Artificial vision, white space and racial surveillance capitalism

This first half of the paper outlines the formation of racial surveillance capitalism across the longue durée of settler colonialism, with special attention to the formation of artificial vision. This artificial vision is deployed in the erased territory, creating a white space in which to see from platforms, ranging from the ship, to the train and today’s drones. The second section examines the Eurodac digital fingerprint database created by the European Union to monitor and control asylum seekers and refugees as an “artificial life system,” to use a phrase coined by its administrators. In this automated form, artificial vision is distributed rather than centralized.