At the airport we line up, remove our shoes, empty our pockets, and hold still for three seconds in the body scanner. Deemed safe, we put ourselves back together and are free to buy the beverage we were prohibited from taking through security. In The Transparent Traveler Rachel Hall explains how the familiar routines of airport security choreograph passenger behavior to create submissive and docile travelers. The cultural performance of contemporary security practices mobilizes what Hall calls the "aesthetics of transparency." To appear transparent, a passenger must perform innocence and display a willingness to open their body to routine inspection and analysis. Those who cannot—whether because of race, immigration and citizenship status, disability, age, or religion—are deemed opaque, presumed to be a threat, and subject to search and detention. Analyzing everything from airport architecture, photography, and computer-generated imagery to full-body scanners and TSA behavior detection techniques, Hall theorizes the transparent traveler as the embodiment of a cultural ideal of submission to surveillance.
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction. Rethinking Asymmetrical Transparency: Risk Management, the Aesthetics of Transparency, and the Global Politics of Mobility
- Chapter 1. The Art of Performing Consumer and Suspect: Transparency Chic as a Model of Privileged, Securitized Mobility
- Chapter 2. Opacity Effects: The Performance and Documentation of Terrorist Embodiment
- Chapter 3. Transparency Effects: The Implementation of Full-Body and Biometric Scanners at US Airports
- Chapter 4. How to Perform Voluntary Transparency More Efficiently: Airport Security Pedagogy in the Post-9/11 Era
- Chapter 5. Performing Involuntary Transparency: The TSA’s Turn to Behavior Detection
- Conclusion. Transparency Beyond US Airports: International Airports, “Flying” Checkpoints, Controlled-Tone Zones, and Lateral Behavior Detection
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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