From protecting to performing privacy

Privacy is increasingly important in an age of facial recognition technologies, mass
data collection and algorithmic decision-making. Yet it persists as a contested
term, a behavioural paradox, and often fails users in practice. This article critiques
current methods of thinking privacy in protectionist terms, building on Deleuze's
conception of the society of control, through its problematic relation to freedom,
property and power. Instead, a new mode of understanding privacy in terms of
performativity is provided, drawing on Butler and Sedgwick as well as Cohen and
Nissenbaum. This new form of privacy is based on identity, consent and collective
action, a process to be performed individually and together to create new
structures that instil respect at the heart of our sociotechnical systems.