GSA 2024 Panel: Cultures of Surveillance: From Panopticism to Participatory Surveillance Practices, Atlanta

Surveillance in its most basic definition is often understood as watching someone from above and has proven to be one of the most effective ways of exercising power in political communities since the Middle Ages. If it is true, as the surveillance scholar David Lyon writes, that cultures of surveillance develop differently depending on their political economies and post-authoritarian or colonial past, a focus on the global circulation of surveillance imaginaries then raises the question of how such local differences are narrated, visualized or imagined. Europe is often considered to be a forerunner in the production of surveillance imaginaries: Foucault’s theoretical proposal of panopticism to analyze disciplinary societies has a long-standing tradition in European thought and metaphors such as Orwell’s Big Brother have been circulated widely, repurposed, and become a symbol for surveillance conducted by totalitarian regimes in the 20th century. 

Contrary to such hierarchical forms of surveillance, which are exercised by well-defined entities, surveillance practices of everyday life, which are often described with adjectives such as “ubiquitous,” “invisible,” and “accelerated,” are less visible, more covert and linked to the complexities to what Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid” modernity (Bauman, 2000: viii). They are estimated to have a higher degree of interconnectedness and are more seemingly integrated into everyday life in the workplace, the convenience of the home, or as tools of social engagement. Such “distributed” forms of surveillance are dispersed far more evenly among various actors on a more equal footing. Their ubiquity draws attention to the role that organizations, institutions, and individuals play in shaping everyday surveillance practices and raises the question of the role that artists, writers, filmmakers, and activists play in creating, depicting, or even obstructing such surveillance practices (for further discussion, see Kammerer, 2008; Brighenti, 2010; Browne, 2015; Kafer, 2016; Monahan, 2022). Such cultural and artistic involvement with surveillance invites the reader, viewer, user, player, or co-creator to engage with the creative practices ranging from activism and art to literature, film, and interactive games and raise the question of the blurred boundaries between activism, complicity, and participation in different surveillance cultures.

We are seeking paper proposals that engage with surveillance and its social, historical, and cultural implications rather than the techno-political representations. Papers that focus on narrated differences within artistic and cultural expressions are particularly welcomed as well as theoretical debates relating to different cultures of surveillance, their past, present, and potential futures. More precisely one might ask, what surveillance imaginaries are circulated within different cultures, and how do they engage, confront, or oppose contemporary surveillance practices? What are the tensions between globally circulating surveillance imaginaries and local surveillance practices that might be anchored in the different economic, political, or colonial histories? Against this backdrop, a focus on the different imaginaries of surveillance promises an inquiry into how different attitudes towards information collection, (mass) monitoring, or values and desires associated with different local cultures of surveillance translate, shape, and intervene with the global. 

Please submit 350-word proposals and brief biographical details by March 4, 2024. For more information contact: sarah.k[at]wustl.edu and martin.hennig[at]uni-tuebingen.de. 

Papers may be presented in either German or English.

To be a panel participant, presenters must become members of the German Studies Association before 18 March 2024.

Contact Information: sarah.k[at] wustl.edu and martin.hennig[at]uni-tuebingen.de

• Bauman, Zygmunt (2000). Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
• Brighenti, Andrea Mubi (2010). “Artveillance: At the Crossroads of Art and Surveillance.”  Surveillance & Society 7 (2): 137–148.
• Browne, Simone (2015). Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Kafer, Gary (2016). “Reimagining Resistance: Performing Transparency and Anonymity in Surveillance Art.” Surveillance & Society 14 (2): 227–239.
• Kammerer, Dietmar (2008). Bilder der Überwachung. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. 
• Monahan, Torin (2022). Crisis Vision: Race and the Cultural Production of Surveillance, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 

Contact Information

sarah.k[at]wustl.edu and martin.hennig[at]uni-tuebingen.de

Contact Email

sarah.k@wustl.edu