The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben does not want his fingerprints taken and, unlike like most European critics of the evil empire, he has been willing to forego an academic visit to the United States in order to prevent it happening. What is at stake, he explains, is the 'new "normal" bio-political relationship between citizens and the state'. Fingerprinting makes 'the most private and incommunicable aspect of subjectivity . . . the body's biological life' part of the system of state control. And though it is hard to see how fingerprints, as opposed to the monstrous Other in a passport photo, might constitute an aspect of anyone's subjectivity, Agamben's unwillingness to share this information with the American state is still a significant refusal.

LRB 16 December 2004 | PDF Download