Unveiling seductions beyond societies of control: affect, security, and humour in spaces of aeromobility

Abstract

Taking the bare bodies that starred in the recent Air New Zealand in-fight safety demonstration and advertising campaign as its starting point, this paper stages an encounter between bareness and security in order to think about how affective atmospheres might be engineered and manipulated within spaces of aeromobility. From a representational perspective the bare bodies appeal to a particular economy of truth through the unveiling of the corporation, parodying the bareness that is a central technique associated with airport securitisation. But the bareness in the in-fight safety demonstration generates a different kind of intimacy between the corporation and the passenger that facilitates t..