Review of David Barnard-Willis, 'Surveillance and Identity: Discourse, Subjectivity and the State', Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012; viii + 213 pp., ISBN 9781409430728, £55 (hbk)

Abstract

'Surveillance and Identity: Discourse, Subjectivity and the State' focuses on surveillance as a socio-political activity that is based on three technological artefacts: hard drives, the personal document shredder, and the credit file. 'Surveillance and Identity' investigates how these technologies are linked to each other in the discourse of surveillance and state. The book aims to answer the following research questions: "what discourses of surveillance are identifiable in the contemporary United Kingdom?, how is the nature of the problem of governance defined in these discourses, what roles or subject positions are made available by discourses of surveillance?, and how is the idea of individual identity articulated within contemporary discourses of surveillance?" (pp. 59-60). In other words, the book is about the politics of technology.