Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility

Biopolitics

by Monica J Casper, Lisa Jean Moore

We know more about the physical body--how it begins, how it responds to illness, even how it decomposes--than ever before. Yet not all bodies are created equal, some bodies clearly count more than others, and some bodies are not recognized at all. In Missing Bodies, Monica J. Casper and Lisa Jean Moore explore the surveillance, manipulations, erasures, and visibility of the body in the twenty-first century. The authors examine bodies, both actual and symbolic, in a variety of arenas: pornography, fashion, sports, medicine, photography, cinema, sex work, labor, migration, medical tourism, and war. This new politics of visibility can lead to the overexposure of some bodies--Lance Armstrong, Jessica Lynch--and to the near invisibility of others--dead Iraqi civilians, illegal immigrants, the victims of HIV/AIDS and "natural" disasters.

Missing Bodies presents a call for a new, engaged way of seeing and recovering bodies in a world that routinely, often strategically, obscures or erases them. It poses difficult, even startling questions: Why did it take so long for the United States media to begin telling stories about the "falling bodies" of 9/11? Why has the United States government refused to allow photographs or filming of flag-draped coffins carrying the bodies of soldiers who are dying in Iraq? Why are the bodies of girls and women so relentlessly sexualized? By examining the cultural politics at work in such disappearances and inclusions of the physical body the authors show how the social, medical and economic consequences of visibility can reward or undermine privilege in society.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2009

About the author

Monica J. Casper, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University. Her latest book, BABYLOST: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z, was published by Rutgers University Press in 2022. Casper is founding co-editor of the NYU Press book series “Biopolitics: Medicine, Technoscience, and Health in the 21st Century” and the University of Arizona book series “The Feminist Wire Books.” She is also a creative writer.

Reviews

[Henry · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2015 this book was too thin, it didn’t get in at the kill. I think I’m going to read it again. I’m just saying I had high expectations and maybe they weren’t fair.

[Beth]

Trying to pitch a review of this book.

[Monica Casper]

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