fingerprints and faces pho-
tographed and scanned at the port of entry. Hence paradoxically enough, the
extension to all non-U.S. visitors did away with nationality-based or ethnically based
discrimination. I am not claiming that such discrimination does not actually occur
on the ground, but rather that it was written out of the system’s design. In fact, what
U.S.-VISIT did, in yet another instance of shifting from one logic to another, was to
substitute ‘‘discrimination’’ with ‘‘enrollment,’’ for NSEER had corresponded to the
phase of ‘‘negative enrollment’’; a prerequisite to the making of database M, as we
saw from the previous section. Thus, U.S.-VISIT represents the ‘‘positive enroll-
ment’’ of all travelers to the United States. Every visitor is now automatically
screened against the database N of risky bodies: should this yield a match, the
visitor is denied entry.17 Otherwise, the visitor is ‘‘positively enrolled’’ into database
M of ‘‘trusted travelers.’’ Together, these various schemes have progressively
15
The point was made by Khaled Abdel Kareem, a journalist form the Middle East News Agency at a Foreign
Policy Center briefing (U.S. State Department 2003b).
16
With two exemptions: Canadian citizens; and Mexican citizens who already have a ‘‘laser visa’’ (Border
Crossing Card)Fand thus whose fingerprints have been pre-recorded through a different system (U.S. State
Department 2004).
17
By January 2006, the number of individuals screened out (and denied entry) was 14,000 at the embassies and
907 at the port of entry, according to Jim Williams (2006), director of U.S.-VISIT.
160 Guilty Bodies, Productive Bodies, Destructive Bodies
generated immense databases, inching ever closer to the industry analysts’ dream
of a perfect database W, where W stands for ‘‘world population’’ (Bolle et al.
2004:157). Indeed, by January 2006 U.S.-VISIT had fingerprinted over 44 million
individuals, which, in the U.S. State Department’s own triumphant assessment,
‘‘makes the program the largest-scale application of biometrics in the world’’ (U.S.
State Department 2006a). From a biometric engineers’ perspective, database W is
the perfect database, the one that enables the system to perform at its best and
thwart all attacks, because of its scope: if everybody in the world is biometrically regis-
tered, all potential attackers will be successfully weeded out.18
18
By the same token, both imperfection and danger are located outside the system: failure can only arise from not
enough biometrics, rather than too much.
CHARLOTTE EPSTEIN 161
biopower, the power fostering the life of the species-man (Foucault 1976a,
1976b:242). First, the individual is reclaiming her/his body away from power, in a
singular reappropriation, and indeed reversal, of the sovereign’s right of death.
Second, killing other bodies generalizes the act to the level of humanity at large, and
destroys (a least a part of) the species’ productive and reproductive capacities.
Sovereignty or Governmentality?
The 9/11 terrorist actions defied the power of the state, in its sovereignty, by
locating the attack not only on its territory (and not at the borders), but also in its
governmentality, by targeting a perfect emblem of productivityFthe World Trade
Center. It is significant that the only way the state knew to react was afforded by the
old schemes of sovereignty: toughen the borders.19 Yet, the borders became the site
of development of these new technologies of population control. Are they the same
old borders, then? Yes, in that they have not altered the lines of the map. And yet
the new borders are not just stronger physical barriersFno concrete walls built up
here. They are flexible and high-tech, infused with biopower. They are no longer
the classic portals of sovereignty, where power was exerted by granting or with-
holding access at the gate, but did not extend far beyond the gate on either side.
Rather, the borders have become nodes, or gateways, along the circuits of a more
fluid and ubiquitous power. They have been turned into strategic spaces for the
collection of fingerprints. Governmentality has invested the borders. The old
schemes of sovereignty have been reactivated by being placed within the field of
governmentality.20 Indeed the resurgence of ‘‘guilty bodies,’’ a category pertaining
to the sovereignty framework, in the new biometric border management system
does exactly that. At the same time, however, the borders are strengthened and
sovereignty is reinvigorated, albeit reworked. In Butler’s (2004:93) words, ‘‘gov-
ernmentality becomes the new site for the elaboration of sovereignty.’’ Yet what re-
emerges in the end is a bolder sovereign stateFa state consolidated not merely in
its governmentality, but in its very sovereignty.
