Psychoanalytic theory and border security

Abstract

Freezing is a common sign of panic, a response to accidents or events that overflow our capacity to react. Just as all civil airspace was cleared after the 9/11 attacks, the USCanada border was also frozen, causing economic slowdowns. Border policies are caught between these two panics: security failures and economic crisis. To escape this paradox, American and Canadian authorities have implemented a series of security measures to make the border 'smarter', notably the implementation of biometric identity documents and surveillance by UAV Predator drones. Psychoanalytic theory can help us explain why the Canadian and American governments have invested so much money for so little evident or measurable increase in either security or economic flows. The article uses the notion of phantastic objects to explain these (over-)reactions to risk management at the US-Canada border.

The U.K. and ‘Razor-Wire Humanitarianism’: The Refugee Crisis and the Aesthetic of Violence

“…Agamben's (1998) 'bare life' invites critique on its limitations in extrapolating the emotive from something deemed 'exceptional.' With his focus on the judicial primacy of the sovereign, he neglects the affective in the production of life (Salter & Mutlu 2011).…”

Drone futures

“…Borderland drones are sublime objects invested with the fantasy of a secure and internally coherent entity whose desires for security are readily met, against a reality of the insecurity of open borders (Salter and Mutlu, 2011). In much of the literature about the ethical considerations of drone use, there is a split between good and bad drones, concisely evoked in the Facebook group “Good drone/Bad drone” devoted to diverse perspectives on UAVs.…”

Psy Policing: The Borderlands of Psychiatry and Security

“…These analyses resonate with Massumi (2010), who contends that rather than evidence of a "clear and present" danger, it is fear that drives the repetitive practices and politics of security in post-9/11 U.S. as this "affective fact" legitimates and eternalizes threat vis-à-vis its invocation of pre-emptive practices that disallow the falsification of it's potential. It follows that measures to prevent the threatening not only feed off insecurities, but nourish them (see also DiProse et al 2008, Salter andMutlu 2012). Such currents are essential to the population racism of biopolitics-the circulation of "fear along with statistical profiles of populations … [provides] neoliberalism with a rhetoric of motive" (Clough and Willse 2010: 51).…”

“…These dynamics have been documented in Salter and Mutlu's (2012) critical examination of the persistence of "psychotic security measures" in the U.S. In a post-9/11 context of insecurity, Salter and Mutlu argue that such measures satisfy anxieties and reproduce desires that work to "shape the image of a safe United States" by enabling the regulation and exclusion of the Other alongside the assertion of the Self (p. 181).…”