When reading Virilio, one is hit with the sense that there is no escaping his paradox of a fully mediated world that aims to capture and present life in a state of immediacy and in “raw data” form. In contrast to Virilio's totalization of the mediation of modern perception, both Habermas and Foucalt seem to allow for the possibility of more agency. Habermas endorses the possibility of natural and rational language communication as a means to overcome a fully mediatized world, especially in that he recognizes the disassociation of language from agency and action as a necessary contingency of a growing society, and Foucalt emphasizes the subject as the seat of surveillance, whereas Virilio eliminates the subject altogether and seems to place the power of surveillance with machines that take on a life of their own.
The Giant corresponds to what Virilio calls, “knowledge in its raw state,” that is a spontaneous registering of daily life. With surveillance cameras in general this raw knowledge seems also to be completely pure of mediation (that is a mediation of daily life unmediated by subjective control), although in the film this idea comes into question because of film techniques like use of a soundtrack and cameras that seem to be following people, zooming in on them in a not so random manner. It is uncertain whether these maneuvers are being directed by the filmmaker or whether the camera has taken on a life of its own (although to even engage in this line of questioning seems to be prefigured by the mechanism itself as described by Virilio when he says in “Candid Camera,” “Here the cinematic is no longer content to give viewers the illusion that some kind of movement is being performed in front of them; it gets them interested in the forces behind its production, in their intensiveness.”)
The question here becomes then, how productive is this line of questioning at all? Doesn’t a film like The Giant, or action such as those of the Surveillance Camera Players, that draw attention to the silent monitoring of everyday life, merely entrench us further in the panoptic mechanism, if as Foucalt describes, surveillance becomes most effective when it is fully self-conscious?

posted by Anonymous at 1:14 PM

Reading into Foucault’s theorization and analysis of panopticism in relation to the increasing usage of and funding for public surveillance cameras, one would think that they go hand in hand. By placing cameras in public areas, the individual subject, acting as the object of gaze, watches him/herself with extra precaution, with the knowledge that s/he may be being tracked at certain points in time. This one-sided gaze would therefore ideally displace power in a way that benefits the viewing subjects (e.g., police, government intelligence).

The work of the Surveillance Camera Players centers around the position that this placement of video cameras pervades the individual and collective rights of the public, as slated in the fourth amendment. However, while this is a worthy and justifiable cause, New York City will not remove its surveillance cameras, nor cut funding to put up new ones. Their ubiquity is not one to merely combat directly, but should be brought to public attention by pointing out their faulty shortcomings.

The use of surveillance cameras is not a direct violation of human rights. It is a vehicle to reinforce problematic stereotypes and validate racism in the name of justice. The very nature of the video medium is one that allows for an extensive and vast archive of footage. The only way to direct the viewing of this “data” is through profiling particular groups of people – nonwhite, lower/middle class civilians who are merely categorized into a conglomeration of the “potentially dangerous.” In the same way, the tightening of airport security has led to the reification of xenophobia and suspicion of what has been merely mediated to be so.

Another point, bringing up Benjamin. The reliance on cameras to enforce the law stems from the point of view that recording these spaces serves to index actual events that transpire over actual periods of time. However, one of the very natures of video is its consumer appeal and ease of use. In the age of digital reproduction, footage cannot only be duplicated from and displace the original copy, but it can be created or altered to function as an original copy. The indexicality of this construction, then, would point to a time and place that did not exist, thereby eluding the reason for installing a camera.

posted by Anonymous at 11:20 AM

Sorry to cut this short, but again, I suck and lost my post because I used the Blogger editor. ::sigh::

Paul Virilio, in his chapter "Public Image", writes: "Curiously, the terror-effect's atavistic twin nature -- its obsession with the un-said going hand in glove with a totalitarian desire for clarification -- is to be found at work endlessly and excessively in...the Michel Foucault...Surveiller et punir."

To what extent is Foucault trapped in the machine he describes? To what extent does he take part in its workings? That's always the problem with Foucault... you're always trying and failing to situate his theories with respect to themselves. It's the complement to the problem of assuming what you theorize.

