Dark Matters by Simone Browne

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D A R K M A T T E R S


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D A R K M A T T E R S

S I M O N E B R O W N E

Duke Universiy Press Durham and London


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© . All righs reserved

Prined in he Unied Saes of America on acid-free paper ∞

Designed by Naalie F. Smih

Typese in Arno Pro by Graphic Composiion, Inc., Ahens, GA

Library of Congress Caaloging-in-Publicaion Daa

Browne, Simone, [dae] auhor.

Dark maters : on he surveillance of blackness / Simone Browne.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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---- (pbk. : alk. paper)

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. African AmericansSocial condiions. . BlacksCanadaSocial

condiions. . Unied SaesRace relaions. . CanadaRace relaions.

. Elecronic surveillanceUnied Saes. . Governmen informaion

Unied Saes. I. Tile.

..

.'dc

: Robin Rhode (Souh African, born ), Pan’s Opicon , .

Phoographs, fieen C-prins face-mouned on four-ply museum board.

Phoos couresy of Lehmann Maupin.

Duke Universiy Press graefully acknowledges he suppor of he

Office of he Presiden a he Universiy of Texas a Ausin, which providedfunds oward he publicaion of his book.


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C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgmens vii

Inroducion, and Oher Dark Maters

1

Noes on Surveillance SudiesTrough he Door of No Reurn

2

“Everybody’s Go a Litle Ligh under he Sun”Te Making of he Book of Negroes

3

B®anding Blackness

Biomeric echnology and he Surveillance of Blackness

4

“Wha Did TSA Find in Solange’s Fro”?Securiy Teaer a he Airpor

Epilogue: When Blackness Eners he Frame

Noes Bibliography Index


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is book began as noes ha I scribbled in he margins while I was con-ducing disseraion research a he Universiy of Torono. Alhough i isno based on ha work, many of he quesions and concerns ha shape his book emerged from ha projec. ank you o my PhD commitee mem- bers Kari Dehli, Roxana Ng, Alissa Troz, and David Lyon for heir guid-ance, suppor, and sharp readings of ha work.

My appreciaion goes ou o colleagues, pas and presen, a he Univer-siy of Texas a Ausin who have made suggesions, poined me in new direc-ions, provided feedback, and read pars of he book along he way. I hank

João Cosa Vargas, Sephen Marshall, Naomi Paik, Nhi Lieu, Mea DuEwa Jones, Shirley ompson, and Michael Ray Charles. Ben Carringon com-mened on many chaper dras, ieraions, and he enire manuscrip. I amgraeful for he insighs ha his readings have brough o his book. TedGordon’s suppor for me and my work has been unwavering. I hank himfor showing me he possibiliies of maroon spaces. Special hanks o hose who provided words of encouragemen and suppor for his projec: Jos-sianna Arroyo, Ann Cvekovich, Lyndon Gill, Sam Gosling, Frank Guridy,

Charlie Hale, Susan Heinzelman, Neville Hoad, Julie Hooker, Bob Jen-sen, Omi Jones, Xavier Livermon, Minkah Makalani, Leonard Moore, LisaMoore, Deborah Paredez, Anna-Lisa Plan, Cherise Smih, Eric Tang, andCraig Wakins. I would also like o hank my colleagues in he SociologyDeparmen, especially Bob Hummer, Keih Robinson, Mary Rose, MarcMusick, Michael Young, and Maya Charrad. I consider myself ruly luckyo have me he many sudens from my graduae seminars and under-graduae classes who have criically engaged wih pars and pieces of wha

would become his book, wih a special hanks o Courney Williams Bar-ron, Josh Bidwell, Jessica Dunning-Lozano, Amanda Gray, Lily Laux, andElissa Underwood.

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S


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viii Acknowledgmens

I appreciae he many colleagues and friends who have suppored meand have made his book beter hrough heir quesions, conversaions, cor-

respondence, enhusiasm, and advice, wih many of hose menioned here

having generously read pars, or all, of his book. I hank Cahy N. David-son, David eo Goldberg, Avery Gordon, Gary T. Marx, Torin Monahan,Lisa Nakamura, Mark Anhony Neal, Howard Winan, Fiona Barnet, ZachBlas, Marc Böhlen, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Micha Cárdenas, Danielle Dirks, Joe Feagin, Allen Feldman, Cailin Fisher, Marin French, Ahmed Ghap-pour, Ruhie Gilmore, Sarah Ihmoud, Richard Ion, Joy James, David Leon-ard, Seve Mann, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Alondra Nelson, Tamara K. Nopper,Mark Olson, Jenny Rhee, Mark B. Saler, Chrisina Sharpe, Maggie Tae,France Winddance Twine, David Murakami Wood, and Clyde Woods. Iam especially graeful for Kaherine McKitrick’s friendship, her brilliance,and her many visis o Ausin. Her fierce commenary on so many pars ofhis book has been invaluable. My sinceres appreciaion goes o Rinaldo Walcot for his encouragemen, his menorship, his generous feedback, andfor he semeser ha he sojourned in Ausin.

I’ve had opporuniies o presen my research a various venues, whichhave grealy enriched his book. I am hankful for all ha I’ve learned from

he rigorous quesions and commens, and in paricular hose from audi-ences a he Surveillance Sudies Cener a Queen’s Universiy, conferences in Durham and Torono, Graduae Cener, Universiyof California a Berkeley, Universiy of California a Sana Barbara, Univer-siy of Otawa, and New York Universiy.

Chaper benefied from financial suppor from he John L. WarfieldCener for African American Sudies ha allowed me o ake research ripso he Naional Archives in London and o Fraunces Tavern in New York

Ciy. A workshop a he John Hope Franklin Humaniies Insiue a DukeUniversiy organized by Cahy Davidson provided me wih generous feedback and guidance on his chaper. I am so graeful o Cahy for her incred-ible kindness and for creaing a imely and safe space for me a he FranklinCener.

Duke Universiy Press has been a dream (come rue) o publish wih.Since our firs meeing a Parker and Ois, Courney Berger has been anamazing edior. I deeply hank her for her commimen o his book and

for her insighs and advice hroughou. ank you o Erin Hanas for hersep- by-sep guidance hrough he ediorial process. I also wan o hankhe producion eam a Duke, and in paricular Chrisopher Robinson,


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Acknowledgmens ix

Danielle Houz, and Karen M. Fisher. A big hanks also o Ken Wissoker.I am especially indebed o he wo anonymous reviewers for heir fiercecriique and for invesing heir ime in order o make his book so much beter.

I am eernally graeful for he friendship and suppor of Samia Rizek-Benisy and Samuel Benisy, Danielle Chow-Leong, Aliyah Hamirani, Almira Hamirani, Zahra Hamirani and family, Carrianne Leung, and SellaMeghie.

is book is dedicaed wih love o my family, especially James Bailey,Ena Bailey, and Elsa Consanine. To my moher, Carmel Browne, hank you for everyhing and for singing o me (or my answering machine) everyday. To my faher, Eardley Browne, hank you for all of your insighs andencouragemen and reading all of i. Again and again. To my broher, KevinBrowne, who has augh me so much abou srengh, love, survival, kind-ness, and humour.

of chaper appeared as “Everybody’s Go a LitleLigh under he Sun: Black Luminosiy and he Visual Culure of Surveil-

lance,” Culural Sudies , no. (): –. Pars of chaper have been revised from “Digial Epidermalizaion: Race, Ideniy and Biome-rics,” Criical Sociology , no. (): –.


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I N T R O D U C T I O N , A N D O T H E R D A R K M A T T E R S

e can neiher confirm nor deny he exisence or nonexisence ofrecords responsive o your reques.” Someime in he spring of , I wroeo he Cenral Inelligence Agency () and o he Federal Bureau of In- vesigaion () o reques he release of any documens peraining oFranz Fanon under he Freedom of Informaion Ac (). A he ime,I was ineresed in Fanon’s ravels o he Unied Saes of America in ,possibly under he nom de guerre Ibrahim Fanon, o receive reamen formyeloid leukemia. He arrived in he Unied Saes on Ocober , saying aa hoel in Washingon, DC, where he was “le o ro,” according o Simone

de Beauvoir, “alone and wihou medical atenion.”

