Bio-surveillance and The Immobilizing Journey in The Inheritance of Loss

Abstract

This article focuses on the notion of bio-surveillance in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006) from the perspectives of Ajana and Foucault. It tries to discuss why postcolonial journeying, despite its reputation for upsetting the old colonial paradigms of cultural demarcations, has ended up in the invisible biocitizenship of diasporic figures. To this end, the article elaborates on the biometric measures, ranging from the classic model of Anthropometry to the most advanced biometric technologies, and their deployment at the service of securitization in the center of empire. It is argued that these measures, by keeping the colonial paradigm of otherization intact, have divided society into friends / enemies and, later, reduced the latter into the bare life of invisible biocitizenship. Hence, it can be remarked that postcolonial journeying, despite its apparent dissolution of meta-narratives of identity or cultural geography, underpins the ‘us-versus-them’ binary and proves immobilizing. This means that the open-gate policy cannot wipe out the racist blemish from the West’s reputation since the racism which roots in bodily features (including skin) conducts identity, citizenship, and immigration policies. Hence, racial minorities are always the other, even though their bodies are subject to change.

Keywords

• biopower
• post-colonial journeying
• biometric measures
• kiran desai
• biocitizenship