In any case, the gist of my post is: even as early as 1984, with The Giant, we see how completely saturated with surveillance our lives our (or at least a German city). But the guy still shoplifts, and Providence drivers still run red lights. Even when the surveillance camera is clearly visible. Are we so used to the visibility that is the foundation of panopticism that we no longer pay attention to the gaze? Have we entered post-panopticism, where in order to be real, an event must be seen; where the power of the visibility is no longer manifested through the disciplines, but in its ability to make real? Is knowledge that which is seen, and only that?

I apologize for this being short, but it's pretty much what I said earlier, but better said.

And also, I tend to ask a lot of questions without ever answering them. I hope I at least managed to stir a thought or two.

Peace.

/s
posted by Anonymous at 12:03 AM

So I wrote the post in the Blogger editing window, and then copied it before posting. I managed to loose it anyway. Please hold while I reconstruct my post.

--scott
posted by Anonymous at 11:51 PM

I’m very sorry I missed the screening- I very much want to see “Giant”- but I was on a late flight back into town.

Funfact: There is a new sunglass brand called “Panoptix” (you can’t see the eyes....)

Foucault, in his discussion of discipline, presents the Panopticon as the ideal structure for the positioning of authority within society. The idea of the omnipresent observer keeping a watchful, critical eye over the blind and encapsulated subject is one completely applicable to the social structure in which we live. The knowledge of what is acceptable versus what is unacceptable, or what is legal versus illegal, is imprinted upon us by every social institution we encounter from birth until death. This concept of institutions with the ability to structure society, and thus hail subjects to those institutions is the same as Althusser’s notion of the Ideological State Apparatuses. Foucault applies the Panopticon to the same categories of institution that Althusser applies the ISA’s. But for Foucault, Ideology is synonymous to discourse, which, for the purposes of the Panoptic power structure, takes the form of discipline. Within this structure, discipline subjugates all those within discursive or ideological bounds through the illusion that the subject is always under observation. The result of this perceived exchange between subject and imaginary authority figure is the subject’s attempt to stay within the visual bounds of acceptability set forth by those social institutions to which he is hailed, and thus avoid being disciplined.

In speaking of panoptic vision, Virilio brings some interesting things to light in his discussion of modern visual technologies and their use in surveillance. As he says, “what we are witnessing is the birth of hyper-realism in legal and police representation” (44). He takes his discussion of surveillance in disciplinary methods as far as the use of ultrasound, and says that “eyewitness accounts have been devalued, it is now possible to do away with the body too, for we have something more than their image: we have real-time telepresence” (44). This idea of doing away with the corporeal body is one which certainly needs attention, but what comes immediately to mind is just the level of hyper-realism which new imaging technologies can produce. Our technologies to create and to alter images are just as advanced as those which merely capture them. The eyes can be fooled in many ways through the complexities of image-capture and alteration. It may soon be that image testimony has the potential to be just as flawed or corrupted as witness testimony. What then happens to the idea of telepresence? Just how real is hyper-real before it is no longer reality at all?

posted by Anonymous at 11:42 PM

Since we have now read about how Foucault interpret's Bentham's panopticon and its theoretical effect on the fundamental idea of power relations, I think the only fruitfull question to ask centers on whether or not the panopticism that exists in our society trully resembles what Foucault describes. Something that I never understood fully, and came up again while watching the giant... Foucault describes the ideal physical structure of the panopticon as such that the prisoners are indeed aware of the central tower which may house a monitoring element, the trick of course is that there needn't be anyone actually monitoring, just the constant fear of that possibility. While watching the giant, I noticed that most of the people where not aware of the surveillance being done, and thus did not act any differently. Doesn't the power balance sought by panopticism require a dual path of knowledge? A person must fear being watched before they alter their actions, and thus must somehow come to the situation knowing that this is possible (i.e. hidden surveillance isnt much of a deterent, unless there is a widespread knowledge that this is occuring). I feel as if most state sponsored monitoring has the implicit quality of being hidden, and thus not really effective as a deterent. This being said, I'm not advocating more visible means of public surveillance, just that it seems fairly fruitless to ideologically hide the mechanical apparatus if one wants to shift the balance of power.
I was with a classmate at target the other day (i wont name names... but i bet you can guess whom) when we noticed the thousands of spherical balls hanging from the roof, that situation was one that made the ballance of power very clear. But if the question is...So am I afraid when i am walking down the street that someone is monitoring me? Not especially, I don't think about it, even if its true.
The other thing that always bothered me centers around the structural nature of the power relationship that panopticism builds. Foucault seems to credit its "invention" to a specific person (i can't recall if its actually Bentham), but I feel that the exact power relationship described by the panopticon (fear of acting do to the overwhelming chance that you may be monitored and disciplined) has existed since the creation of religious states. It seems like an easy arguement to make that suggests the "fear of God" as a precursor to the "fear of being surveilled". Afterall, it seems like most religious states function by using the ever present eye of god to cram a specific moral code of conduct down the throats of the every day citizen.