Fanon was a paiena he Naional Insiues of Healh Clinical Cener in Behesda, Maryland,from Ocober , , unil he died of pneumonia on December , .He was hiry-six. I didn’ ge any documens from he excep a leterciing Execuive Order wih he sandard refrain ha he agency “canneiher confirm nor deny he exisence or nonexisence of records,” andfurher saing ha “he fac of he exisence or nonexisence of requesedrecords is currenly and properly classified and is inelligence sources and

mehods informaion ha is proeced from disclosure.”Fanon’s files ha were released o me by he consis only of

hree declassified documens: Documen --Aa clipping of a Washingon Pos-imes Herald aricle on Fanon’s “Black Power Mes-sage” and is coninuing influence on he Caribbean island of Marinique, where he was born; Documen --a once “” memo onFanon daed March , ; and Documen --a book reviewof David Caue’s biography Franz Fanon , filed under “exremis ma-

ers,” which says of Caue ha “his mehodology bears he Marxis samp”and ha “he is no friend of he Unied Saes or of a free sociey.” Documen--A, he news clipping, names Te Wreched of he Earh ()

“


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Inroducion

as Fanon’s mos imporan book, saing, “is sales have run unusually highlaely, especially among young Negroes.” Documen --, he ’sown review of Caue’s biography, describes Fanon as a “black inellecual,” a“radical revoluionary,” and “a philosophical disciple of Karl Marx and JeanPaul Sarre, [who] preached global revol of he blacks agains whie colo-nial rule,” and says ha Fanon’s Te Wreched of he Earh is “oen quoedand misquoed by Sokely Carmichael and oher black power advocaes, boh foreign and domesic.” is review also claims ha “Fanon’s impor-ance has been inflaed ino exaggeraed dimensions by he need of blackrevoluionaries for philosophical jusificaion and leadership.” Traces ofFanon’s influence appear in oher declassified documens where eiherhe or his published books are named, including some documens ha de-ail he bureau’s surveillance of he Black Panher Pary.

Alhough much of he informaion on he once “” memoon Fanon, Documen -- (figure .), has been redaced, meaningha some of is informaion is censored, concealed, or oherwise coveredup, his memo names Fanon as “he Algerian represenaive in Ghana forhe Algerian Fron for Naional Liberaion ()” and noes ha he was, ahe ime, in Tunisia preparing o ravel o Washingon, DC, for “exensive

medical reamen.” is memo is from Sam J. Papich, he bureau’s liaisono he . I is ineresing o noe here ha he redacion of Documen-- ook he form of a whieou, concealing a good porion ofhe original ex wih whie blocks, in his way deviaing from he mehodof censoring he redaced daa wih opaque black blocks, rendering anyinformaion in he dark. We can hink of he redacion here as he will-ful absening of he record and as he sae’s disavowal of he bureaucraicraces of Fanon, a leas hose which are made publicly available. Here

Franz Fanon is a nonnameable mater. Now dead, ye sill a “currenly andproperly classified” securiy risk, apparenly, as “he fac of he exisence ornonexisence” of Fanon’s records iself is “inelligence sources and mehodsinformaion ha is proeced from disclosure.” Wih his, he redacion andExecuive Order could be undersood as a form of securiy heaer where cerain “inelligence sources and mehods,” if in exisence, could sill be pu ino operaion, and as such could no be declassified.

Fanon’s files form a par of he long hisory of he collecion of in-

elligence on he many black radicals, ariss, aciviss, and inellecuals who were argeed for surveillance by he . is lis includes Assaa Shakur,


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Inroducion

James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Sokely Carmichael, he Suden Non- violen Coordinaing Commitee, he Freedom Riders, Marin Luher King Jr., Elijah Muhammad and he Naion of Islam, Claudia Jones, Malcolm X,Fred Hampon, William Edward Burghar DuBois, Fannie Lou Hamer,Cyril Lionel Rober James, Mumia Abu- Jamal, Angela Yvonne Davis, Rich-ard Wrigh, Ralph Ellison, Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, he Black Pan-her Pary, Kahleen Cleaver, Cassius Clay, Jimi Hendrix, and Russell Jonesaka Ol’ Diry Basard of he Wu-Tang Clan, among many, many ohers. edeclassified prined mater released o me by he was no paricularlyrevealing regarding any surveillance and monioring of Franz Fanon. I wasdisappoined. My own surveillance of he records of he ’s surveillanceof Fanon had apparenly been salled.

In he foreword o he ediion of Te Wreched of he Earh , HomiBhabha describes Fanon’s dying days as filled wih delirium and wih a lovefor liberaion:

his body was sricken, bu his fighing days were no quie over; heresised his deah “minue by minue,” a friend repored from his bed-side, as his poliical opinions and beliefs urned ino he delirious fan-asies of a mind raging agains he dying of he ligh. His hared of rac-

is Americans now urned ino a disrus of he nursing saff, and heawoke on his las morning, having probably had a blood ransfusionhrough he nigh, obsessed wih he idea ha “hey pu me hroughhe washing machine las nigh.” His deah was ineviable.

Les damnés de la erre () would be he las of his books ha Fanon would live o see published. He was in he hospial in Maryland when heheard some iniial reviews of he book and he reporedly saed, “a’s no

going o ge me my marrow back.”

A leter o a friend penned from hishospial bed capures Fanon’s rage “agains he dying of he ligh” as boh a batle of he body agains disease and an anicolonial praxis:

During a nigh and day surveillance, hey injec me wih he compo-nens of blood for which I have a errible need, and where hey giveme huge ransfusions o keep me in shapeha’s o say, alive. . . . Wha shocks me here in his bed, as I grow weaker, is no ha I’mdying, bu ha I’m dying in Washingon of leukemia considering haI could have died in batle wih he enemy hree monhs ago when I


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F I G U R E I . 1 . “” memo on Franz Fanon, Documen --.


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Inroducion

knew I had his disease. We are nohing on earh if we are no, firs ofall, slaves of a cause, he cause of he people, he cause of jusice, hecause of libery.

Fanon wroe much of he anicolonial Les damnés de la erre as his ime was running ou. He knew ha his cancer was erminal, which brough wriing he book “down o he wire,” as he pu i. A he ime he was inexile in Tunisia aer being expelled from Algeria in January by heFrench auhoriies for his work wih he Fron de Libéraion Naionale(). During his exile in Tunisia, home o he ’s headquarers, Fanonook on muliple roles. He worked a he ’s newspaper El Moudjahid ,served in refugee camps run by he near he Algerian border, was chef

de service a he psychiaric hospial of Manouba, and was also he Alge-rian provisional governmen’s delegae o Mali and oher African naions. While in exile, Fanon gave a series of lecures a he Universiy of Tunis onsurveillance, he psychic effecs of war and colonialism on he colonized,and aniblack racism in he Unied Saes. In he noes from hese lecures,Fanon speaks of he problem of racial segregaion in he Unied Saes, orhe “color bar” as he names i, where aniblack racism is consan and muli-layered, emoional and affecive. He menions he hemes of escape and

blackness on he move found in Negro spiriuals, he hauning lyrics of blues music and social deah, Harlem and he wriings of African Americannovelis Cheser Himes, he rigidiy of he color line and is nagging pres-ence, African American vernacular and code-swiching (“quand un Noirs’adresse à un Blanc”) and repressive policing pracices (“Quand un Noirue un Noir, il ne se passe rien; quand un Noir ue un Blanc, oue la policees mobilisée”). Fanon’s lecures on surveillance a he Universiy of Tunis were evenually canceled, by order of he Tunisian governmen.

During hese lecures Fanon pu forh he idea ha moderniy can becharacerized by he “mise en fiches de l’homme.” ese are he records,files, ime shees, and ideniy documens ha ogeher form a biography,and someimes an unauhorized one, of he modern subjec. In a mannersimilar o he deailed case hisories of colonial war and menal disordersfound in he fih chaper of Te Wreched of he Earh , in a secion of henoes on hese lecures iled “Le conrôle e la surveillance” (in English“Surveillance and Conrol”), Fanon demonsraes his role as boh psychia-ris and social heoris, by making observaions, or social diagnoses, onhe embodied effecs and oucomes of surveillance pracices on differen


