vcs02foucault

8/8/2019 vcs02foucault

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Topic 2Foucault

To introduce you to Michel Foucault, whosetheories of history make him one of the principalmodels for visual studies

To consider Foucaults theory of the panopticon,arguably the most influential concept for visualarts

To introduce you to Guy Debord, a political

theorist influential on a range of writersconcerned with current forms of capitalism

To consider Debords theory of the spectacle, hiscentral concept

Main purposes of this lecture:

Note: this material was originally posted on www.jameselkins.com, under Syllabi. Send all comments to [email protected]


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Foucaults panopticon: principal concepts

PanopticonJeremy Benthampanopticismdiscipline-blockade

discipline-mechanism


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1. Characteristics of the discipline-mechanism (used, according to Foucaults

source, during outbreaks of the plague).

- Space is enclosed and segmented ( 6, beginning This enclosed...)- An uninterrupted work of writing [reports] links the center andperiphery ( 6).- [e]ach individual is constantly located ( 6).

2. Characteristics of the discipline-blockade (used, according to Foucaultssource, during outbreaks of leprosy).

- The massive, binary division between lepers and non-lepers ( 7,beginning If it is true that the leper...).- Separation rather than segmentation ( 7).

Two kinds of discipline* before the Panopticon model: discipline-mechanism,discipline-blockade ( 23, beginning There are two images, then, of discipline...).

* Discipline is a type of power, not an institution; see after the three numbered, beginning Discipline may be identified neither...


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In the 19th c., all kinds of people excluded from societywere treated in the way that people had treated plaguevictims:

- the excluded were individualized ( 8, beginning They are differentprojects...).- individualization [was used] to mark exclusion ( 8).

Examples of 19th c. (and 20th c.) institutions that operate this way:

- psychiatric asylum- penitentiary- reformatory- approved school (? 8 -- same as the Christian school in theparagraph Foucault numbers 2?)- hospital ( 8)- factories (to supervise workers; 17)

On the other hand, 19th c. institutions also treatedpeople like lepers:

- There was a binary division and branding into mad/sane, dangerous/

harmless, normal/abnormal.- This was superimposed on the discipline-mechanism.


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The new Panopticon model, combining both kinds of discipline, was asymptom of more profound processes: (numbered , after 23):

1. The functional inversion of the disciplines: that they werenow used to increase productivity, not merely to safeguard orpunish

2. The swarming of disciplinary mechanisms. (This is swarming

as in bee behavior, when the queen leaves the nest.) Theinstitutions go out into society.

3. The state-control of the mechanisms of discipline.


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Antiquity had been a civilization of spectacle. To render accessible toa multitude of men the inspection of a small number of objects: thiswas the problem to which the architecture of temples, theatres andcircuses responded. With spectacle, there was a predominance ofpublic life, the intensity of festivals, sensual proximity. In these rituals inwhich blood flowed, society found new vigour and formed for a

moment a single great body.The modern age poses the opposite problem: To procure for a smallnumber, or even for a single individual, the instantaneous view of agreat multitude. In a society in which the principal elements are nolonger the community and public life, but, on the one hand, privateindividuals and, on the other, the state, relations can be regulated onlyin a form that is the exact reverse of the spectacle: It was to the

modern age, to the ever-growing influence of the state, to its evermore profound intervention in all the details and all the relations ofsocial life, that was reserved the task of increasing and perfecting itsguarantees, by using and directing towards that great aim the buildingand distribution of buildings intended to observe a great multitude ofmen at the same time.

Note, for the Debord reading, how Foucault defines society of thespectacle (from the about 3/4 through the document, which beginsA few years after Bentham...


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The next pages are examples of surveillance, from the2004 class.

Questions in regard to these:

1. How well does Foucault apply?

2. Which elements of life are under surveillance? Whicharent?

Surveillance sites and services


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www.readnotify.com

A site that allows emails to be traced, recipients to be locatedgeographically, and data to be obtained about the length of time the emailswere read, etc.

Visual Route 8 from Visualware

Software that allows graphical packet tracing: it shows the routes thatemails and URL requests travel across the world, and the names of eachserver they pass through.

1. Spyware (computer surveillance)

http://www.win-spy.com/?hop=allthebest

For spying on a co-workers computer. (found by Brendan Flanagan)


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http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html

A report on the National Security Agencys ESCHELON program, aninternational surveillance program for monitoring phone conversations.(found by Claire)

http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/

Online journal, Surveillance and Society. (found by Claire)

2. Government surveillance


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3. Satellite mapping

http://www.keyhole.com

An application that gives access to terabytes of satellite data, to zoom in ondifferent parts of the globe. (found by Autumn Ramsey)

http://www.landvoyage.com/

Another. (found by Rachel Klingoffer)


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4. Miscellaneous, parodic, goofy

http://www.fas.org/ahead/

Infectious animal and zoonotic disease surveillance. (found by Claire, whohas a suspicious ability to find sites that increase paranoia)

http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/users/bsy/coke.html

List of internet-accessible Coke machines. (suggested by George Sartiano)

http://www.caller2.com/multimedia/cams/ghostcam/main.html#

The Lexington Ghost Cam, monitoring the ship that is supposedly haunted.(found by Margaret Burns)

http://www.123cam.com/online.htm

A business that sells access to a large selection of webcams. (found byDionne)


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4. Miscellaneous, parodic, goofy, continued

http://www.vivalasvegasweddings.com/livevideofeed.htm

Las Vegas wedding chapel webcam. (found by Jean Potter)


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5. Home and business security

http://www.icepick.com/

A service that allows you to track the number of times your toilet has beenflushed, your icebox opened, your garage door opened... (found by ZoeWeisman).

http://www.safetynow.com/spycam.htm

Nanny cams, security cams. (found by Rachel Klingoffer)

http://www.spylife.com/

Spying equipment for sale. (found by Maria Merchenkova)


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6. Surveillance ofthe government

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

NASA TV, allowing viewers to watch agency activities. (found by RachelKlingoffer)

http://www.appliedautonomy.com/isee.html

The Institute of Applied Autonomy, allowing users to avoid police webcams.(found by Tim Ivison, and thanks for the song)


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7. Self-surveillance (?)

http://www.igs.net/~spykitten/livecam.html

Canadian girl who has installed a webcam in her house.


