Hyperlegality and Heightened Surveillance: The Case of Threatened Species Lists

Abstract

My contribution to the Debate "Thinking about Law and Surveillance" focuses on the project of governing nonhuman species through care, briefly pointing to how law and surveillance are interwoven in this context and to how conservation's biopolitical regimes are increasingly becoming more abstract, standardized, calculable, and algorithmic in scope. I argue that conservation’s focus on governing through care lends itself to heightened modes of surveillance and to hyperlegality - namely, to the intensified inspection and regulation of both governed and governing actors. I start with some preliminary explanations about my atypical use of the terms surveillance, law, and biopolitics.

Keywords: law, surveillance, hyperlegality, biopolitics, threatened species lists, algorithms