Guilty Bodies, Productive Bodies, Destructive Bodies: Crossing the Biometric Borders CHARLOTTE EPSTEIN University of Sydney This article examines the forms of power brought into play by the deployment of biometrics under the lenses of Foucault’s notions of discipline and biopower. These developments are then analyzed from the perspective of governmentality, highlighting how the broader spread of biometrics throughout the social fabric owes not merely to the convergence of public and private surveillance, but rather to a deeper logic of power under the governmental state, orchestrated by the security function, which ultimately strengthens the state. It is asso- ciated with the rise of a new governmentality discourse, which operates on a binary logic of productive/destructive, and where, in fact, the very distinctions between private and public, guilty, and innocentFclassic categories of sovereigntyFfind decreasing currency. However, bio- metric borders reveal a complicated game of renegotiations between sovereignty and governmentality, whereby sovereignty is colonized by governmentality on the one hand, but still functions as a counterweight to it on the other. Furthermore, they bring out a particular function of the ‘‘destructive body’’ for the governmental state: it is both the key figure ruling the whole design of security management, and the blind spot, the inconceivable, for a form of power geared toward producing productive bodies. (. . .) Political power is like the sun; everyone can see it, nobody can look straight at it, it has taken centuries to ‘‘discover’’ it, and it’s not finished yet! (Henri Lefebvre 1987:18). Biometrics are at the borders: the discussion on biometrics has been fueled by the series of deadlines imposed by the U.S. government upon the 27 countries par- taking in the ‘‘U.S. Visa Waiver Program’’ for their adoption of the biometric passport. 1 It also brought out a host of new anxieties associated with the experience of traveling, in the face of forms of control that have become increasingly close, increasingly invasive, even promiscuous (Big Brother is Looking After You 2006; Jeffrey 2006). Biometric passports have changed the way we travel. For travelers Author’s note: I would like to thank the participants of the ISA workshop Governing by Risk in the ‘‘War on Terror,’’ Mark Salter, Mick Dillon, Vivienne Jabri, as well as two anonymous reviewers for the journal for their helpful comments on this article. 1 The U.S. mandated the inclusion of a digital photograph in the passport by October 2005, and of the ‘‘e-chip’’ (to store digital data) by October 2006 (U.S. State Department 2006b). r 2007 International Studies Association. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK. International Political Sociology (2007) 1, 149–164