Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

REGISTRY, PRINT, RESISTANCE

2012; Routledge; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17530350.2012.640553

1753-0369

Josef Teboho Ansorge,

Migration, Refugees, and Integration

Abstract This article is about technologies that arithmetize and data-manage the other and the foe. It undertakes a mini-genealogy of information technology used to identify and sort individuals. Information management technologies developed in libraries are identified as fundamental, yet overlooked, sources of a bio-political revolution. In particular, the library card registry and the smart number has led to a radicalization and standardization of the state's capacities to know individuals. This article is also about a curious North-South symbiosis, or 'boomerang effect', where technologies first used on the other in illegible, securitized situations are then transported back to the metropole where they are initially deployed to capture the internal other and then, ultimately, the entire population. Finally, this article is about the global war on terror and how 'knowing the enemy' is intimately connected to a whole host of data-mining techniques and statistical knowledges. Keywords: information technologyterrorismgenealogyfingerprints ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Alex Anievas, David Beall, Duncan Bell, and the editors and reviewers of the Journal of Cultural Economy for helpful comments. The usual disclaimers apply. Notes 1. Newspaper articles (Bagby Citation2009) and the marketing literature of biometric technology purveyors (Division Citation2009) are presently the best sources on census operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A review of the plethora of articles dealing with the use of biometric tools in military magazines, such as Armor, also demonstrates the importance currently attached to these means. For accounts of the centrality of censuses for counter-insurgency campaigns see (Kitson Citation1971, p. 107; Scott Citation2009, p. 180). 2. To 'securitize' something means to move an issue from a political discursive register to a security discursive register in which the stakes are cast as existential and the need for action is regarded as greater than the need for agreement. For more on securitization see (Buzan, Waever, & de Wilde Citation1998). For a take on securitization as being 'concerned with making life accessible to different social technologies' see Dillon and Reid (Citation2001, p. 51). 3. For more on the genealogical method see Nietzsche (Citation1999[1887]) and Foucault (Citation1994). 4. Foucault does not have much to say on card registries, but Weber does. In his late great Economy and Society (1922) he writes at some length about the importance of filing technology for bureaucracy (Weber Citation1922, pp. 128, 129, 651). 5. For a good discussion of medieval scholarly methods of information retention and organization, such as tagging and indexing see (Blair Citation2010; Corns Citation2000). 6. 'After Gutenberg … hundreds of readers possessed identical copies of the same book' (Manguel Citation1997, pp. 137–138). On the wide-ranging cognitive significance of mass-literacy see (Ong Citation2002; McLuhan Citation1962). 7. 'Destabilization rights protect the citizen's interest in breaking open the large-scale organizations or the extended areas of social practice that remain closed to the destabilizing effects of ordinary conflict and thereby sustain insulated hierarchies of power and advantage' (Unger Citation1987, p. 530). On destabilization rights and standardization see Grewal (Citation2008, pp. 187–189). 8. For a detailed description of these methods see Bertillon (1896). One can see what institutions were most interested in Bertillon's methods through the fact that Major R. W. McClaughry, the General Superintendent of the Police of Chicago, edited the English edition. For secondary literature on Bertillon see Kaluszynski (Citation2001). 9. 'Identity Dominance is defined as the operational capability to achieve an advantage over an adversary by denying him the ability to mask his identity and/or to counter our biometric technologies and processes' (BIMA Citation2010, p. 35). 10. For more on databases and surveillance see Guzik (Citation2009); Lyon (Citation2001, Citation2003); Amoore and De Goede (Citation2005); Solove (Citation2001). 11. Lieutenant Colonel Kathy DeBolt, US Army Battle Laboratory quoted in Division (2009). 12. It is worth recalling that Hannah Arendt located Nazism at the conjunction of bureaucracy and racism (Arendt Citation1986, 405–407). 13. The view of the unchanging oriental warrior was exemplified in an editorial by John Keegan which argued that on September 11, 2001 'the Oriental tradition … returned in an absolutely traditional form. Arabs, appearing suddenly out of empty space like their desert raider ancestors, assaulted the heartlands of Western power, in a terrifying surprise raid and did appalling damage' (Keegan Citation2001).