The Transparent Traveler: The Performance and Culture of Airport Security

239 Pages·2015·2.57 MB·English

by  Rachel Hall

THE TRANSPARENT TRAVELER

T H E
The Performance
T R A N S P A R E N T
and Culture of
T R A V E L E R
Airport Security
RACHEL HALL
Duke University Press Durham and London 2015
© 2015 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ∞
Designed by Heather Hensley
Typeset in Scala Pro by Copperline
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Hall, Rachel, [date] author.
The transparent traveler : the performance and culture of
airport security / Rachel Hall.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8223-5939-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-5960-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-7529-6 (e-book)
1. Airports — Security measures — United States. 2. Aeronautics,
Commercial — Security measures — United States. 3. United
States. Transportation Security Administration. 4. United
States — Social conditions — 21st century. I. Title.
he9797.4.s4h35 2015
363.28'70973 — dc23 2015010109
Cover art: Hasan Elahi, Transit v4.1, 2015. Courtesy of the artist.
For Dustin

CONTENTS
ix Acknowledgments
1 INTRODUCTION RETHINKING ASYMMETRICAL TRANSPARENCY
Risk Management, the Aesthetics of Transparency, and the
Global Politics of Mobility
25 CHAPTER 1 THE ART OF PERFORMING CONSUMER AND SUSPECT
Transparency Chic as a Model of Privileged, Securitized Mobility
57 CHAPTER 2 OPACITY EFFECTS The Performance and
Documentation of Terrorist Embodiment
77 CHAPTER 3 TRANSPARENCY EFFECTS The Implementation of
Full- Body and Biometric Scanners at US Airports
109 CHAPTER 4 HOW TO PERFORM VOLUNTARY TRANSPARENCY
MORE EFFICIENTLY Airport Security Pedagogy in the Post- 9/11 Era
131 CHAPTER 5 PERFORMING INVOLUNTARY TRANSPARENCY
The TSA’s Turn to Behavior Detection
157 CONCLUSION TRANSPARENCY BEYOND US AIRPORTS
International Airports, “Flying” Checkpoints,
Controlled- Tone Zones, and Lateral Behavior Detection
179 Notes 205 Bibliography 219 Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I first became interested in airport security in 2006, when living and work-
ing apart from my partner, Dustin Howes. He was teaching in southern
Maryland. I was teaching in southern Louisiana. During the two long years
that we lived apart, I spent a lot of time alone in both major metropolitan
and small regional airports. Initially, airport security grabbed my attention
as an irritating obstacle: a bureaucratic apparatus separating me from the
one I loved. I sought my revenge through writing. I would pass the time
by jotting down observations and later developed those sketchy notes into
snapshots or short, sharply focused critiques of various aspects of the per-
formance and culture of airport security. Since those early attempts to
document and mount a response to airport madness within the United
States after 9/11, many colleagues have offered constructive criticism and
encouraged me to keep working on it.
Kelly Gates and Shoshana Magnet gave me my first opportunity to write
about airport security for an audience when they asked me to join a panel
on surveillance at the National Communication Association in the fall of
2006. Later, they kindly extended me an invitation to submit a revised ver-