Biopolitics of Light in Modern and Contemporary Cities: From a Disciplinary Light’s Eye to the Operational Lights of Control

Abstract

In this article, we seek to explain some of the relationships between light and biopolitics in modern and contemporary cities. We consider light as an external stimulation capable of not only impacting and sensitizing bodies, but also influencing them in different ways and to different degrees. Based on this premise, we ask ourselves how, in modernity and in contemporary times, the luminous materialities and practices of urban space have the capacity to influence, determine, capture, monitor, discipline and control the opinions, discourses and practices of individuals. In order to outline some partial elements of response to this wide-ranging problem, we first try to demonstrate how public lighting in modern Paris can be considered a disciplinary technology. Then, we ask how light can, even today, participate in different power strategies. Starting with Paul Virilio (2002), we argue that there has been a shift in control strategies through light in relation to previous times. Subsequently, a distinction is proposed by the author, outlining two regimes: the first, coming from modernity, is characterized by the use of “direct light”; to this, we can now add a second regime of “indirect light”, characteristic of societies of control. Thereby, we attempt to denaturalize our relationship with light, in the context of western culture, and recognize its role in the service of photo-politics, a term that we propose to designate some of the (bio)political instrumentalizations of light. Finally, analyzing contemporary insurgent luminous artworks and practices, we reflect on the possible strategies through which insurgent lights could be raised.