The Cybernetic Border
Drones, Technology, and Intrusion
IvĂĄn Chaar LĂłpez
- 248 pages
- English
- PDF
- Disponible sur iOS et Android
The Cybernetic Border
Drones, Technology, and Intrusion
IvĂĄn Chaar LĂłpez
Ă propos de ce livre
In The Cybernetic Border, IvĂĄn Chaar LĂłpez argues that the settler US nation requires the production and targeting of a racialized enemy that threatens the empire. The cybernetic border is organized through practices of data capture, storage, processing, circulation, and communication that police bodies and constitute the nation as a bounded, territorial space. Chaar LĂłpez historicizes the US government's use of border enforcement technologies on Mexicans, Arabs, and Muslims from the mid-twentieth century to the present, showing how data systems are presented as solutions to unauthorized border crossing. Contrary to enduring fantasies of the purported neutrality of drones, smart walls, artificial intelligence, and biometric technologies, the cybernetic border represents the consolidation of calculation and automation in the exercise of racialized violence. Chaar LĂłpez draws on corporate, military, and government records, promotional documents and films, technical reports, news reporting, surveillance footage, and activist and artist practices. These materials reveal how logics of enmity are embedded into information infrastructures that shape border control and modern sovereignty.