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Inroducion

caegories of laborers when atemps are made by way of workforce super- vision o reduce heir labor o an auomaion: facory assembly line work-ers subjeced o ime managemen by punch clocks and ime shees, heeavesdropping done by elephone swichboard supervisors as hey secrelylisened in on calls in order o monior he conversaions of swichboardoperaors, and he effecs of closed-circui elevision () surveillanceon sales clerks in large deparmen sores in he Unied Saes. is is con-rol by quanificaion, as Fanon pu i. e embodied psychic effecs of surveillance ha Fanon described include nervous ensions, insomnia, faigue,accidens, lighheadedness, and less conrol over reflexes. Nighmares oo:a rain ha depars and leaves one behind, or a gae closing, or a door ha won’ open. Alhough Fanon’s remarks on surveillance are shor,hey are revealing as he suggess ha hese cameras are rained no onlyon he poenial hief, bu also on he employee working on he shop floor who is pu on noice ha he video surveillance is perpeual. He also noedha workers displayed microresisances o managerial conrol in he way ofsick leave, expressing boredom on he job, arriving lae, and someimes noarriving a work a all. Raher han being hough of as unproducive, suchacs mus be undersood as disalienaing, as hey are sraegic means of

conesing surveillance in he workplace. Alhough only he noes from hese lecures remain, Fanon’s observaionson he monioring of audio communicaions and are neverheless in-

srucive for he social diagnosis of alienaion and he effecs of moderniy,

surveillance, and resisance ha he offers. If one were o read hese lecures

“opimisically,” as Nicholas Mirzoeff has suggesed, “had he lived longer,

Fanon migh have moved away from his emphasis on masculiniy o imagine

new modes of posrevoluionary gender ideniy, as par of his analysis of

he racialized disciplinary sociey, a connecion made by many radical blackfeminiss in he Unied Saes from Angela Davis o Toni Cade Bambara

and bell hooks.” I ener Dark Maters: On he Surveillance of Blackness wih

his sense of opimism in mind: ha in Fanon’s works and in he wriings of

black feminis scholars, anoher mode of reading surveillance can be had.

Dark Maters begins wih a discussion of my failed atemp o ge myhands on any informaion from he peraining o Fanon, his file, he shor noes ha remain from his lecures on surveillance, and an ex-

cerp from his leter o a friend recouning he “nigh and day surveillance”ha he experienced as he was on he brink of deah as a way o cue surveil-lance in and of black life as a fac of blackness. My gesure o “e Fac of


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Blackness,” one of he English ranslaions of he ile of he fih chaperof Fanon’s Black Skin, Whie Masks , is a deliberae signal o he faciciyof surveillance in black life. Firs published in as Peau Noire, Masques

Blancs , he book’s fih chaper in he French original is “L’expérience vécuedu Noir.” As Sylvia Wyner and ohers have noed, he ranslaion of hachaper’s ile ino English as “e Lived Experience of he Black” in laerediions offers a more accurae undersanding. I is his sligh difference beween he wo iles“e Fac of Blackness” and “e Lived Experi-ence of he Black”ha I wan o signal here. e “Blackness” in he for-mer could be aken o mean, as Wyner has pu i, “ Blackness as an objecivefac” while “e Lived Experience of he Black” speaks o a focus on heimposiion of race in black life, where one’s being is experienced hroughohers. Wyner coninues her discussion of Fanon and sociogeny o sayha “e Lived Experience of he Black” makes clear ha Fanon is dealing“wih he ‘subjecive characer’ of he experience of he black, of, herefore, wha i is like o be black, wihin he erms of he mode of being humanspecific o our conemporary culure.”

Sociogeny, or wha Wyner calls “he sociogenic principle,” is under-sood as he organizaional framework of our presen human condiion

ha names wha is and wha is no bounded wihin he caegory of he hu-man, and ha fixes and frames blackness as an objec of surveillance. Take,for example, Fanon’s oen-cied “Look, a Negro!” passage in Black Skin,Whie Masks on he experience of epidermalizaion, where he whie gazefixes him as an objec among objecs and, he says, “he whie gaze, he only valid one, is already dissecing me.” Epidermalizaion here is he imposi-ion of race on he body. For Fanon, here is no “onological resisance” inspaces, like ha rain he rode in France, ha are shaped for and by whie-

ness, where “insead of one sea, hey le me wo or hree,” he wries.

Dark Maters akes up blackness, as meaphor and as lived maerialiy, and ap-plies i o an undersanding of surveillance. I work across muliple spaces(he airpor, he plan of he Brooks slave ship, he plan for Jeremy Benham’sPanopicon, Inerne ar) and differen segmens of ime (he period ofransalanic chatel slavery, he Briish occupaion of New York Ciy dur-ing he American Revoluion, pos-/) o hink hrough he mulipliciiesof blackness. is mehod of analyzing surveillance and he condiions of

racial blackness brings hisorical documens, ar, phoography, conempo-rary popular film and elevision, and various oher forms of culural pro-ducion ino dialogue wih criical race scholarship, sociological heory,


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and feminis heorizing. For his sudy, I look o Pamela Z’s mulimediaprojec on ravel and securiy, Baggage Allowance; Adrian Piper’s Wha I’s

Like, Wha I Is ; Caryl Phillips’s episolary sory “e Cargo Rap” onprisons, poliics, and slavery; and Hank Willis omas’s commenary on branding and he aerlife of slavery in his B®anded series. Par of he argu-men presened here is ha wih cerain acs of culural producion we canfind performances of freedom and suggesions of alernaives o ways of liv-ing under a rouinized surveillance. In his fashion, I am indebed o SuarHall’s unsetling of undersandings of “culural ideniy” ha does no seehe black diaspora and black experiences as saic or singular, bu insead as“a resul of a long and disconinuous series of ransformaions.” FollowingRinaldo Walcot here, my use of he erm “blackness” is o “signal black-ness as a sign, one ha carries wih i paricular hisories of resisance anddominaion” ha is “never closed and always under conesaion.” Black-ness is ideniy and culure, hisory and presen, signifier and signified, bunever fixed. As Ralph Ellison names i in Invisible Man , “Black is . . . an’ black ain’.”

Fanon’s “Look, a Negro!,” his ariculaions of epidermalizaion, andhis anicolonial hough have influenced he formaion of his book. Dark

Maters suggess ha an undersanding of he onological condiions of blackness is inegral o developing a general heory of surveillance and,in paricular, racializing surveillancewhen enacmens of surveillancereify boundaries along racial lines, hereby reifying race, and where heoucome of his is oen discriminaory and violen reamen. Of course,his is no he enire sory of surveillance, bu i is a par ha oen escapesnoice. Alhough “race” migh be a erm found in he index of many of herecen edied collecions and special journal issues dedicaed o he sudy

of surveillance, wihin he field of surveillance sudies race remains un-derheorized, and serious consideraion has ye o be given o he racialsubjec in general, and o he role of surveillance in he archive of slaveryand he ransalanic slave rade in paricular. I is hrough his archive andha of black life aer he Middle Passage ha I wan o furher complicaeundersandings of surveillance by quesioning how a realizaion of he con-diions of blacknesshe hisorical, he presen, and he hisorical pres-encan help social heoriss undersand our conemporary condiions of

surveillance. Pu anoher way, raher han seeing surveillance as somehinginauguraed by new echnologies, such as auomaed facial recogniion orunmanned auonomous vehicles (or drones), o see i as ongoing is o in-


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Inroducion

sis ha we facor in how racism and aniblackness undergird and susainhe inersecing surveillances of our presen order. Paricia Hill Collins useshe erm “inersecional paradigms” o signal ha “oppression canno be re-duced o one fundamenal ype, and ha oppressions work ogeher in pro-ducing injusice.” Indebed o black feminis scholarship, by “inersecingsurveillances” I am referring o he inerdependen and inerlocking waysha pracices, performances, and policies regarding surveillance operae.

e concep of dark mater migh bring o mind opaciy, he color black,limilessness and he limiaions imposed on blackness, he dark, anima-er, ha which is no opically available, black holes, he Big Bang heory,and oher concerns of cosmology where dark mater is ha nonluminouscomponen of he universe ha is said o exis bu canno be observed, can-no be re-creaed in laboraory condiions. Is disribuion canno be mea-sured; is properies canno be deermined; and so i remains undeecable.e graviaional pull of his unseen mater is said o move galaxies. Invis-ible and unknowable, ye somehow sill here, dark mater, in his planearysense, is heoreical. If he erm “dark mater” is a way o hink abou race, where race, as Howard Winan pus i, “remains he dark mater , he oeninvisible subsance ha in many ways srucures he universe of moder-

niy,” hen one mus ask here, invisible o whom?

If i is oen invisible,hen how is i sensed, experienced, and lived? Is i really invisible, or is iraher unseen and unperceived by many? In her essay “Black (W)holes andhe Geomery of Black Female Sexualiy,” Evelyn Hammonds akes up heasrophysics of black holes found in Michele Wallace’s discussion of he ne-gaion of black creaive genius o say ha if “we can deec he presence ofa black hole by is effecs on he region of space where i is locaed,” where,unseen, is energy disors and disrups ha around i, from ha under-

sanding we can hen use his heorizing as a way o “develop reading srae-gies ha allow us o make visible he disoring and producive effecs” of black female sexualiies in paricular, and blackness in general. Taking up blackness in surveillance sudies in his way, as raher unperceived ye pro-ducing a producive disrupion of ha around i, Dark Maters names hesurveillance of blackness as oen unperceivable wihin he sudy of surveil-lance, all he while blackness being ha nonnameable mater ha matershe racialized disciplinary sociey. I is from his insigh ha I siuae Dark

Maters as a black diasporic, archival, hisorical, and conemporary sudyha locaes blackness as a key sie hrough which surveillance is praciced,narraed, and enaced.


