Were they Ever Meant to Provide Agency? iii. Technologies of the Precarious Modernity

technology of the precarious modernity

Image Source: The Atlantic

Within this discourse, ‘civilization’ comes to mean “ the process of acculturation of the colonized subject, and the subsequent cultural domination of Europe; ‘progress’ and ‘development’ are equated with industrialization; and ‘salvation’ is a goal that may only be achieved through christianity and its predominantly white, heteronormative and patriarchal morals. 65

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Luiza Prado De O. Martins

In the wake of the Revolution in response to police and military brutality against Black and non-Black people of color globally, it becomes necessary to look at the institutions of policing—their histories and the technologies of destruction available to them to commit murder. This analysis is to understand what role technology plays in the propulsion of the ideas of modernity and progress.

In the United States, policing began as early as the 1700s and was made up of white men who volunteered to bring back enslaved peoples who self-emancipated. later, the police institution became the enforcers that safeguarded Jim Crow laws. 66

With this history, the institution of policing becomes the perfect example to analyze responses to current global precarity. This history of policing, as with all histories of global oppression, is intentionally hidden, but exists just below the surface of prescribed “good intention.” Despite the statistics of colonized and racialized oppression by this institution and the disproportionate harm it does to Black and Brown bodies, the first reaction in any precarious situation is to call the police. Despite the narrative of “those who protect” that dominates the discourse, technologies are granted to this institution in abundance—technologies like tear gas, riot gears, guns, taserstechnologies that could never “protect.” It is strange that this irony is not perceived by those dialing 911, but the narrative created is so strong that it has managed to infiltrate even those with the best intentions. It is the same narrative that has allowed the NRA to run the United States by making its citizens believe that destructive technologies like guns can protect them from harm.

This estrangement with precarious situations is applied to technologies of destruction everywhere—this estrangement is how war is justified against civilians, how surveillance of borders and the imprisonment of immigrants is justified, and how fracking and mining are justified. It is the narrative of modernity that frames these perceptions—modernity that enables development and destruction to be framed as “necessary” and “inevitable” in order for global “development.” And it is this very narrative that allows those in power to get away with simply tweaking technologies after the revelation that these technologies have put the global population at risk. They don’t need to reach radical change, because they already established the inevitability of their destruction.

So, in order to imagine alternative futures, there is need to think radically and reach beyond the surface to question the necessities of these systems of oppression—because they are, in fact, not necessary at all.

65. Prado de O. Martins, 27. 66. Olivia B. Waxman, “The History of Police in America and the First Force,” Time (Time, March 6, 2019), https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/.