Friend Requests from the Force: Affective Mimicry, Intimate Imitations and a Softened Police Apparatus

Abstract

What happens when we are spoken to softly, with a sense of playfulness, by the symbolic apparatus of the carceral state? Invoking the concept of “affective mimicry,” this paper examines the digital means by which law enforcement agencies attempt to realise a sense of trust, intimacy, and emotional entanglement with the cyber-public. With a focus on the social media presence of the Australian Police, it will be argued that a strategic synthesis of memes, humorous language, and innocuous imagery with incarcerations, mugshots, and criminal descriptors abstracts the very materiality of law enforcement; its role, its potential misuse of power, and, by extension, state-sanctioned violence. Furthermore, the paper will suggest that the techno-affective cues embedded within these digital posts are vital in actively fostering intimate, off-screen solidarities between civilian users and the police force – solidarities which are oriented towards the visible, and always accessible, criminal other (with haptic contact evoked through virtual commentary and reactions). It will be posited that these interactions exist as potential avenues for exculpation, with digital posts momentarily capturing an affect and subsequently utilising it to bolster state governance. In this case, it happens to be the appropriation of a pre-existing, emotive lexicon, one commonly circulated in the context of community and friendship. The paper will also draw upon Louis Althusser’s analysis of the Ideological State Apparatus by conceptualising digital affect as possessing an interpellative function, much like classical forms of subjectification by the state, whereby the police are imagined as one of the primary social actors transforming individuals into subjects. However, Althusser’s point will be complicated through a recognition of social media’s emphasis on the general public as arbiters and decision-makers, an emphasis facilitated by the structural hyper- connectivity of digital communication, as well as the symbolic ideological terrain within which popular social media platforms have emerged. Indeed, the developmental system within which digital interactions between the state and its subjects occur ultimately obfuscates police subjectification and complicity for harm enacted. Considering all of this, the question remains: do we respond to friend requests sent by the force? If so, do we accept or reject?