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Surveillance is nohing new o black folks. I is he fac of aniblackness.is book is no inended o be a comprehensive overview of he ways ha black people and blackness have come under, or up agains, surveillance.Of he scholars ha have writen abou surveillance as i concerns blackpeople, many have aken as heir focus he Counerinelligence Pro-gram () ha ran from unil and ha saw individualsand domesic poliical organizaions deemed subversive, or poenially so,come under invesigaion by he bureau wih he aim of disruping heiraciviies, discrediing heir effors, and neuralizing heir effecs, oenhrough infilraion, disinformaion, and he work of informans. Sociolo-gis Mike Forres Keen’s sudy of he ’s surveillance of sociologiss suchas W. E. B. DuBois and E. Franklin Frazier, David Garrow’s Te and

Marin Luher King Jr. , eodore Kornweibel on he ’s surveillance ofhe aciviies of Marcus Garvey and he Unied Negro Improvemen As-sociaion hrough he use of informans and disinformaion, or CaroleBoyce Davies’s wriings on he inense scruiny of Trinidadian aciv-is, Marxis, and journalis Claudia Jones, for example, form par of hisscholarly work. Oher research examines policing wih a focus on racism,sae power, and incarceraion, such as he works of Ruh Wilson Gilmore,

Angela Davis, Joy James, Dylan Rodriguez, and more. James Baldwin, ToniCade Bambara, bell hooks, and Ralph Ellison have all, in differen ways, writen on being looked a and on seeing black life. For insance, in Te Evidence of Tings No Seen , James Baldwin describes black suffering underhe condiions of aniblackness where, as he pus i, “i is a very grave matero be forced o imiae a people for whom you knowwhich is he priceof your performance and survivalyou do no exis. I is hard o imiae apeople whose exisence appears, mainly, o be made olerable by heir bo-

omless graiude ha hey are no, hank heaven, you.”

Toni Cade Bam- bara’s call for emancipaory exs o “heal our imperialized eyes” as well as bell hooks’s naming of he inerrogaing, “opposiional gaze” as “one ha‘looks’ o documen” form par of his criical ake on black looks. RalphEllison’s criiques and quarrels wih wha is aken as canonical sociologyand he ways in which much of is early racial knowledge producion wasachieved by disoring blackness has been deailed by Roderick Ferguson.In Aberraions in Black: oward a Queer of Color Criique , Ferguson offers an

analysis of an unpublished chaper of Ellison’s Invisible Man where he ex-amines he ways ha canonical sociology made iself ou o be a disciplinehrough he “sociologizaion” of black sexualiy by way of surveillance. On


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sociologizaion, Ferguson wries, “canonical sociology would help rans-form observaion ino an episemological and ‘objecive’ echnique for hegood of modern sae power. is was a way of defining surveillance as ascienifically accepable and socially necessary pracice. I esablished hesociological onlooker as safely removed and insulaed from he prurienpracices of African American men, women and children.”

As ehnography, allying, and “saisics helped o produce surveillanceas one mode, alongside confession, for producing he ruh of sexualiy in Wesern sociey,” when his mode concerned he measuremen of blackhuman life in he pos-Emancipaion Unied Saes, such racial logics of-en made for sociology as a populaion managemen echnology of hesae. One example of how such sociologizaion funcioned in relaion o blackness is “e Conflic and Fusion of Culures wih Special Referenceo he Negro,” Rober Park’s address o he meeing of he AmericanSociological Sociey in which he saed, “e Negro is, by naural dispo-siion, neiher an inellecual nor an idealis like he Jew, nor a broodinginrospecive like he Eas Indian, nor a pioneer and froniersman, like he Anglo-Saxon. He is primarily an aris, loving life for is own sake.” Park, who in would become presiden of he American Sociological Sociey,

coninued his address by saying, “e Negro is, so o speak, he lady amonghe races.” Park’s address is insrucive regarding he enes of genderedaniblack racism ha shaped he discipline of sociology in he early wen-ieh cenury. I is accouns of blackness like hese ha influenced Ellison’squarrels wih sociological discourse, or wha he called in his inroduciono Invisible Man “he bland asserions of sociologiss,” where in observing,allying, quanifying, indexing, and surveilling, black life was made “un- visible.”

Dark Maters sems from a quesioning of wha would happen if someof he ideas occurring in he emerging field of surveillance sudies were puino conversaion wih he enduring archive of ransalanic slavery and isaerlife, in his way making visible he many ways ha race coninues osrucure surveillance pracices. is sudy’s objecs of invesigaion in-clude he plan of he Brooks slave ship, he Panopicon, he Book of Negroes as a record of black escape from New York in he lae s, branding ofenslaved people in ransalanic slavery, slave passes and runaway noices,

lanern laws in eigheenh-cenury New York Ciy ha mandaed enslavedpeople carry li candles as hey moved abou he ciy aer dark, a se ofrules from he s specifying he managemen of slaves on an Eas Texas


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planaion, and he life of a young woman named Coobah who was en-slaved in eigheenh-cenury Jamaica. If we are o ake ransalanic slaveryas aneceden o conemporary surveillance echnologies and pracices ashey concern invenories of ships’ cargo and he cheek- by- jowl arrange-men laid ou in he sowage plan of he Brooks slave ship, biomeric iden-ificaion by branding he slave’s body wih ho irons, slave markes andaucion blocks as exercises of synopic power where he many wached hefew, slave passes and parols, manumission papers and free badges, blackcodes and fugiive slave noices, i is o he archives, slave narraives, andoen o black expressive pracices, creaive exs, and oher effors ha wecan look for momens of refusal and criique. Slave narraives, as AveryGordon demonsraes, offer us “a sociology of slavery and freedom.” Toparaphrase Gordon here, hrough heir rendering of he auobiographical,he ehnographic, he hisorical, he lierary, and he poliical, slave narra-ives are sociological in ha hey reveal he social life of he slave condiion,speak of freedom pracices, and deail he workings of power in he makingof wha is excepionalhe slave lifeino he everyday hrough acs of violence.

Surveillance Sudies

In his secion, I provide a brief overview of key erms and conceps, someof hem overlapping, as hey relae o he concerns of his book. is is nomean o be a comprehensive review of he field of surveillance sudies, buraher i is done o pu his book ino conversaion wih ha body of re-search and wriing and o also inroduce he wo main, inerrelaed concep-

ual schemes of his book: racializing surveillance and dark sousveillance.Research and wriing ha falls under he rubric of surveillance sudies hascome from a range of disciplines including sociology, geography, culuralsudies, organizaion sudies, science and echnology sudies, criminol-ogy, and criical heory. As an inerdisciplinary field of sudy, he quesionsha shape surveillance sudies cener on he managemen of everyday andexcepional lifepersonal daa, privacy, securiy, and errorism, for ex-ample. In heir inroducion o Te Surveillance Sudies Reader , Sean Hier

and Joshua Greenberg noe ha alhough “a qualiaive shi in surveillanceook place aer /,” here sill remains a cerain absence in he lieraure“on he pre-/ forms of surveillance ha made pos-/ surveillance


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possible.” Dark Maters seeks o make an inervenion in he lieraure bynaming he “absened presence” of blackness as par of ha absence in helieraure ha Hier and Greenberg poin o. In he sense ha blackness isoen absened from wha is heorized and who is cied, i is ever presen inhe subjecion of black mooriss o a disproporionae number of rafficsops (driving while black), sop-and-frisk policing pracices ha subjec black and Laino pedesrians in New York Ciy and oher urban spaces o jus ha, and urban renewal projecs ha displace hose living in black ciy spaces, and mass incarceraion in he Unied Saes where, for ex-ample, black men beween he ages of weny and weny-four are impris-oned a a rae seven imes higher han whie men of ha age group, and he various exclusions and oher maters where blackness mees surveillanceand hen reveals he ongoing racisms of unfinished emancipaion. Unfin-ished emancipaion suggess ha slavery maters and he archive of rans-alanic slavery mus be engaged if we are o creae a surveillance sudiesha grapples wih is consiuive genealogies, where he archive of slaveryis aken up in a way ha does no replicae he racial schema ha spawnedi and ha i reproduced, bu a he same ime does no erase is violence.

