The Biopolitics of Absence

Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility is a compelling, ambitious study that weaves together analysis of transnational politics, culture, national and international law, demography, and biomedical technologies to interrogate the complex and layered dynamics of social and political visibility. In this multimethod ethnographic study, robust case studies of biopolitical negotiation highlight how contemporary trends toward protectionism, abstraction, biomonitoring, and patriotism all work to render some bodies and lives visible and others missing. The authors rely on a broad array of data sources, including popular media, children's literature, scientific research across a range of disciplines, and government documents as well as qualitative interview and fieldwork to analyze "how certain places, spaces, policies and practices in contemporary society, particularly in the United States, exhibit and celebrate some bodies while erasing and denying others" (3).

Casper and Moore premise the book on the argument that attention to the absent or forgotten can teach us a lot about societal power relations and ideologies. Toward this end the authors center their analysis on biopolitics and extend the Foucauldian argument that states increasingly regulate populations through the surveillance and production of knowledge about bodies. From this starting point the book is broken into three sections, each illuminating the complexities of visibility and erasure in a new way.

The first two case studies examine the biopolitics of protectionism and abstraction to make sense of how children's lives and deaths are made invisible through the lens of innocence. Chapter 2 asks who gets to speak for (i.e., render visible) children and childhood sexuality. The following case study argues that the demographic methods used to quantify infant mortality on a national scale hide the racialized and classed reality of whose babies die, while simultaneously producing individual solutions (such as preconception health campaigns) for structural problems (the poverty and racism that produce health disparities). The authors assert that if research and policy were refocused on the material lives of children and infants—if they gave voice to the silenced—scholars and policy makers could not only do justice to the complexity of children's lives but also make the kind of structural changes necessary to address inequality.

Building on these examples of missing bodies, the second set of case studies examines public negotiations of visibility and risk. The central questions these cases raise are, Whose bodies are exposed to surveillance, quantification, and biomedical intervention? and, Whose are shielded? Examining policy discourses on HIV/AIDS and environmental toxin biomonitoring, Casper and Moore highlight how epidemiology as a biopolitical methodology exposes some bodies to state regulation (in this case, women's bodies) and leaves others missing (here, HIV-positive individuals).

The final section of the book examines the gendered nature of heroism and visibility. By examining two unique cases—Iraq veteran Jessica Lynch and Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong—the authors interrogate which bodies can represent national identity and heroism, and which are invisible. In contrasting these two stories they explore why Armstrong is legible as a hero who demonstrates triumph over tragedy, while Lynch's refusal to be the damsel in distress leads to invisibility.

Missing Bodies covers an immense amount of ground, and the linkages between the disparate case studies are sometimes difficult to track. Certainly each of these case studies could be a monograph unto itself (e.g., Moore's Sperm Counts in 2007). Regardless, the eight chapters are an engaging read, attributable in large part to the accessibility of the text, which is peppered with interesting narratives, personal reflections, and compelling data. Moreover, Casper and Moore illuminate the dynamic relationship between visibility and power without erasing the complexity present in each case. Expansion of these cases in the future would benefit from more interview and field data to give voice to the individuals the volume so successfully refocuses attention on.

Perhaps the most significant contribution Missing Bodies makes is the development of the "ocular ethic," an approach characterized by a three-fold process of focusing attention on absent bodies, magnifying...