-manu


posted by Anonymous at 11:35 PM

The Surveillance Camera Players are based around the idea that people under surveillance can resists it – they turn the oppressive camera into a different kind (a movie camera) and deny the power of the gaze by turning it into a performance. In effect the SCP functions to reverse the gaze upon itself. It makes the security guard (or whoever is watching) conscious of their watching (or at least it calls to attention the act of watching), and changes the role of “the watched” into “the performer.” Instead of being caught by the camera, they seek out the camera. But I can’t decide whether this reversal of function is merely a clever trick or if it actually achieves something. If a prisoner in the Panopticon is misbehaving but still trapped within the machine, does it count as a productive action? And if the only ones seeing the misbehavior are a few security guards and passers-by? This is a very cynical (skeptical?) and poorly formulated response (on my part) towards these acts of protest, I apologize. Perhaps the power relations shift balance temporarily during their performances, but power structures don’t necessarily change.
Secondly – and perhaps this could be addressed by going back to last week’s readings – in Foucault’s interview, Perrot brings up the issue of the resistance of the prisoners, and asks if the Panopticon is somewhat of an illusion of power. Foucault answers with:
“It’s the illusion of almost all of the eighteenth-century reformers who credited opinion with considerable potential force. Since opinion could only be good, being the immediate consciousness of the whole social body, they thought people would become virtuous by the simple fact of being observed. For them, opinion was like a spontaneous re-actualisation of the social contract. They overlooked the real conditions of possibility of opinion, the ‘media’ of opinion, a materiality caught up in the mechanisms of the economy and power in its forms of the press, publishing, and later the cinema and television.” (161-162)
From this passage, opinion is “the immediate consciousness of the whole social body” and “a spontaneous re-actualisation of the social contract,” but I’m still unclear about the meaning and function of opinion as Foucault uses it. I don’t think it came up before, and I’m curious about what he sees as the consequences of (public) opinion.

posted by Anonymous at 11:32 PM

I feel that it is time to assess the relevance that panopticism has in our world. Panopticism is governed by the principle that indivudals remain unaware to the extent of global or institutional surveillance...a principle that would render any investigation of its relative power futile. In this futility, are we then immobile in our efforts for so called freedom? For if a global network capable of worldwide surveillance does in fact exist, with a civilian preoccupation, how are we to even assess its existence if its power stems from what Foucault considers a self-induced notion of accountability? Bouncing back and forth between a paranoid fantasy or comforting ignorance, we rest almost everything on speculation. This is why I am more likely to believe in the non-existence of panoptic forces, if we are indeed living under the influence of a complex organization of "powers of persuasion". For while panoptic institutions are employed architecturally, I question the substance to which they allude to. ECHELON accountability?! It is far more pragmatic to institute phallic architecture. Take Target for example. In addition to the swelling of religious rhetoric that is subtly emphasized in a store such as this, one of karma and catholic guilt, there also appear various architectural elements whose sole purpose, from what I gather, is to provide panoptic sources of observation. Black half-spheres line the ceilings, let's say one every 10 feet throughout the entire store. Clearly there are not enough store employees to operate a surveillance of approximately 150 video monitors in the store. Or Disney World. Cameras up Dumbo's ass, through Pinocchio's nose, in all the water fountains, and one giant facade of a fascist tower, right? Is it awful to suggest that panopticism's power rests on our own belief, and that to stop believing would dismantle its power? Of course I would be wrong; surveillance exists and operates under various levels, both small and enormous. Yet I remain unconvinced that we are trapped, waiting for some Messiah to liberate us from some matrix. Question the practicality of surveillance and then shoplift accordingly.
posted by Anonymous at 11:23 PM

