Monstrous Play in Negative Spaces: Illegible Bodies and the Cultural Construction of Biometric Technology

Abstract

Biometric technology is often described as the ultimate form of transnational surveillance, producing a readable body through a process of measurement, enrollment, and identification/verification. The technology, however, cannot read all bodies equally. This article will engage with industry analyses, the historical category “monster,” and Foucaultian notions of normativity to argue that biometric technology's production of illegible bodies suggests the unfixable nature of bodies, and calls for the need to reconfigure discourses about biometric technology.