technical images and linear text

Modern society, particularly modern American society, is endlessly patting itself on the back. It thinks of itself as a spectacular society, a fantastic society which is more or less the most fantastic place which there is or ever has been on Earth to make one’s home. These things are partly true. What does it mean, though, that these are the adjectives which we employ to denote ‘goodness’? Why is it that we consider ’spectacular’ and ‘fantastic’ to be synonymous with “good,” indeed, to be the superlative forms of ‘goodness’? Is it not the case that they mean simply, “in the manner of a spectacle” or a “fantasy”, respectively? Indeed, this is the case — and this is why we believe these terms to denote positive attributes. In a society enthralled by an endless parade of spectacles, to be considered spectacular, is the highest of compliments. As Guy Debord writes:

“The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than ‘that which appears is good, that which is good appears.’ The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance, which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance” (12).

I have always been intrigued by Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, in that it seems to present a somewhat oppositional reading of history to that undertaken by Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas, two of the most prominent figures in critical theory. Both Foucault and Habermas propose that in preindustrial societies, power was primarily deployed through spectacular imagery: torture, public executions, shamings, and the cultivation of an image of monarchic omnipotence. In industrial societies, however, they propose that societies are governed by different principles: in Habermas’ case, the public sphere, and in Foucault’s case, the institutions of social discipline. And yet Debord is arguing — quite persuasively, I think — that in contemporary society, “all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles” (1). I find all three thinkers to be quite convincing, and yet, it is quite difficult to figure out how these divergent accounts can best be reconciled. It is for this that I appreciated Peter Weibel’s article, “Pleasure and the Panoptic principle.” Other theorists read thus far in this course have generally presupposed that the objects of surveillance are in a more-or-less adversarial (or at the very least, indifferent) relationship to those who are conducting the surveillance. Weibel, however, looks at surveillance with an eye to uncovering the voyeuristic, scopophilic tendencies which quickly become apparent when considering visual culture and surveillance.

He writes that, “as Foucault has already revealed, behind the mechanisms of surveillance lie the mechanisms of power, which are likewise supported by libidinal mechanisms. These power mechanisms are formed from psychological mechanisms” (208). It would be a mistake to construct surveillance as a force of social control imposed on humanity by a nameless, faceless bureaucracy; surveillance does not form in a vacuum, but rather is the product of certain specific psychological mechanisms in the human consciousness. The Panopticon, and by association surveillance in general, are the product of a human assumption that visibility deters delinquency. The mechanisms of power are less ‘behind’ the mechanisms of surveillance in contemporary society than they are one and the same. To be seen is to be the object of power, for the gaze always holds some authority. This is the significance of Weibel’s discussion of luggage-screening and passenger checking procedures at airports (208). By subjecting oneself and one’s belongings to the gaze, one is thereby subjected to the discipline of the airport authorities. Passengers and their luggage pass “through zones of visibility” (Weibel 208) which in themselves constitute the disciplinary authority of the airport security.

And yet the disciplinary elements of ’seeing’ are indissociable from its scopophilic elements, just as the imposed elements of being-seen are indissociable from its exhbitionist elements. Recall, for example, in the “Working Rules” text, where it is noted that male operators tend to look at women through CCTV overwhelmingly for voyeuristic rather than disciplinary reasons. Conversely, consider a phenomenon like American Idol, in which contestants offer themselves up ostensibly for ‘judging,’ but more importantly for ’seeing.’ Indeed, is ’seeing’ not in itself a type of ‘judging’? Weibel writes that, “since desires cannot be satisfied by reality, they are satisfied through images that function like hallucinations. The result is post-real satisfaction. The images of the mass media show the social unconscious, the repressed collective desires and fears” (210).

Weibel’s article does well to consider the ‘reality-tv’ phenomenon. Most of the theorists studied thus far have considered pop-cultural conceptions of surveillance society primarily in their dystopic forms, as assorted riffs on the theme of 1984. However, with the rise of ‘reality’ television, Orwell’s “Big Brother” is reappropriated by the culture industry (without a trace of irony) as the moniker for a television show, the ‘hook’ of which is the scopophilic pleasure one finds in watching surveillance footage of the young and beautiful. As we can see by the contemporary youthful obsession for constructing online video archives via MySpace, YouTube and the like, surveillance has passed from the realm of ‘frightening spectre’ to that of ‘pleasant recreation.’ Webel calls this “the panoptic principle turned into the pleasure principle” (218).

The central lesson of Weibel’s article is that surveillance and exhibitionism are intrinsic to our visually-focused culture. We live in a society of ‘the gaze;’ except, where Sartre could once write that “my fundamental connection with the Other-as-subject must be able to be referred back to the permanent possibility of being seen by the Other” (306), now we are presented with a plethora of scenes in which we can see without being-seen. This, I think, is the ultimate source of scopophilic pleasure: as voyeurs, we see, without being seen. The result of this peculiar uneven visibility is that we see ourselves in relation to others in a fashion reminiscent of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. The voyeuristic subject — the master — need never acknowledge the subjectivity of the object being-seen, for the object cannot perceive the subject who gazes upon them. In short, if it is true that “my apprehension of the Other in the world as probably being a man refers to my permanent possibility of being-seen-by-him” (Sartre 306), then if we cannot be-seen by the Other, then we need not acknowledge the Other as a subject.

And yet, new forms of discipline beget new forms of resistance. Bentham’s panopticon, and the concept of surveillance which it spawned, was predicated on the Enlightenment idea that total visibility accomplished through the illumination of dark spaces (en-lighten-ment) would deter all forms of delinquency. The Enlightenment mind could not, however, grasp the concept of a delinquency which occurs because of and through visibility. This delinquency is terrorism, in the broadest sense: this being the reasoning behind the assertions of Baudrillard and other theorists that contemporary terrorism constitutes some sort of rebuttal to the Enlightenment in general. Terrorism in fact exists because of visibility; it confronts surveillance with the ultimate dilemma. How does one use visibility to deter a violent crime which is done “for the cameras”? The World Trade Center was not a ’strategic’ target in the conventional sense – the actual damage done to the United States by the events of 9/11 is practically negligible. The symbolic damage done to the United States by the photos of 9/11, however, is irreparable. As Weibel observes, “terrorists, who understand the logic of this world, don’t seek out the dark; they seek the light” (214). Why else does a terrorist group inevitably ‘claim responsibility’? Terrorism without visibility is merely absurd violence; it is because an act is seen, and its image reproduced, that it becomes capable of breeding terror.

Works Cited

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Available on-line.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. Washington: Washington Square Press, 1992.

Weibel, Peter. “Pleasure and the Panoptic Principle.” In CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance. 206-223.