Reading Response 2/10/02

Foucault’s statement in Panopticism, "…power should be visible and unverifiable." (D and P, 201) is present in all the readings and the screening this week. The advent of visuality, the importance of representation, the use of surveillance as psychological warfare, and segmentation into carefully monitored spaces seem to have become forms of domination in our society. However, I can not tell in Foucault and Virilio if they believe this has come about as a historical construction based on the intersection of technology, politics, and economics or if it is the outcome of a more calculated, sinister plan. One can clearly see that cameras and panoptic strategies are forms of discipline and order. However, it seems to me that neither the origins nor the motives are wholly verifiable. What remains imminently present is the paranoia this surveyed society feels. What is to be done with that?
Virilio quotes Rosenberg, "When you know everything you are afraid of nothing." Yet knowledge as facts, details, and visual proof caught on tape are the weapon wielded to produce terror and obedience in the masses. The public knows they are being watched, but that knowledge does not equal power. Do the powerful knowers who see all then fear nothing? Surely, they fear a reversal of fortune. As Virilio points out, terrorists document killings and tortured captives in order to disseminate their objections and goals. The omnipresent footage of September 11th is as the SCP says a reminder to the watchers/the intelligence community of the failure of intelligence gathering.
At the end of The Giant, I couldn’t help but hope there would be a camera mounted in the front of the room that showed a black and white real-time image of the class looking at the screen after the film had ended. Then a short edited version of reactions during the film all caught on a similar surveillance camera. That would have driven home the paranoia for me.
"Who watches the watchers?" (SCP) Foucault says, "Power is no longer substantially identified with an individual who possesses or exercises it by right of birth; it becomes a machinery that no one owns. Certainly everyone doesn’t occupy the same position; certain positions preponderate and permit an effect of supremacy to be produced." (P/K, 156) To me it seems that those positions are the haves and have-nots potentially riddled with gender, class, racial, and ethnic biases. Is there currently a system of check and balances in our "democratic," panoptic society for keeping the watchers reasonable? What is a reasonable level of surveillance, search, and seizure? Who decides? And has that level changed in the last six months?



posted by Anonymous at 11:18 PM

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Foucault et al

1.
“This reign of ‘opinion’, so often invoked at this time, represents a mode of operation through which power will be exercised by virtue of the mere fact of things being known and people seen in a sort of immediate, collective and anonymous gaze.” (154)

This is a clear predecessor to Keenan’s description of the modern conception of publicity and “humanitarian” action.

2. the sinister results of decentering, according to Foucault et al.:

“You have an apparatus of total and circulating mistrust, because there is no absolute point.”
(158)

“The power of the bourgeouisie is self-amplifying, in a mode not of conservation but of successive transformation.” (162)

I think this is a good reminder that all “progress” has both negative and positive results. The death* of God/meaning/the Center allows people to escape from certain negative regimes and gain certain freedoms, but it also allows distributed systems of power to arise which cannot be deposed as easily as beheading a king. Now we have to topple “the government” as a whole if we want to blind the eye of our ruler. The destructive tactics of Fight Club won’t suffice to take out capitalism (= bourgeois power?). Like the flat worm, destroying one Starbucks will only cause two to grow in its place. How can you fight an abstract concept, a process that is only tangible in its instantiations?

* It’s not so much that God is dead as he’s taken a less prominent position as “religion” ( = human construction). Theory transcended God, explained Him, and included Him as an example (though God might counter that He includes Theory to begin with...) In this vein, I think that capitalism/panopticism must be transcended rather than defeated. But, as Chris said, "what could realistically replace 'discipline'...?" In Star Trek: First Contact, there is terrible war on Earth until first contact with the Vulcans. The implications of alien intelligence make humanity resolve its differences and divert its agression to colonizing space (I may not be remembering this perfectly; apologies to any Trekkies). While I tend to think that humanity's first reaction to aliens would probably be more lethal and unifying, it does seem possible that a BIG EVENT that rearranges everyone's worldview might bring about the next stage in social consciousness... or a return to the Dark Ages...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Paul Virilio

1. An honest question (not an idea phrased as a question):
What is “the fourth estate” (35)? Part of a classification of the development of civilization?

