Call For Papers

‘Exposing Bodies:

Surveillance and Embodiment’

An interdisciplinary symposium run by The Surveillance and Everyday Life Research Group

A Special Call for Papers

Friday July 8th, 2011

Faculty Common Room,
New Law Building Level 4, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney


Symposium Overview

‘…no one has hitherto laid down the limits to the powers of the body, that is, no one has as yet been taught by experience what the body can accomplish…’

(Spinoza, 1675/2006: 59)

‘The body is not primarily an organism or an organization. It is an immanent assemblage of kinetic particles and anonymous forces, motion and energy that constitute every body: a bacterial body, a eukaryotic body, a multicellular body, a cultural body, the body of machines, etc. … A body is primarily defined by associations and splittings…’

(Parisi, 2004: 29)

The University of Sydney’s Surveillance and Everyday Life Research Group invites abstracts for an exploratory symposium examining the everyday voluntary/involuntary exposure of the body as facilitated by organisationally-situated surveillance technologies and the recording devices of modern-day citizens.

Whether in artistic or scientific domains, the human and non-human body has historically been subject to myriad complex processes aimed at its identification, organization, (re)presentation and classification. An ontology of the body as a reliable organism for measurement and as a social text that can be visualized, identified, mapped, read, profiled, categorized, influenced and coerced in a variety of ways, has been central to such definitional enactments. A traditional assumption deriving from the professionalization and politicization of health, for example, is that ‘objective’ bodily knowledge derived from the senses can strategically be used to understand and treat illness/bodily dysfunctionality, to harness subjectivity in particular ways, and to direct behavioural practices and conduct (e.g. interactional norms, mobility, sexual reproduction and consumption). Perhaps this imaginary is best illustrated in the relationships between biomedical science and body parts, functions and processes, and between government and citizen. The body’s objectification within an array of biopolitical regimes has been greatly facilitated by a variety of established and emergent ‘envisioning’ technologies with surveillant capacities, including fingerprinting devices, radiographic x-rays, facial and voice recognition software, DNA databases, biobanks, body scanners, video and camera transmission equipment, webcams etc. Many of these bodily capturing ‘probes’ and recording devices function to convert bodily complexity, materiality and motion into discrete forms of textual data, which can then be read, decoded, interpreted and analysed both by individuals and by expert officials in a multitude of interesting ways.

In contrast to expert imaginings that project a stable, universal body into the heart of the liberal, human subject, the bodies that are processed and (re)mediated by what have been termed ‘surveillant assemblages’ are perhaps closer to the open, indeterminate, unknown forms that Spinoza had long ago described, or the mutating, dis/associating bodies depicted more recently by Parisi. In important ways, contemporary surveillant assemblages constitute anew the chaotic bodies they encounter and process. Situated amidst the multiplicity of these interactions, yet cognizant of the sea of embodiment that escapes, or is even utterly indifferent to, surveillant capture, this symposium takes up Spinoza’s invitation to imagine what the body can accomplish.

Key questions and issues for critical reflection include: how are bodies conceived through and transformed by surveillance technologies? What functions, within surveillant assemblages, do bodies perform? Which bodies escape, or are excluded from, the embrace of surveillance, and why? How is surveillance mediated through embodiment? How and why are embodied-subjects complicit in their surveillance? How do they resist or negotiate surveillance? How is bodily mobility regulated? How are surveillance techniques used to mobilize the body’s performative potential? By addressing such questions, this symposium will establish a framework for mapping the socio-cultural and politico-economic affinities linking surveillance and bodies.

Symposium Themes

  • Bodily Identification, Profiling & Biometrics
  • Biomechanics & Comportment Analytics (including recognition softwares, algorithms etc.)
  • Normal/Abnormal Bodies & Classificatory Politics
  • Biotechnology & Bioengineering
  • Biopower & Objectivation
  • Bodily Exhibitionism & Performativity
  • Cyborgs, Robotics & Alternative Bodies
  • Disease Monitoring and Non-Human Bodies
  • Bodies in Sport & Mass Mediated Sporting Mega-Events
  • Bodily Regulation & Discipline
  • Body Images & Mediation
  • Distributed Bodies & Bodily Flows
  • Bodily Im/mobility
  • Biocapital, Biobanking & Bioeconomy
  • Disappearing Bodies & Re-emergent Codes

Symposium Keynotes

  • Professor Catherine Waldby, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, The University of Sydney: ‘Biobanking in Singapore: Post-developmental state, experimental population’
  • Dr Charlotte Epstein, Department of Government and International Relations, The University of Sydney: ‘The Big Other Is Watching You: Surveillance, Sovereignty, Subjectivities’

Participant Instructions

Please send a 200 word abstract by Wednesday June 15th to:

Katarina.Ferro@sydney.edu.au