Since is emergence, surveillance sudies has been primarily concerned

wih how and why populaions are racked, profiled, policed, and governeda sae borders, in ciies, a airpors, in public and privae spaces, hrough biomerics, elecommunicaions echnology, , idenificaion docu-mens, and more recenly by way of Inerne- based social nework siessuch as Twiter and Facebook. Also of focus are he ways ha hose whoare oen subjec o surveillance subver, adop, endorse, resis, innovae,limi, comply wih, and monior ha very surveillance. Mos surveillance,as David Lyon suggess, is “praciced wih a view o enhancing efficiency,

produciviy, paricipaion, welfare, healh or safey,” leaving social conrol“seldom a moivaion for insalling surveillance sysems even hough hamay be an uninended or secondary consequence of heir deploymen.” Lyon has argued ha he “surveillance sociey” as a concep migh bemisleading, for i suggess “a oal, homogeneous siuaion of being undersurveillance” raher han a more nuanced undersanding of he someimesdiscree and varying ways ha surveillance operaes. He suggess ha weshould look more closely a “sies of surveillance,” such as he miliary, he

sae, he workplace, policing, and he markeplace in order o come o anundersanding of he commonaliies ha exis a hese various sies. ForLyon, looking a conemporary sies of surveillance requires us o examine


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some “common hreads” including raionalizaion (where reason “raherhan radiion, emoion or common-sense knowledge” is he jusificaiongiven for sandardizaion), echnology (he use of high-echnology appli-caions), soring (he social soring of people ino caegories as a means ofmanagemen and ascribing differenial reamen), knowledgeabiliy (henoion ha how surveillance operaes depends on “he differen levels ofknowledgeabiliy and willing paricipaion on he par of hose whose life-deails are under scruiny”), and urgency (where panic prevails in risk andhrea assessmens, and in he adopion of securiy measures, especiallypos-/).

In Privae Lives and Public Surveillance (), James Rule se ou o ex-plore commonaliies wihin sies of surveillance as well by asking wheherhe “sociological qualiies” of he oalizing sysem of surveillance as de-piced in George Orwell’s could be seen in compuer-mediaed mod-ern sysems of mass surveillance in he Unied Saes and Briain, such aspolicing, banking, and naional healh care schemes. Rule found ha al-hough he bureaucraic sysems he sudied did no funcion as malevo-lenly as in , Orwell’s novel served as a “heoreical exreme” from which o analyze a given sysem’s capaciy for surveillance, in oher words,

how near i comes o replicaing an Orwellian sysem of oal conrol.

Us-ing his rubric, Rule concludes ha a large-scale and long-enduring surveillance sysem could be limied in is surveillance capaciy in four ways:due o size, he cenralizaion of is files, he speed of informaion flow, andresricions o is poins of conac wih is clienele. Alhough much haschanged wih regard o innovaions in informaion echnologies, machineinelligence, elecommunicaions, and neworked cloud compuing sincehe ime of Rule’s sudy in he lae s and early s, Privae Lives is

insrucive in is undersanding of he workings of cenralized and diffusedpower by sae and privae acors and insiuions, and for idenifying ear-lier developmens in wha Gary T. Marx has called “he new surveillance.”

Wha makes “he new surveillance” quie differen from older and moreradiional forms of social conrol is laid ou by Marx in a se of en charac-erisics ha hese new echnologies, pracices, and forms of surveillanceshare o varying degrees: () i is no longer impeded by disance or physi-cal barriers; () daa can be shared, permanenly sored, compressed, and

aggregaed more easily due o advances in compuing and elecommuni-caions; () i is oen undeeced, meaning ha “surveillance devices caneiher be made o appear as somehing else (one- way mirrors, cameras


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hidden in a fire exinguisher, undercover agens) or can be virually invis-ible (elecronic snooping ino microwave ransmission or compuer files)”;() daa collecion is oen done wihou he consen of he arge, for ex-ample wih noncooperaive biomeric agging and maching a a casino or a

sporing even, or Facebook’s promp o “ag your friends” using he phooag sugges feaure; () surveillance is abou he prevenion and manage-men of risk hrough predicive or anicipaory means; () i is less laborinensive han before, opening up he possibiliy for monioring ha which was previously le unobserved, like he deecion of illegal marijuanagrow-ops by hermal cameras se o sense unusually high emperaures orhe deecion of illici bomb making by collecing and esing chemical airsamples; () i involves more self-surveillance by way of wearable compu-ing or “elecronic leashes” such as finess rackers or oher means by whichpeople come o monior hemselves; () he presumpion of guil is as-signed o some based on heir membership wihin a paricular caegory orgrouping; () echnological innovaions have made for a more inensiveand ineriorizing surveillance where he body is concerned, for example, wih voice analysis ha is said o measure sress as a way o differeniae beween lies and ruhs; and () i is now so inense and wih reduced

opporuniies o evade i ha “he uncerainy over wheher or no surveil-lance is presen is an imporan sraegic elemen.” Wih hese develop-mens regarding he scope and scale of surveillance, Marx has suggesedha perhaps we have become a “maximum-securiy sociey.”

For Marx, he maximum-securiy sociey is a way o concepualize howhe surveillance ha was once figured as conained inside he miliary baseor he maximum-securiy prison (“perimeer securiy, hick walls wihguard owers, spolighs, and a high degree of elecronic surveillance”)

now exends ou o he whole sociey.

According o Marx, he maximum-securiy sociey is predicive, porous, moniored and self-moniored, andmade up of compuerized records and dossiers, where increasingly choicesare engineered and limied by social locaion. In i, everyone is rendered sus-picious a some ime or anoher, while some individuals migh be more of-en subjec o wha Marx erms “caegorical suspicion” given heir ascribedmembership in cerain groups. Noably, for Marx, he maximum-securiysociey is also “a ransparen sociey, in which he boundaries of ime, dis-

ance, darkness, and physical barriers ha radiionally proeced informa-ion are weakened.” Marx’s concep of “elecronic leashes” and also wha William Saples calls “paricipaory monioring” are ways of undersanding


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how people, objecs, and hings come o be moniored in remoe, rouin-ized, and coninuous wayshink of elecronic ankle braceles as a require-men of house arres or car igniions fited wih breahalyzers ha measurea driver’s breah alcohol conen before he engine can be sared. People who are subjec o such monioring are also asked wih acively paricipa-ing in heir own confinemen by parnering, in a way, wih he overseeing body or agency in he check for violaions and infracions.

Oscar Gandy’s “panopic sor” names he processes by which he collec-ion of daa on and abou individuals and groups as “ciizens, employees andconsumers” is used o idenify, classify, assess, sor, or oherwise “conrolheir access o he goods and services ha define life in he modern capial-is sociey,” for example, wih he applicaion of credi scores by lenders orae he crediworhiness of consumers or pu o use for argeed markeingof predaory lending wih high-ineres loans. e panopic sor privilegessome, while disadvanaging ohers. ese concepscaegorical suspi-cion, social soring, maximum-securiy sociey, elecronic leashes, parici-paory monioring, panopic soringalong wih Kevin Haggery andRichard Ericson’s concep of he “surveillan assemblage,” are some of he ways ha he field has come o concepualize surveillance. As a model for

undersanding surveillance, he surveillan assemblage sees he observedhuman body “broken down by being absraced from is erriorial seting”and hen reassembled elsewhere (a credi reporing daabase, for example)o hen serve as virual “daa doubles,” and also as sies of comparison by way of, for example, credi scores or urinalysis drug esing, where one’s biological sample is colleced and esed for drug use, or when “lie deec-ors align and compare assored flows of respiraion, pulse and elecriciy.”

I wan o add o hese undersandings of surveillance he concep of ra-

cializing surveillance. Racializing surveillance is a echnology of social con-rol where surveillance pracices, policies, and performances concern heproducion of norms peraining o race and exercise a “power o define whais in or ou of place.” Being mindful here of David eo Goldberg’s cau-ion ha he erm “racializaion,” if applied, should be done wih a cerainprecision and no merely called upon o uncriically signal “race-inflecedsocial siuaions,” my use of he erm “racializing surveillance” signals hosemomens when enacmens of surveillance reify boundaries, borders, and

bodies along racial lines, and where he oucome is oen discriminaoryreamen of hose who are negaively racialized by such surveillance. Tosay ha racializing surveillance is a echnology of social conrol is no o


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ake his form of surveillance as involving a fixed se of pracices ha main-ain a racial order of hings. Insead, i suggess ha how hings ge orderedracially by way of surveillance depends on space and ime and is subjeco change, bu mos oen upholds negaing sraegies ha firs accompa-nied European colonial expansion and ransalanic slavery ha sough osrucure social relaions and insiuions in ways ha privilege whieness.Racializing surveillance is no saic or only applied o paricular humangroupings, bu i does rely on cerain echniques in order o reify boundar-ies along racial lines, and, in so doing, i reifies race. Race here is under-sood as operaing in an inerlocking manner wih class, gender, sexualiy,and oher markers of ideniy and heir various inersecions.

