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

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
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