2. Thinking about the idea of photograph/video as substitution/conduit for “reality”, what does an out-of-focus photograph represent? reality to a person with bad eyesight? what about an poorly developed photograph? or a photograph that is more or less well-developed, but the color is a little bit off...

3. It’s interesting that the public seems to have learned only gradually to expect “reality” from photographs and movies (and that this came about through war propaganda, 50).

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Giant

1. an excellent example of the circle of mistrust in the panopticon: surveillance of security personnel watching surveillance cameras; surveillance of camera man standing on a roof

2. The movie questioned the line between surveillance footage and movies, “reality” and the movies. Most obviously by its function of presenting surveillance footage as a movie. We see “real” (unscripted) events through the intentional editing and sound-tracking by the directors. The movement of the camera is abrupt and rough, unlike film, but there is also a feeling of intention in the way the camera tracks its targets that recalls both film and first-hand vision. It struck me that the difference between surveillance and film, at the time of the recording, could be expressed in terms of intention: “watching in case...” vs. “watching because...” Though there are (of course) exceptions to this dichotomy, security guards are watching in case someone steals something from the store, and cinematographers are watching because they know something is going to happen that they want to get on film. I’m not yet sure how this distinction is useful...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
posted by Anonymous at 11:13 PM

Responses - Surveillance
Shawn E. Greenlee
10 February 2002

The Surveillance Camera Players question the legality of the video-camera, intelligence gathering that has permeated our society. They pose the notion that such observance is an unjustifiable search without probable cause and thus labels all persons under the camera's gaze as potential criminals. They cite the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution as proof of this violation: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizure, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The issue of privacy within public spaces is at stake. The S.C.P. say that this type violation of human rights is akin to what occurs in a police state, thus our society is at risk of becoming the 1984 nightmare. The S.C.P. disregard the notion that these cameras are to serve as aids in preventing crime. The S.C.P. rather believe that they displace the location of crime; crime moves beyond the camera's view. Does this situation then encourage the proliferation of surveillance equipment until all of human behavior is the subject of the camera's gaze so that we can effectively eliminate crime? Surveillance cameras are a reassurance against acts of terrorism, a cosmetic for every space that needs to appear secure. Is the intent of our institutions? To strengthen their hold on society, surveillance as means of control… or is it to facilitate a comfort for society - someone is watching, therefore everything will be o.k.

The situation is one of hyper-realism. In his closing remarks of his chapter entitled, "Public Image", Virilio states, "How can we hope to scandalize, surprise, move to tears under the gaze of electronic magistrates that can fast forward or reverse in time and space at will, before a judicial system that is now no more than a distant technological outcome of that merciless more light of revolutionary terror, which is, in fact, its very perfection? (44) Virilio suggests that the illumination of the private sphere has created a situation in which the public gaze is the examiner/judge/police. The police and legal system are to see without being seen, to illumine every dark corner, to have a panoramic (complete) view of the world, ever vigilant, always present - omnivoyance. This is the essence of the Panopticon that Foucault analyzes. The Panopticon is the opposite of the dungeon. By illumination of the subject, the subject is more imprisoned than in darkness - the public gaze keeps the subject fixed into an appropriate pattern of behavior, unable to get away with anything unlawful. The concept is one of transparency of the individual, secret actions are impossible because the protection afforded to us by darkness is lost. Public opinion, enlightened by journalism and media which are controlled by economic and political forces, thus acts as "an apparatus of total and circulating mistrust" (Foucault 158).