John Fiske shows he operaion of racializing surveillance in his discus-sion of video surveillance and he hypermediaion of blackness where heargues ha “alhough surveillance is peneraing deeply hroughou oursociey, is peneraion is differenial.” Fiske argues ha alhough MichelFoucaul and George Orwell boh concepualized surveillance as inegralo moderniy, surveillance “has been racialized in a manner ha hey didno foresee: oday’s seeing eye is whie.” Fiske gives he example ha“sree behaviors of whie men (sanding sill and alking, using a cellular

phone, passing an unseen objec from one o anoher) may be coded asnormal and hus graned no atenion, whereas he same aciviy performed by Black men will be coded as lying on or beyond he boundary of he nor-mal, and hus subjec o disciplinary acion.” Where public spaces areshaped for and by whieness, some acs in public are abnormalized by wayof racializing surveillance and hen coded for disciplinary measures ha arepuniive in heir effecs. Racializing surveillance is also a par of he digialsphere wih maerial consequences wihin and ouside of i. For example,

wha Lyon calls “digial discriminaion” signals his differenial applicaionof surveillance echnologies, where “flows of personal daaabsracedinformaionare sied and channeled in he process of risk assessmen,o privilege some and disadvanage ohers, o accep some as legiimaelypresen and o rejec ohers.” In his way, daa ha is absraced from, orproduced abou, individuals and groups is hen profiled, circulaed, andraded wihin and beween daabases. Such daa is oen marked by gender,naion, region, race, socioeconomic saus, and oher caegories where he

life chances of many, as Lyon noes, are “more circumscribed by he caego-ries ino which hey fall. For some, hose caegories are paricularly preju-dicial. ey already resric hem from consumer choices because of credi


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raings, or, more insidiously, relegae hem o second-class saus because ofheir color or ehnic background. Now, here is an added caegory o fear:he erroris. I’s an old sory in high-ech guise.”

To concepualize racializing surveillance requires ha I also unpackhe erm “surveillance.” Surveillance is undersood here as meaning “over-sigh,” wih he French prefix sur- meaning “from above” and he roo word-veillance deriving from he French verb veiller and aken o mean observ-ing or waching. e roo word -veillance is differenly applied and invoked,for example, wih he erms “überveillance” (oen defined as elecronicsurveillance by way of radio-frequency idenificaion or oher devices em- bedded in he living body), “reddiveillance” (he crowdsourcing of surveillance hrough publicly accessible feeds, phoographs uploadedo online image sharing plaforms such as Flickr, and online discussion fo-rums, such as Reddi and chan), and “daaveillance,” o name a few. Lyonhas oulined he “poency of daaveillance” in a surveillance sociey, which,he wries, is marked by “a range of personal daa sysems, conneced by ele-communicaions neworks, wih a consisen idenificaion scheme.” eprefix daa- signals ha such observing is done hrough daa collecion asa way of managing or governing a cerain populaion, for example, hrough

he use of bar-coded cusomer loyaly cards a poin of sale for discounedpurchases while also collecing aggregae daa on loyaly cardholders, or vehicles equipped wih ransponders ha signal heir enry and exi on pay-per-use highways and roads, oen replacing oll boohs.

e Guardian newspaper named “surveillance” and “sousveillance” ashe words ha matered in alongside “Bicoin,” “Obamacare,” and“binge- waching.” For Seve Mann, who coined he erm “sousveillance,” boh ermssousveillance and surveillancefall under he broad concep

of veillance, a form of waching ha is neural. Mann siuaes surveillanceas he “more sudied, applied and well-known veillance” of he wo, defin-ing surveillance as “organizaions observing people” where his observingand recording is done by an eniy in a posiion of power relaive o he per-son or persons being observed and recorded. Such oversigh could akehe form of red-ligh cameras ha phoograph vehicles when drivers violaeraffic laws, or he monioring of sales clerks on shop floors wih , as well as, for example, punch clocks ha rack facory workers’ ime on he

floor o more ubiquious forms of observaion, produciviy monioring,and daa collecion, such as remoe deskop viewing or elecronic monior-ing soware ha racks employees’ non- work-relaed Inerne use. Mann


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developed he erm “sousveillance” as a way of naming an acive inversionof he power relaions ha surveillance enails. Sousveillance, for Mann,is acs of “observing and recording by an eniy no in a posiion of poweror auhoriy over he subjec of he veillance,” oen done hrough he use

of handheld or wearable cameras.

George Holliday’s video recording ofhe beaing of Rodney King by police officers of he Los Angeles PoliceDeparmen on March , , is an example of sousveillance, where Hol-liday’s waching and recording of he police ha nigh funcioned as a formof ciizen undersigh.

Mann’s Veillance Plane (figure .) places surveillance on he x-axis(uppercase S) and sousveillance on he y-axis (lowercase s). An “-poincompass” model, he Veillance Plane sees sousveillance and surveillance

as “orhogonal vecors” or perpendicular, where “he amoun of sousveil-lance can be increased wihou necessarily decreasing he amoun of surveillance.” Oher direcionaliies on his plane include univeillance (e.g.,

S − s−S − s

s+SS−s

−S

−s

s, "Y"

S, "X"

Total veillance

Surveillance

S o u s v e i l l a n c e

C o u n t

e r v e

i l l a n

c e M c V e

i l l a n c e

V e i l l

a n c e

U n i v e i l l a n c e

A n t i - S o u

s v ei l l a n c e

Anti-Surveillance

F I G U R E I . 2 . Seve Mann’s Veillance Plane and he“-poin compass” model of is direcionaliies. From Seve Mann, “Veillance

and Reciprocal Transparency.” Reproduced wih permission.


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when one pary o a elephone conversaion records said conversaion,making his acion more aligned wih sousveillance, raher han an ap-proach closer o surveillance where a “nonparicipan pary” o a conversa-ion does he recording) and McVeillance. McVeillance would include anesablishmen ha ses up a policy ha forbids parons from using camerasand recording devices on is premises, while a he same ime recordinghose very parons hrough surveillance, for example. McVeillance issurveillance minus sousveillance (S − s). Mann describes he “sousveillanceera” as occurring prior o he increase and normalizaion of surveillancecameras recording in public and privae spaces. He argues ha alhough“he king or emperor or sheriff had more power” in he sousveillance era,during his era “he observaional componen of ha power was more ap-proximaely equal han i is oday,” where people are oen prevened fromrecording eniies in posiions of power, for example, when signs are posedin governmen offices and business esablishmens warning visiors andparons ha he use of recording devices on he premises is prohibied. On he sousveillance era, Mann furher explains, “Before approximaely years agoand going back millions of yearswe have wha we call he‘sousveillance era’ because he only veillance was sousveillance which was

given by he body- borne camera formed by he eye, and he body- bornerecording device comprised of he mind and brain.”

I wan o make a link here beween Mann’s naming of he human eye asa “body- borne camera” and wha Judih Buler erms he “racially sauraedfield of visibiliy” and wha Maurice O. Wallace has called he “picure-aking racial gaze” ha fixes and frames he black subjec wihin a “rigidand limied grid of represenaional possibiliies.” In oher words, heseare ways of seeing and concepualizing blackness hrough sereoypes, ab-

normalizaion, and oher means ha impose limiaions, paricularly so inspaces ha are shaped for whieness, as discussed above wih reference oFanon’s epidermalizaion and o Fiske on how some acs and even he merepresence of blackness ges coded as criminal. We can read a rigid framing inhow Rodney King’s acs of self-defense during a raffic sop in Los Angelesas recorded by Holliday on March , , were coded as aggressive and violen. When King raised his hand o proec himself from police baon blows, his acions were me wih more police force. Wihin wha Buler has

called a “racially sauraed field of visibiliy,” such police violence is no readas violence; raher, he racially sauraed field of visibiliy fixed and framed


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Rodney King and read his acions, as recorded by Holliday, as ha dangerfrom which whieness mus be proeced.

