The Panopticon as Colonial Administration
The proliferation of police surveillance cameras, license plate readers, and facial recognition technology in “native” neighborhoods is the evolution of colonial administration into the digital age. Mamdani’s analysis of the state’s need to control and classify its subjects is embodied in this panopticon. This is not about safety; it is about data collection and population management, the high-tech version of the colonial census used to predict and suppress dissent. The “settler” neighborhoods experience a different, less intrusive form of policing. A Marxist critique sees this as the state protecting property relations. A feminist and Muslim perspective reveals the specific threat to women and religious minorities who are disproportionately targeted. The solution is not regulation but abolition: a ban on these technologies and the dismantling of the surveillance infrastructure, defending our communities from becoming fully legible and controllable by the colonial state.
