The de-realization of Black bodies in an era of mass digital surveillance: A techno-criminological critique
| Author | Bruce Arrigo,Olivia P Shaw |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806221082318 |
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The de-realization of Black
bodies in an era of mass
digital surveillance: A
techno-criminological critique
Bruce Arrigo
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
Olivia P Shaw
Arizona State University College of Public Programs, USA
Abstract
This article describes the ways in which existing methods of dataveillance and big data
collection have contributed to the current de-realization of Black bodies. In the present
or ultramodern era, de-realization consists of datafication (i.e. digital profiling techniques
and life mining strategies) in support of techno-crime control policy. The process of
de-realization both de-politicizes Black identities and de-personalizes thelived experience
of Blackness. In order to make explicit our thesis, section one proposes a techno-
criminological theory of de-realization. The theory explains how the racialized construc-
tion of surveillance in the current age is mediated by the algorithmic logic of pre-crime
and the asymmetric rationale of post-criminology. In order to situate our overall theor-
izing, section two explains how Black bodies have historically been the subject of exces-
sive and invasive forms of de-realization. This history includes slavery and visceral forms
of de-realization (e.g. the technologies of branding), as well as political opposition to Civil
Rights and volatile forms of de-realization (e.g. the technologies of suspicion). In the pre-
sent era, the de-realization of Black bodies consists of the mass digital surveillance of
social movements (i.e. bodies of activist social change), including Black Lives Matter
(BLM), that are policed through the technologies of information analytics. Section
three speculates on the criminological fall-out stemming from present day manifestations
Corresponding author:
Bruce Arrigo, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte, 28223-0001,
United States.
Email: barrigo@uncc.edu
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2023, Vol. 27(2) 265–282
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/13624806221082318
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of de-realization. This speculation emphasizes how history, theory, and culture are rele-
vant to historicizing the administration of injustice in the ultramodern age of digital reality
construction.
Keywords
Black identity, critical criminology, culture, de-realization, digital surveillance, history, injustice,
techno-crime control, theory
The patient cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him [or her], and what [the
patient] cannot remember may be precisely the essential part of it. [The patient] is obliged to
repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of remembering it as some-
thing in the past.
(Freud, 1911/1964: 18)
Introduction: A brief history of de-realization
The phenomenon of de-realization is a matter of historical record. It represents a set of
contingent truths borne out by de-realization’s cultural artifacts (e.g. Foucault, 1977).
De-realization occurs when things, people, and events are experienced as unreal, as other-
worldly. When de-realization and its human sequelae chronically persist, then detach-
ment or de-personalization follows (Guralnik and Simeon, 2010). This is the point at
which de-realization as de-personalization becomes clinical disorder (Millman et al.,
2021). At this juncture, “pathologies of personhood”surface because “the seam
between self and world”is ripped (Guralnik and Simeon, 2010: 400, 406). This article
draws critical attention to the underlying cultural dynamics of de-realization for Black
bodies (of social movement protest) in the current era of mass digital surveillance.
The truths of de-realization tell the story about distinct periods of human relating and of eco-
nomic exchange, commencing with the period of modernity and extending to late modernity,
and then to the period of post-modernity and extending to the ultramodern age (e.g. Beck, 2009;
Delanty, 2009; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). Importantly for criminology, we might think of
each of these historical epochs as revealing and reflecting different provisional truths given
the cultural (political-economic) conditions within which crime control policy emerges and
from which it takes (and has taken) on form (e.g. Arrigo and Sellers, 2021; Garland, 2002).
The cultural artifacts in question for this article include the reified forms of
de-realization that populate the “historical present”(Foucault, 1977: 31). The meaning
of this Foucauldian notion was explained by its author in an interview: “I set out from
a problem expressed in the terms current today and I try to work out its genealogy.
Genealogy means that I begin my analysis from a question posed in the present”
(Kritzman, 1988: 262; see also Garland, 2014). In this article, the question posed is as
follows: what productive purposes do the technologies of mass digital surveillance
serve in relation to Black identity and the lived experience of Blackness?
Our view of reification is informed by Lukács (1971). He theorized the following
about this pre-cognitive process:
266 Theoretical Criminology 27(2)
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