Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

The “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign was and is a performance of security. It is a campaign that attempts to shape what commuters see and respond to. It is a campaign that attempts to shape ideas concerning security; but, more importantly, it is a campaign which requires bodies to perform the notions of security that it is attempting to define, redefine, and/or, in a Foucaultian sense, normalize. Based on my research, this article will explore this particular performance of security as a site of biopolitics. In the logic of security that this campaign performs, how do bodies respond to it? How do they incorporate that logic into their own movement? How do they challenge it? What does the movement of this campaign and the bodies that move along with it suggest for current debates within biopolitics regarding security? These are the questions that this article will seek to explore.

Keywords

security performance governance normalization subway campaign

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Agamben

(1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Agamben

(2005). State of exception. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Clough

P. T.

Willse

(Ed.). (2011). Beyond biopolitics: The governance of life and death. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Dillon

(2007). Governing terror: The state of emergency of biopolitical emergence. International Political Sociology, 1, 7-28.

Foucault

(1978). The history of sexuality, Vol. 1: An introduction ( Hurley

, Trans.). New York, NY: Pantheon Books.

Foucault

(1995). Discipline & punish: The birth of the prison. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Foucault

(2003). Society must be defended: Lectures at the College de France 1975-1976 ( Macy

, Trans.). New York, NY: Picador.

Foucault

(2007). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the College de France 1976-1977 ( Burchell

, Trans.). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Foucault

(2008). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978-1979 ( Burchell

, Trans.). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

10.

Goffman

(1969). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York, NY: Penguin Press.

11.

Martin

(2010). Bombs, bodies, and biopolitics: Securitizing the subject at the airport security checkpoint. Social & Cultural Geography, 11, 17-34.

12.

Massumi

(2009). National enterprise emergency: Steps toward an ecology of powers. Theory Culture Society, 26, 153-185.

13.

Molotch

(2012). Against security: How we go wrong at airports, subways, and other sites of ambiguous danger. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

14.

Neilson

(2012). Ageing, experience, biopolitics: Life’s unfolding. Body & Society, 18, 44-71.

15.

Schmitt

(1996). The concept of the political. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

16.

Shapiro

(2005). Every move you make: Bodies, surveillance, and media. Social Text, 23, 21-34.

17.

Story

(2007, January 15). Anywhere the eye can see, it’s likely to see an ad. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/business/media/15everywhere.html?pagewanted=all

18.

Sylvia

(2013). Cultural messaging in the U.S. war on terrorism: A performative approach to security. El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing.

19.

Thacker

(2011). Necrologies: Or, the death of the body politic. In Clough

P. T.

Willse

(Eds.), Beyond biopolitics: The governance of life and death (pp. 139-162). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

The Performance of Security as a Site of Biopolitical Struggle

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References