The S.C.P. cite a Tampa Police spokesperson, Durkin, as stating in reference to the use of face recognition software at the 2001 Super Bowl, "The courts have ruled that there is no expectation of privacy in a public setting. I think the vast majority of the public, they welcome anything they can utilize to make their visit safer and do a preemptive strike on crime." However in somewhat of a contrast at the FBI site for Carnivore, the FBI clearly states that, "Applications for electronic surveillance must demonstrate probable cause and state with particularity and specificity: the offences being committed, the telecommunications facility or place from which the subject's communications are to be intercepted; a description of the types of conversations to be intercepted, and the identities of the persons committing the offenses that are anticipated to be intercepted. Thus, criminal electronic surveillance laws focus on gathering hard evidence -- not intelligence." This mode of operation seems in line with the fourth amendment. What seems disputable is the category of "Electronic Surveillance". What specifically is the definition here?
The FBI clearly state that the use of electronic surveillance is for the gathering of evidence (with probable cause) - not for intelligence purposes. This being said I believe that the S.C.P. make a valid point in regards to the use of surveillance cameras by our public and private institutions. Just because we have become accustomed to the surveillance camera ever present in our society does not mean that it is not a violation of the law or furthermore of human rights.

In an article by Patrick Poole (that was a link on the ECHELON Watch site), Senator Frank Church was quoted as stating about the U.S.
"If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge of this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know."
For me this echoes the 'disciplinary mechanism', Foucault illustrates at the beginning of the Panopticism chapter, when describing the measures to be taken in the 17th century when the plague became present in a town. The system of control is one of 'permanent registration'; a space is created "in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded…"


posted by Anonymous at 11:10 PM

Though accusing the NYC police commissioner of doublethink in his ability to support the legality of surveillance cameras based on the lack of laws against them (http://www.notbored.org/safir.html), the Surveillance Camera Players seem to be practicing much the same type of a thing in their later support of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America’s stance against the Tampa face-recognition software (http://www.notbored.org/leaa.html). They applaud the LEAA’s uncharacteristic “left-wing” stance and seem particularly appreciative of their understanding of the way in which these cameras will damage the relationship of trust that the police have with those they are meant to protect, but apparently forget that surveillance cameras are, in many ways, only the next logical step from the systematic surveillance that the police themselves represent. The police uphold the same capitalist laws against shoplifting, marijuana and prostitution that the SCP denounce as “only work[ing] for the rich and powerful” and inherently irrational (http://www.notbored.org/transparent.html).
In fact, the SCP seems to have an extremely inconsistent stance on the police and police activities. In one instance, they argue that there should be more police to enforce laws (http://www.notbored.org/traffic-cameras.html). An earlier position paper, however claims that, “if there is anything ‘we’ the People need, it is the abolition of any external governing body, and the instauration of universal self-government, so that ‘scrutiny’ of the actions of others is totally unnecessary and can be completely dispensed with” (http://www.notbored.org/transparent.html). Perhaps this kind of universal self-government is meant to be some sort of eventual program to which they hope to be working, but their language here seems to imply that the immediate abolition of external government would be a good way to go, too. Their fundamental problem seems to stem from the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any real way out of the kind of world determined by Foucault’s disciplines. He describes it adequately and shows the particular ways that it is used to wield power and stimulate conformity, but his ultimate tone is one of resignation to this simply as the way things are. Just as an earlier era used “monarchical” punishments based on leader-lead binaries to enforce its authority, this era uses discipline and panopticism. No one person or group changed the former to the latter, and it seems unlikely that an individual or organization could end this era’s disciplines. As I understand his descriptions, there is not really much of an alternative to these methods of control that can simply be instituted, something he implies in the rhetorical question that closes his interview: “Do you think it would be much better to have the prisoners operating the Panoptic apparatus and sitting on the central tower, instead of the guards?” (Power/Knowledge, 164). The problem is that, though both Foucault and the SCP seem to have in mind some sort of new system that operates upon principles different from panoptic discipline – the “final purpose of the operation [having the prisoners take over the central tower” (P/K, 164) that Foucault mentions – but neither really knows how to get from point a to point b, or even has a very clear image of what point b would look like, barring the SCP’s ideal of universal self-government, which simply seems like the end result of Foucault’s panopticism. As a result, the SCP is left railing against certain aspects of the modern society’s system of surveillance while actually asking for an extension of other parts of it without, to my reading, any very clear idea of what an ultimate solution might be. The real question for us is what could realistically replace “discipline” and what would a world without structural discipline look like?

posted by Anonymous at 9:48 PM