Facial Obfuscation and Bare Life: Politicizing Dystopia in Black Mirror

Abstract

This chapter examines dystopia as expressive of a ‘structure of feeling’ that cannot be reduced entirely to—but also cannot be separated from—the material actuality of media’s physical effects. It asks, can dystopia offer materials that can be shaped into something emancipatory, or is it merely pessimistic, fatalistic? In attempting to understand the politics of dystopia, it follows the theme of facial obfuscation, or the use of facial recognition technologies not to identify, but to both identify and obscure to the point of indiscernibility. Black Mirror demonstrates how technologies of facial recognition do not simply render visible, but modulate the possibilities of visibility and invisibility beyond commonly accepted binaries, determining who is ‘included’ and ‘excluded’ via forms of technically enhanced aesthetic judgement. While a number of recent artistic interventions into surveillance tend to position obfuscation as resistance to technology, this chapter positions the politics of Black Mirror as following Giorgio Agamben’s theories of the ‘inoperative’ and the ‘destitute’ which provide a different mode of politics than that assumed in artistic critiques of surveillance. Or, Black Mirror’s dystopian futures point not inherently towards fatalism, but to a radically different politics than assumed with the opposition of dominance and resistance.