Alhough he observaional componen of he power of he sheriff mighhave been equal o ha of he ciizen in he sousveillance era, in he ime ofslavery ha ciizenry (he wachers) was depuized hrough whie suprem-acy o apprehend any fugiive who escaped from bondage (he wached),making for a cumulaive whie gaze ha funcioned as a oalizing surveillance. Under hese condiions of error and he violen regulaion of blackness by way of surveillance, he inequiies beween hose who were wached over and hose who did he waching are revealed. e violence ofhis cumulaive gaze coninues in he posslavery era.

Exending Seve Mann’s concep of sousveillance, which he describes asa way of “enhancing he abiliy of people o access and collec daa abouheir surveillance and o neuralize surveillance,” I use he erm “darksousveillance” as a way o siuae he acics employed o render one’s selfou of sigh, and sraegies used in he fligh o freedom from slavery as nec-essarily ones of undersigh. Using his model, bu imagining Mann’s Veil-lance Plane as operaing in hree dimensions, I plo dark sousveillance as animaginaive place from which o mobilize a criique of racializing surveil-

lance, a criique ha akes form in anisurveillance, counersurveillance,and oher freedom pracices. Dark sousveillance, hen, plos imaginariesha are opposiional and ha are hopeful for anoher way of being. Darksousveillance is a sie of criique, as i speaks o black episemologies ofconending wih aniblack surveillance, where he ools of social conrolin planaion surveillance or lanern laws in ciy spaces and beyond wereappropriaed, co-oped, repurposed, and challenged in order o faciliaesurvival and escape. is migh sound like Negro spiriuals ha would sing

of freedom and escape roues, or look like an handbill disribued byeodore Parker, a whie aboliionis from Massachusets, ha advised“colored people of Boson” o “keep a sharp lookou for kidnappers” who would ac as slave cachers under fugiive slave laws ha federalized aniblack surveillance (figure .). In his way, acs ha migh fall under herubric of dark sousveillance are no sricly enaced by hose who fall underhe caegory of blackness.

Dark sousveillance chars possibiliies and coordinaes modes of re-

sponding o, challenging, and confroning a surveillance ha was almosall-encompassing. In he Narraive of he Life of Frederick Douglass , Fred-


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erick Douglass carefully describes how surveillance funcioned as a com-prehensive and regulaing pracice on slave life: “a every gae hrough which we were o pass, we saw a wachmana every ferry a guardonevery bridge a senineland in every wood a parol. We were hemmed inupon every side.” is sweeping ordering did no, of course, preclude es-capes and oher forms of resisance, such as anisurveillance “pranks” ahe expense of slave parollers by sreching vines across roads and bridgeso rip he parollers riding on heir horses, or counerveillance songs, forexample, he folk une “Run, Nigger, Run,” which warned of approach-ing slave parols. Recalling acs of anisurveillance and counerveillance,ex-slave Berry Smih of Fores, Mississippi, ells of “he pranks we used oplay on hem paerollers! Someimes we ied ropes across he bridge andhe paerollers’d hi i and go in he creek. Maybe we’d be fiddling and danc-ing on he bridge and hey’d say, ‘Here come he paerollers!’ en we’d puou.” Such playful ricks were a means of self-defense. ese oral hisoriesof ex-slaves, slave narraives, and runaway noices, in revealing a sociologyof slavery, escape, and freedom, recall he brualiies of slavery (insru-mens of punishmen, planaion regulaion, slave parols) and deail how black performaive pracices and creaive acs (fiddling, songs, and danc-

ing) also funcioned as sousveillance acs and were employed by people asa way o escape and resis enslavemen, and in so being were freedom acs. As a way of knowing, dark sousveillance speaks no only o observing

hose in auhoriy (he slave paroller or he planaion overseer, for in-sance) bu also o he use of a keen and experienial insigh of planaionsurveillance in order o resis i. Forging slave passes and freedom papersor passing as free are examples of his. Ohers include fugiive slave EllenCra escaping o Philadelphia in wih her husband, William, by pos-

ing as a whie man and as William’s owner; Henry “Box” Brown’s escapefrom slavery in by mailing himself o freedom in a crae “ fee longand wide”; Harrie Jacobs’s escape from slavery o a cramped garre aboveher grandmoher’s home ha she named as boh her prison and her eman-cipaory “loophole of rerea”; slave spiriuals as coded messages o coor-dinae escape along he Underground Railroad; Harrie “Moses” Tubmanand her role in he Combahee River Raid ha saw over seven hundredpeople escape enslavemen in Souh Carolina; Soujourner Truh’s escape

o freedom in when she “walked off, believing ha o be alrigh.” Dark sousveillance is also a reading praxis for examining surveillance haallows for a quesioning of how cerain surveillance echnologies insalled


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F I G U R E I . 3 . “Cauion! Colored People of Boson,” handbill (). Library ofCongress, Prined Ephemera Collecion; Porfolio , Folder . . x cm.


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during slavery o monior and rack blackness as propery (for example, branding, he one-drop rule, quaniaive planaion records ha lised en-slaved people alongside livesock and crops, slave passes, slave parols, andrunaway noices) anicipae he conemporary surveillance of racializedsubjecs, and i also provides a way o frame how he conemporary surveil-lance of he racial body migh be conended wih.

e Chapers

If, for Foucaul, “he disciplinary gaze of he Panopicon is he archeypicalpower of moderniy,” as Lyon has suggesed in he inroducion o Surveil-lance Sudies: An Overview , hen i is my conenion ha he slave shipoo mus be undersood as an operaion of he power of moderniy, andas par of he violen regulaion of blackness. Chaper , “Noes on Sur- veillance Sudies: rough he Door of No Reurn,” considers he Panop-icon () and he plan of he slave ship Brooks () for wha hesewo schemaic plans disclose abou surveillance, race, and he producionof knowledge. My inen in his chaper is no o reify he Panopicon as he

definiive model of modern surveillance, bu raher I wan o complicae ihrough a reading of he slave ship. Boh of hese diagrams were publishedin and around he same ime period, and hey coninue o provoke, in dif-feren ways, quesions for boh surveillance sudies and for heorizing he black diaspora. Taking up David Murakami Wood’s call for a “criical rein-erpreaion” of panopicism, wha I am suggesing here is ha one of he ways ha his reinerpreaion can be done is hrough a reading of he slaveship. Panopicism, for Murakami Wood, is undersood as “he social ra-

jecory represened by he figure of he Panopicon.”

Panopicism, hen,is he Panopicon as a social pracice. I inerrogae he Panopicon and heplan of he slave ship Brooks o ask: Wha kinds of subjecs were hese wospaces mean o produce? How is social conrol exercised? Wha acs ofsubversion and resisance do hese srucures allow for? Also in his chap-er, I explore he operaion of disciplinary and sovereign forms of powerover black life under slavery by looking a planaion managemen and run-ning away.

In Jeremy Benham’s plan for he Panopicon, small lamps worked o“exend o he nigh he securiy of he day.” I examine his idea of hesecuriy of he day and surveillance by lamps a nigh in Chaper , “Ev-


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erybody’s Go a Litle Ligh under he Sun: e Making of he Book of Ne- groes.” In his chaper I discuss wha I call “lanern laws,” which were or-dinances “For Regulaing Negroes and Slaves in he Nigh Time” in New York Ciy ha compelled black, mixed-race, and indigenous slaves o carrysmall lamps, if in he srees aer dark and unescored by a whie person. Wih his ciywide mandae, “No Negro, Mulato or Indian slave could” bein he srees unaccompanied “an hour aer sunse” wihou “a lanhornand lighed candle in i, so as he ligh hereof may be plainly seen” wihoupenaly. Here echnologies of seeing ha are racializing in heir applica-ion and effecs, from a candle flame o he whie gaze, were employed in an

atemp o idenify who was in place wih permission and who was ou ofplace wih censure. e ile of his chaper is aken, or sampled, from helyrics of funk band Parliamen’s song “Flash Ligh” (). I do his o hina and imagine wha i migh mean in our presen momen o be mandaedo carry a handheld flashligh in he srees aer dark, illuminaing black-ness. is chaper also looks o prior hisories of surveillance, idenifica-ion documens, and black mobiliies hrough a reading of he archive ofhe Book of Negroes. Working wih reaies, leters and oher governmendocumens, maps, memoirs, and fugiive slave adverisemens as primary

source daa, I use his archive o examine he arbiraion ha ook placea Fraunces Tavern in New York Ciy beween fugiive slaves who sougho be included in he Book of Negroes and hose who claimed hem as es-caped propery. e Book of Negroes is an eigheenh-cenury ledger haliss hree housand self-emancipaing former slaves who embarked mainlyon Briish ships, like Danger and Generous Friends , during he Briish evacu-aion of New York in aer he American Revoluion. e Book of Ne-

groes , I argue, is he firs governmen-issued documen for sae-regulaed

migraion beween he Unied Saes and Canada ha explicily linkedcorporeal markers o he righ o ravel. is linking of gender (oen re-corded in he ledger as “fine wench,” “ordinary fellow,” “snug litle wench”),race (“healhy Negress,” “worn ou, half Indian,” “fine girl, ¾ whie”), labor (“brickmaker,” “carpener by rade,” “formerly slave o”), disabiliies(“lame of he le arm,” “sone blind,” “blind & lame”), and oher idenify-ing marks, adjecives, and characerizaions (“ scars in her face,” “cu in hisrigh eye, Guinea born,” “remarkably sou and lusy,” “an idio”) poins o

he ways ha biomeric informaion, undersood simply as “bio” (of he body) and “meric” (peraining o measuremen), has long been deployedas a echnology in he surveillance of black mobiliies and of black sabili-


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ies and conainmen. is chaper argues ha biomeric informaion ech-nologyas a measure of he black bodyhas a long hisory in he ech-nologies of slavery ha sough o govern black people on he move, noablyhose echnologies concerned wih escape.

