| Abstract | In Biopolitical Media: Catastrophe, Immunity and Bare Life, Allen Meek examines the development of media through a biopolitical lens, arguing that the circulation of imagery since the 1840s is implicated in the systematic cataloguing of human life, the increasingly mechanised mass slaughter of animals and humans and biological conceptions of life and death. Ruth Garland finds that while this complex and fascinating interrogation may not always fully convince, it will encourage readers to critically examine how images of violence and catastrophe exercise power over our lives.In Biopolitical Media: Catastrophe, Immunity and Bare Life, Allen Meek examines the development of media through a biopolitical lens, arguing that the circulation of imagery since the 1840s is implicated in the systematic cataloguing of human life, the increasingly mechanised mass slaughter of animals and humans and biological conceptions of life and death.Biopolitical Media: Catastrophe, Immunity and Bare Life.Biopolitical Media: Catastrophe, Immunity and Bare Life examines catastrophe not through themes of collective memory or trauma, but at one remove, through the media’s role in recording humans as biological entities and in capturing our attention through shock.At the level of the nation state, a shocked, disoriented, anxious and hence passive population enters into a ‘collective regression’, which gives those in power the opportunity to reduce freedoms, intensify surveillance and undertake…
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