States of (in)Security: Corporeal Geographies and the Elsewhere War

This paper examines embodied representations of state (in)security within three broad thematic categories: biometrics, prosthetics, and military biopower. This analysis elucidates the ways in which gender and race are put to work through representational framings of US state security. These framings, while diverse, offer similar taxonomies of inclusion—exclusion, security—insecurity, and violence against or care for certain bodies. This critical examination explicates how security is succinctly situated by autonomous state actors, ‘life politics’, and manipulations of the global—intimate through the lens of mimetic gendered and raced bodies. I argue that these various visual representations aid in reinforcing to the mainstream/white US citizen-subject that he or she remains secure within the immediate US homeland by way of the displacement of contemporary war violence elsewhere—rather than such violence circulating ‘everywhere’. A visual and discursive representation of security—insecurity illustrates a purposeful militarized illusion, inscribed through the many examples discussed in this paper. These disparate techniques shape US citizens' imagination of ‘terror’ as potentially ‘everywhere’, while simultaneously situating the US military's war ‘over there’ (elsewhere) as part of securing the homeland. These corporeal exemplifications help to situate security within the homeland and a/effectively shroud the flesh-and-bone devastation of US military violence elsewhere.