Stripping for the State

This article examines whole body imaging technologies in contemporary airport security contexts. Situating these technologies more broadly within histories of aviation and theories of mobility, we examine how discourses of technological efficiency and freedom of movement work to obscure the ever-expanding surveillance practices of the state. While whole body imaging technologies are marketed as objective and neutral, we investigate how they draw upon, and reinscribe, existing social inequalities. Using Angela Davis' theory of the strip search as a form of state-sponsored sexual assault, we assess contemporary uses of whole body scanners by the state and allied corporate interests not only as alleged privacy violations, but also as potential acts of violence by the state on marginalized subjects. By demonstrating the disproportionate impact of whole body imaging technologies on particular communities, including the intersections of transgendered travelers, travelers with disabilities, and racialized and religious communities, we show that whole body imaging technologies continue and expand upon the tradition of stratified mobilities that has always been a component of air travel. We also argue that the alleged non-invasiveness and efficiency of the "virtual strip search" marks a troubling trend in which the state consolidates power through increasingly concealed surveillance practices. Keywords: feministracetransgendersurveillancetechnologymobilitybackscatterwhole body imaging technologies Acknowledgements Shoshana Magnet wishes to thank Kathryn Trevenen, Ummni Khan, Michael Orsini, Kim Sawchuk, Rae Staseson, Tagny Duff, Yasmin Jiwani, Corinne Mason, Sasha Cocarla, Ashley Bickerton, Helen Kang, Aisha Durham, Celiany Rivera Velazquez, Robert Smith, and Jillian Baez as well as two anonymous reviewers for technical discussions, feedback, and incredibly helpful comments. Tara Rodgers thanks her co-author for this research collaboration; Jonathan Sterne, Carrie Rentschler, and Darin Barney for numerous insightful conversations on feminist media and technology studies; and the reviewers for their constructive feedback.