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8. Surveillance as advertising

http://www.poppies.net/cam/restcam.html

Restaurant in Bali with a webcam. (found by Nicolette Maniaci)


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9. Surveillance of landscapes, inanimateobjects...

http://dsc.discovery.com/cams/cams.html

Discovery Channel webcams: video of volcanoes, penguins, etc. (found byDionne)

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/southpolediaries/webcam.html

University of New South Waless South Pole webcam

http://www.buckeyetraffic.org/webcams/nosvg/

Webcams of highways in Ohio. (found by Phia)


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10. Surveillance of media (?)

http://www.gomobilebroadband.com/systems.htmlSelling mobile dishes for broadband satellite access. (found by Melea)

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http://find-someone.com/nd/ga.asp

Net Detective, a PI service that tells you if a person is marrried, where theylive, if they have a mortgage, if theyve adopted, if the FBI has a file on them...(found by Rachel Klingoffer)

http://www.listguy.com/netspy.html

Another one, which is geared to business that need to create mailing lists.

http://www.efindoutthetruth.com/due_diligence.htm

FindOutTheTruth.com. (found by Brendan Flanagan)

11. Private investigation


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Debord: principal concepts

society of the spectacle(distinguish it from Foucaults

society of the spectacle)Be able to gloss the Thesis onthe following pages.


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A selection of Debords theses, from The Societyof the Spectacle (various translations)

Thesis 1:

The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of

production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation ofspectacles.All that was once directly lived has become mere representation.

[Note the difference between mere representation here and JeanBaudrillards simulacrum: the latter is an image, with a realiy accessiblebehind it. This is a systematic condition of society.]


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Thesis 3:

The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as a part ofsociety, and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is the focalpoint of all vision and all consciousness. But due to the very fact that thissector is separate, it is in reality the domain of delusion and falseconsciousness: the unification it achieves is nothing but an official languageof universal separation.

[Note false consciousness, from Marx: the condition of any classconsciousnessthe illusion that the government and state are natural.]


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Thesis 6:

Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the outcome and the goal

of the dominant mode of production.

It is not something addedto the real worldnot a decorative element, soto speak.

On the contrary, it is the very heart of societys real unreality. In all its

specific manifestationsnews or propaganda, advertising or the actualconsumption of entertainmentthe spectacle epitomizes the prevailingmodel of social life.

It is the omnipresent celebration of a choice already made in the sphere ofproduction...

[This goes to the question of whether the media are pressured or coerced,for example by people like Rupert Murdoch. Passive acceptance is morewhat Debord has in mind: everyone collaborates, and there is no need forcensorship or guidance.]


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Thesis 10:

The concept of the spectacle brings together and explains a wide range ofdisparate phenomena.

Diversities and contrasts among such phenomena are the appearances ofthe spectaclethe appearances of a social organization of appearances thatneeds to be grasped in its general truth.

...any critique capable of apprehending the spectacles essential charactermust expose it as a visible negation of lifeand as a negation of life that hasinvented a visual form for itself.

[There are echoes of Friedrich Nietzsche in Debord, especially when heidentifies the spectacle with negations of life; note the epigraph to thebook, which is from Ludwig Feuerbachs Essence of Christianity. Nietzche wasa prominent critic of the ethics of Christianity in the later19th c.]


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Thesis 11:

In order to describe the spectacle, its formation, its functions, and theforces that work against it, it is necessary to make some artificialdistinctions. In analyzing the spectacle we are obliged to a certain extent touse the spectacles own language, in the sense that we have to movethrough the methodological terrain of the society that expresses itself inthe spectacle. For the spectacle is both the meaning and the agenda of our

particular socio-economic formation. It is the historical moment in whichwe are caught.

[Debord thrashes around like an animal caught in a trap: he knows that thespectacle cant be easily described from the outside. There is a parallel here,without the angst, to Dilthey, who acknowledged the entanglement of the

subject in the worldview.]


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Thesis 12:

The spectacle manifests itself as an enormous positivity, out of reach andbeyond dispute.

All it says is: Everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear.

The attitude that it demands in principle is the same passive acceptancethat it has already secured by means of its seeming incontrovertibility, andindeed by its monopolization of the realm of appearances.


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Thesis 19:

The spectacle inherits the weakness of the Western philosophical project,which attempted to understand activity by means of the categories ofvision, and it is based on the relentless development of the particulartechnical rationality that grew out of that form of thought. The spectacledoes not realize philosophy, it philosophizes reality, reducing everyones

concrete life to a universe of speculation.

[Compare this to Martin Jay, Scopic Regimes of Modernity. Jays proposalthat Western history can be divided into different scopic regimes isoptimistic in comparison to this, not least because it assumes that we canstand outside out categorization. Debord is far more pessimistic, and hisidea of categories of vision is more destructive.]

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