K&K. Kultur og Klasse · Nr. 110 · Årgang 2010 - Aarhus University ...

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188 K&K · Kultur&Klasse · 110 · 2010 In a situation where even more sophisticated surveillance tech nologies are deployed to almost every corner of everyday life it becomes essential to understand surveillance as an integrated part of society. Although the academic field of surveillance studies contributes to this understanding, it is at the same time limited by the use of a few powerful metaphors. However, by looking at the many interesting examples of artists experimenting with surveillance, the study of surveillance might be able to regain its analytical imagination. MARIA JOHANSEN: THIS IS THE TIME. AND THIS IS THE RECORD OF TIME Today’s extensive use of databases for storing identifying biometric and genetic information raises several questions on the relations between bodies, tech nology, information, power, human rights and personal integrity. While an individualistic understanding of the human being is inadequate as a way of approaching this complex of problems, we are also confronted with the challenge not to dissolve the subject, thus overlooking the fragility of our condition and the ways in which our bodies are being encroached. The present article attempts to meet this double challenge. Starting with the short story Fantomina: or Love in a Maze, written by Eliza Haywood during the early 18th century, and with a discussion on some relations between fiction, power and surveillance, the article investigates contemporary ways in which bodies are being inscribed in laws and captured in the trap of scription when used as proofs of identity. The article analyzes questions of identification in their historical complexity, as well as the patterns that are played out by powers of recording, operating with some continuity over the past centuries. It is also suggested that so-called bodily freedoms and rights, as well as integrity, could gain in critical significance by considering the “betweenness” – the inter-est of Hannah Arendt – and the ways in which our existence presupposes the other (understood as both the world and the others conditioning us). Opposing the individualistic tradition, the law understood as a boundary does not, thus, enclose independent individuals in sovereign possession of themselves beyond time and space; instead, the boundary gains its significance in relation to an opaque who in continuous becoming. PETER OLE PEDERSEN AND JAN LØHMANN STEPHENSEN: PARANOID, MOI? – ERASING DAVID The article discusses the relationship between the subject of surveillance and documentary film. As its main example, it uses David Bond’s Erasing David from 2009, which thematically revolves this particular topic, the British surveillance society (Big Brother Britain). The genrespecific and film historic aspects of this documentary are analysed and in a further perspective serve as the point of departure for a more general theoretical discussion of surveillance. Through the treatment of its content and the conceptual framework, Bond’s film places itself within what could appropriately be termed the “popular cultural documentary”. What characterises this part of the genre is a critical approach bordering on activism. This DETTE MATERIALE ER OPHAVSRETSLIGT BESKYTTET OG MÅ IKKE VIDEREGIVES INDHOLD
DETTE MATERIALE ER OPHAVSRETSLIGT BESKYTTET OG MÅ IKKE VIDEREGIVES INDHOLD Abstracts is sought, combined with the ability to entertain the audience, through elements of fiction and comic relief while attempting an analysis of a current and often controversial subject. Michael Moore’s productions are the most successful examples of this filmmaking strategy, and two film analytical approaches based on Moore’s 1989 debut Roger & Me are used to evaluate the aesthetic and conceptual coherence in Bond’s work. Following this, a three-part taxonomy for the analytical and normative understanding of the surveillance phenomenon and its socio-cultural and political implications is established. These are termed: The critical-subversive, the para-cultural and the affirmative mode of understanding. The critical-subversive mode is comparable to the expository documentary form. A strategy that, regardless of it is being articulated academically or aesthetically, aims at the disclosure of hidden societal mechanisms by way of facts. In a theoretical perspective, this is discussed in relation to Foucault’s idea of the ‘panopticon’ and more recently Bruno Latour’s corrective counter-concept ‘oligopticon’. The para-cultural intervention is akin to Michel de Certeau’s understanding of ‘creative re-appropriation’ and ‘making do’. This tactic, like the previous one, is generally speaking sceptical of a surveillance society and its implications, though it establishes a different, temporary form of critical stanza. The last mode of portraying and analyzing surveillance is termed affirmative. This is directly connected to the popular cultural representation of surveillance tech nologies. According to the German art historian O.K. Werkmeister, these tech nologies are here ascribed an almost omnipresent and omniscient potential. Regardles of the fact that these images of surveillance tech nologies and their capabilities often seem rather counterfactual, they nonetheless participate in creating an internalisation of the surveillance culture, one which is paradoxically endorsed by both its supporters and critics, among these David Bond. Both the theoretical perspective and the film analytical approach to Bond’s film discuss problematic weaknesses in his project. Bond tends to invest more in cracking the ‘formula’ for a successful presentation of his material, than discovering new formalistic or analytical territory in the filmic exposure of current surveillance culture. KRISTIN VEEL: SURVEILLANCENARRATIONS. SURVEILLANCE AS SUBJECT AND FORM IN THE CONTEMPORARY NOVEL Within recent years surveillance has simultaneously become a pervasive topic of public debate, a growing academic field in its own right and an increasingly popular theme in the arts and popular culture. This article argues that there are significant insights to be gained on the impact of surveillance on our cultural imagination from looking at the ways in which contemporary fiction employs surveillance as a literary trope. By exploring the ways in which surveillance is portrayed in three recent novels, Ulrich Peltzer’s Teil der Lösung (2007), Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost (2007) and Tim Lott’s The Seymour Tapes (2005), respectively it is shown how surveillance is used not only as a central theme, but also as a vehicle for literary reflections on modes of representation. The point of departure is the identification of information overload as a shared challenge for narrative fiction and surveillance tech niques. The amount of information we 189
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