A somatechnics of (dis)integration: the body as bordertechnology

The term ‘somatechnics’ illustrates how ‘isomorphic relations between the collective body politic and an individual corporeality is not merely representational but also material’ (Stryker, Currah, and Moore 2009: 52). In this sense, ‘somatechnologies function as the capillary space of connection and circulation between the macro- and micro-political registers through which the lives of bodies become enmeshed in the lives of nations, states, and capital formations’ (Stryker, Currah, and Moore 2009:  52).

What does the concept of somatechnics have to offer as a way of thinking through the relationship between sovereignty and borders?  If political borders are indeed embodied through bodies, current border practices suggest that sovereign power can only enforce the bodily integrity of political borders through the task of bodily incarceration and disintegration. This has been the case, for example, in the context of Indian occupied Kashmir where documentation of mass graves, enforced disappearances, and torture has been steadily growing through human rights reports. Simultaneously, human rights institutions and processes depend on notions of bodily integrity thus seemingly reinforcing conventional notions of embodied and national sovereignty.

One possible way in which the concept of somatechnics may be useful in this context is to think through the ways in which experiences of bodily disintegration are accompanied by a number of somatechnologies of resistance, which are also expressions of different forms of sovereignty. Exploring these somatechnologies may provide a way to think through how borders are refused as well as created through transnational activist networks. What forms of sovereignty are possible in such a context? This paper will explore how such networks may offer a way of rethinking conventional notions of the relationship between sovereignty and embodied borders.