‘Airport Emergency: Scrambling the Codes of Conduct’

Damian O’Doherty – University of Manchester Business School

 

The airport is a site where the sciences of protection are being advanced almost hegemonically. They are deployed in the name of safe living. The airport is concerned with national citizenship, with transition, and is a non-place. The airport space is highly coded. For instance, objects are coded differently depending on where they are. In the departures terminal, space is striated. People become different things in different places. People are coded differently according to their tickets. Classifications apply to planes as well. So many calculations and coding have to occur. They are always incomplete. The system must juggle too much.