LICENTIA COGITATIONIS

Surveilling the Unseen Body Biopolitics, Capital, and The Surveillance System I'm taking a detour to describe the way I see all of this.       Molecular HIV Surveillance (MHS) and Cluster Detection and Response (CDR) are not simply tools of public health, but systems of disciplinary control,entangled in state power, capitalist interest, and ideological domination. From data collection to analysis, reporting and visualization, the entire system functions not neutrally, but as a technology of governance targeting those already socially marked: queer folks, Black and Brown bodies, trans people, sex workers, the HIV+ and HIV-risk labeled-people, for having lives that deviate from the normative scripts of capitalist biopolitics.      Biopolitics is term used to describe how modern states exercise power not just over individuals, (a sovereign power) but over populations, by managing life itself, health, reproduction, risk, death. In this way populations beco...

Beyond Identity Epidemiologists and biostaticians need to think about they produce  knowledge, not just how they describe it. If we stripped away traditional identity categories like race, gender, and age, epidemiology and biostatistics would look profoundly different. And, I think that's a good thing. It is time for us to look at shared experiences, (or exposures), as inclusion criterion and the define our populations, stratifications and categories, in ways that acknowledge real cultural differences and contextuality; not just what the government puts on your driver's license. The imposition of taxonomies predisposed identities, without consideration for the subjectivities of the individuals for whom the categories is set to represent. These representational strategies are then used to make generalizing statements, or snap shots, about people whose experiences are not embedded in the research.  I'll give an example, then talk about the age-old Structure/Agency debate, and...