Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Korean Studies, Indiana University
Contributor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
Research Interests
Feminism | Gender | Medical anthropology | Queer Studies | Security |
About Timothy
I am an anthropologist, activist, and writer that researches security technologies and sexuality; viruses and infectious diseases; and social justice in South Korea. I am currently a Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Korean Studies at Indiana University. I curate posts on the securitization of science and technology and biosecurity, and am specifically interesting in pieces that take critical feminist and queer approaches to their work.
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Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Timothy's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
The Surveillance Cyborg
Editor’s Note: This post is part of our ongoing series, “Queering Surveillance.” Surveillance is an embodied experience, both being watched and watching. The sheer number of concert-goers recording Cher’s “Here We Go Again” concert this past year with their phones had them trade singing and dancing for an act of documentation. Whether the recordings are to remember the experience later, share the experience with others, or to simply document one’s presence in that space and at that time, recording the concert on one’s phone becomes an experience in its own right. They are present in the space, but their attention is about both what is happening in the here and now and the recording that filters the experience in the future. Their phones and recordings are central to their embodied experience, fused into one like a cyborg traveling across space and time in the moment. Add to this that countless (read more...)
Towards a Queer Art of Surveillance in South Korea
When is a face not a face? With the launch of the iPhone X that boasts facial recognition capabilities, the individual markers of one’s face tie one’s identity to the security of their phone. Yet it also makes the face complicit in forms of self-surveillance, as it requires definitive facial proof to access one’s phone. It produces the face as evidence of one’s identity that supposedly cannot be forged. In this instance, one continuously uses one’s phone to surveil one’s own identity—with the face becoming a safeguard against potential security breaches. Small-scale, yes, but surveillance need not always be connected to sprawling security apparatuses and institutions. So we ask again: when is a face not a face? When it is used to distinguish a body as a body rather than as an individuated person? With this post, we seek to explore possible answers to this question in the context of (read more...)