Chaper , “B®anding Blackness: Biomeric Technology and he Sur- veillance of Blackness,” asks broader quesions abou early applicaions of biomeric surveillance and is role in African American racial formaion inparicular, and in he black diaspora in general. I begin wih a discussion ofan care de visie feauring “Wilson Chinn, a Branded Slave from Loui-siana” as a way o locae my analysis of branding wihin planaion surveil-lance and punishmen pracices. To more clearly draw he links beweenconemporary biomeric informaion echnology and ransalanic slavery,I race is archive, namely he diary of omas islewood (an Englishplaner and slave owner) ha ells of planaion condiions in eigheenh-cenury Jamaica and he life of an enslaved woman named Coobah, oher writen accouns, runaway noices, and cares de visie. I begin wih a dis-cussion of branding during ransalanic slavery as a marking, making, andmarkeing of blackness as commodiy. Branding was a measure of slavery,an ac of making he body legible as propery ha was pu o work in he

producion of he slave as objec ha could be bough, sold, and raded. Iargue here ha he hisory of branding in ransalanic slavery anicipaeshe “social soring” oucomes ha Lyon’s work alers us o regarding someconemporary surveillance pracices, including passpors, idenificaiondocumens, or credi bureau daabases. rough Franz Fanon’s concepof epidermalizaionha being he imposiion of race on he bodyIrace and provide a genealogy of modern, digial epidermalizaion by fo-cusing on branding and he role of prooypical whieness in he develop-

men of conemporary biomeric informaion echnology. I consider he way ha wha Paul Gilroy erms “epidermal hinking” operaes in he dis-courses surrounding research and developmen () of conemporary biomeric informaion echnologies and heir applicaions: he fingerprindaa emplae echnology and reina scans where he human body, or parsand pieces of i, are digiized for auomaion, idenificaion, and verifica-ion purposes or, in keeping wih wha Haggery and Ericson argue as hemarkings of he surveillan assemblages, “reduce flesh o pure informa-

ion.” Epidermal hinking marks he episemologies concerning sigh ahe sie of he racial body. I look a some repors concerning race andgender wihin he biomerics indusry, including one paricular repor ha


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uses images of acor Will Smih as he prooypical black male and acorTom Cruise as he prooypical whie male. is chaper also examines he branding of blackness in conemporary capialism by looking a NaionalFooball League quarerback Michael Vick’s posincarceraion rebranding,aris Hank Willis omas’s B®anded series, and blockbuser films sarringacor Will Smih ha feaure biomeric informaion echnology. I argue inhis chaper ha he filmic represenaion of biomerics is one of he waysha he viewing public gains a popular biomeric consciousness and comeso undersand hese surveillance echnologies. I also explore he conem-porary circulaion of branding arifacs for sale online and ake up visualariss Mendi + Keih Obadike’s Blackness for Sale , where Keih Obadikepu his blackness up for sale on eBay.com as a way o quesion he currenrade in slave memorabilia and branding blackness.

Chaper , “ ‘Wha Did Find in Solange’s Fro’?: Securiy eaera he Airpor,” asks, broadly, wha he experiences of black women in air-pors can ell us abou he airpor as a social formaion. is chaper alsoexamines ar and arworks a and abou he airpor and popular culure rep-resenaions of pos-/ securiy pracices a he airpor o form a generalheory of securiy heaer. is is far from saying ha securiy measures and

securiy heaer a he airpor are a sricly pos-/ formaion. Beween and here were hijackings of U.S. commercial airline flighs, while for foreign carriers during ha period hijackings oaled . GarretBrock Trapnell hijacked one of hose planes, Trans World Airlines Fligh from Los Angeles o New York on January , , and during his hijack-ing he reporedly said: “I’m going o ell you exacly wha I wan. I wan, in cash waiing a Kennedy. I wan he San Jose jail noified I wan Angela Davis released.” Trapnell laer claimed ha his demand ha An-

gela Davis be released was acually a ploy o garner he atenion and sup-por of he black naionalis movemen. Trapnell’s was one of weny-sixhijackings of U.S. air carriers in , a peak in domesic aerial piracy haled o he inroducion of new securiy measures by way of a Federal Avia-ion Adminisraion Emergency Order on December , . is Emer-gency Order included prefligh screenings of passengers and heir carry-on baggage by way of magneomeers, or walk-hrough meal deecors, andhe use of handheld meal deecors a many U.S. airpors. is was no he

firs federal inervenion ino anihijacking effors. On Sepember , ,Presiden Richard Nixon announced counermeasures o comba wha hecalled “he menace of air piracy,” including dispaching plainclohes armed


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personnel, or sky marshals, onboard U.S. commercial flighs and he expan-sion of he use of magneomeers a airpors. e rash of airplane hijack-ings in he early s evenually led o he Ani-hijacking or Air Transpor-aion Securiy Ac of , signed ino law by Nixon on Augus , , fourdays before his resignaion from he office of he presiden. On February of ha same year, Samuel J. Byck atemped o hijack Dela Airlines Fligh ou of Balimore- Washingon Inernaional Airpor wih he expressedinen o assassinae Presiden Nixon by weaponizing he plane and crash-ing i ino he Whie House. Byck killed wo people during his failed a-emp, including he plane’s copilo. Byck died of a self-infliced gunsho wound during a sandoff wih police. Dela Fligh never le he runwayha day.

I recoun his shor hisory of hijackings and various counermeasures asa way o siuae conemporary securiy measures in U.S. air ravel as havinga much earlier hisory han hose measures aken and performances under-gone aer he ragic atacks by weaponized aircra in New York Ciy and Washingon, DC, on Sepember , . is hisory offers a counerfram-ing o hen Naional Securiy Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s commen duringa press briefing in when, in reference o he / hijackings, she saed,

“I don’ hink anybody could have prediced . . . ha hey would ry o usean airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.” A pos-/ U.S.airpors, passenger screening by he U.S. Transporaion Securiy Adminis-raion () fulfills he usual scrips of confession (“Wha is he purposeof your ravel?” or “Wha do you do for a living?” and “Are you bringing anygoods in wih you?”). Wih increasing procedural delays due o aniliquidpolicies, pa downs, cha downs, op ous, he applicaion of race deecionechnologies o check for residue of explosive making maerials, and wih

Secondary Securiy Screening Selecion for some, many ravelers undergoa cerain amoun of onological insecuriy a he border, paricularly a air-pors. While he airpor is an insiuional sie where almos everybody isreaed wih suspicion a one ime or anoherby agens, by airline workers, and by oher ravelerssome ravelers may be marked as moresuspicious han ohers. In Chaper , I inroduce he concep of racial bag-gage in order o name he ways ha race and racism weigh some peopledown a he airpor. I also examine he discreionary power wielded by

agens and by airline workers by looking a cases of, mainly, black women who were subjeced o invasive pa downs, hair searches, and oher securiyheaer measures. I do his as a way o quesion how black women are de-


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ployed in narraives abou airpor securiy, for example, hrough represen-aions in popular culure as unineresed, sassy, and ineffecive agens.is chaper suggess ha we pay atenion o he ways ha black women’s bodies come o represen, and also resis, securiy heaer a he airpor.

e epilogue brings ogeher his book’s key concerns around he ques-ion of wha happens when blackness eners he frame, wheher ha becameras ha “can’ see black people” or cenering blackness when i comeso quesioning he logics of surveillance.

Dark Matters by Simone Browne

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