Sovereignty, that ‘‘anachronism that refuses to die,’’ as Judith Butler (2004:54)
ironizes, shows indeed little sign of waning. No need to look for a neat break
between sovereignty and governmentality, Foucault himself insisted on their co-
existence. This, however, prompts a similar question to the one raised by the new
borders: Is this a new, fundamentally different sovereignty? Butler for her part
captures one ‘‘reconstellation’’ of sovereignty operated by the war prisons, which
have brought sovereignty a new lease of life. There sovereignty is revitalized, yet
deeply deformed: we are in a new era of ‘‘petty sovereigns,’’ to use her terms. Yet
the monstrous sovereignty she exposes is a sovereignty fully colonized by govern-
mentality, and these petty sovereignties may distract from that other nexus, sov-
ereignty/law/rights, and thus from sovereignty’s capacity to actually function as
resistance to governmentality. In other words, maybe sovereignty persists today, not
just because it is easily disfigured, but because it still continues to operate as the pole
of resistance to governmentality. Indeed historically the evolution toward govern-
mentality was accompanied by the appropriation of sovereignty by ‘‘the people’’
(Foucault 1976a:37–40). At that particular point, sovereignty became the critical
instrument wielded against the excesses of (a monarchic) power. No doubt, this
democratization of sovereignty was a smokescreen for the rise of these new forms of
disciplinary and regulatory power from within these same people; and Foucault
19
All the more interesting as, technically, the attack did not happen at the borders: both 9/11 flights were
domestic flights.
20
This is why I disagree with Mark Salter (2003:131) when he sees NSEER as an attempt to ‘‘supplement the old
passport system’’: rather, as NSEER, U.S.-VISIT, and the biometric passport tend to indicate, it is an effort to invest
it otherwise.
162 Guilty Bodies, Productive Bodies, Destructive Bodies
(1976a:40) calls for moving away from both disciplinary powers and ‘‘the old right of
sovereignty.’’ Nonetheless, in the meantime, that ‘‘old right’’ is the only one we
have, as Foucault himself recognizes (1976a:39). Moreover, this other ‘‘piece of the
real,’’ namely biometric borders, reveals some very real points of tension between
sovereignty and governmentality, which seem to indicate that sovereignty is
perhaps not so easily reconfigured. Thus, perhaps sovereignty may still be more
than an empty shell entirely hollowed out, but still somehow upheld, by govern-
mentality.21 Before nailing too hastily the lid on sovereignty’s coffin, maybe we
should see that ‘‘anachronism’’ instead as referring back to the form once taken by a
democratized sovereignty, where it operated as a refuge from power.
Not only is the figure of the individual as subject of rights, entitled to bodily
integrity, the only recourse against encroachments upon civil rights, but more
concretely, and at the systemic level, sovereignty is what has effectively prevented
the deployment of biometrics to its full capacityFthe constitution of the perfect
database W of all the fingerprints, toward which governmentality, with its expansive
trajectory, tends, for aside from the issue of tamperproof documents, the main
reason why the United States has subjected visa-waiver country travelers to
fingerprinting and digital photographing under U.S.-VISIT is that, even with
biometric passports, the United States depends upon other states’ goodwill to access
the biometrics on the chip. Even if another state includes fingerprints on the chip,
the latter would need to be configured so as to allow U.S. machines to read them.22
In other words, behind the question of authorization, the United States is coming
up against other states’ sovereignty. Having it own biometric systems circumvents
these issues. Conversely it is interesting that, while collecting fingerprints from
‘‘aliens,’’ the United States’ own new biometric passports do not contain them (U.S.
Congress 2005)Fthus removing the risk that they may be read by other states.
At play here is a competition between jurisdictionsFwho has access to whose
citizens’ biometricsFand thus between sovereignties. But this is also a sign of sov-
ereignty’s enduring resistance to governmentality: it is interesting that, on the re-
lated question of what passenger information should be made compulsorily
available by the airlines to the U.S. administration, the staunchest opposition has
stemmed from the European parliament, the institution charged with guarding the
sovereignty of the European people.23 Thus, sovereignty has so far effectively
stalled the free-flow of fingerprints from one database to another across the globe.
Conclusion
21
For why, then, would governmentality continue to uphold sovereignty at all? The persistence of sovereignty
suggests a more complicated relationship that needs to be further explored.
22
This transpired as a real concern at the U.S. Congress (2005) Committee Hearing on Border Security/Bio-
metric Passports’ with regards to the new European passports: when asked whether the U.S. border system could
not read the actual chip, or would not be allowed information to the EU databases, the DHS official replied: ‘‘Well,
both actually.’’
23
This in turn reveals tensions between the Commission and Parliament, as the former has sought to accom-
modate the demands of the United States. The Commission’s position, however, was overturned by the European
Court of Justice on May 30, 2006; and a new agreement between the EU and the United States on that question is
currently under negotiation.
CHARLOTTE EPSTEIN 163
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