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Alternative Alt - Overconformity
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- Submitting to surveillance as a form of exhibitionism serves as a form of resistance against structures of power
AlternativeAlt - OverconformityThe alternative is a strategy of overconformity to the surveillance state – rather than trying to change or transgress the law, we must enthusiastically open ourselves to the gaze of the state to disrupt the panoptic regime of surveillanceKrips, 10 – Andrew W. Mellon All-Claremont Chair of Humanities and Professor, Cultural Studies, Claremont Graduate University (Henry, “The Politics of the Gaze: Foucault, Lacan and Žižek,” Culture Unbound, Vol. 2, 98-99, http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v2/a06/cu10v2a6.pdf)//SY It is clear that the film theoretic account of Foucault that Copjec uses, misrepresents Foucault’s concept of the panoptic gaze, and that this misrepresentation, in turn, is responsible for her insistence upon a gap between the Foucauldian and Lacanian concepts of the gaze. By correctly representing Foucault, I have closed this gap. A fortiori I have changed the exclusively conservative political valence that, in virtue of its function as a disciplinary tool that supports the status quo, has come to be associated with the panopticon. In particular, I allow that, like the Lacanian gaze, and depending on context, the Foucauldian gaze may have either disruptive, Dionysian effects or conservative, Apollonian effects.5 Foucault’s “practices of freedom” are one way of thinking the possibility of disruptive effects. Rather than pursuing this line of thought at an abstract level, however, I turn finally to Slavoj Žižek’s work, in particular his concept of overconformity, in order to show that, by reconceiving the panoptic gaze along the lines that I have suggested, new political possibilities arise for opposing modern regimes of surveillance. Central to Žižek’s account of the modern state is the concept of “an obscene underside of the law ”, namely widespread practices – petty tax evasion, speeding, walking on the grass, etc – which, although strictly speaking illicit, are unofficially tolerated. This network of practices is sustained thanks to what Žižek calls an “ideological phantasy” that keeps them an “open secret” – everyone knows about and participates in them in private, but no one mentions them, let alone publicly flaunts participating in them. Such practices constitute points of failure of the law in so far as they fall in an indeterminate zone in relation to legal categories: on the one hand, in so far as they are tolerated they are not straightforwardly illegal, but, on the other hand, neither are they legal; and as such, constitute a fundamental illegality at the heart of the legal system. Žižek’s point is that, rather than undermining the law, the obscene underside of the law sustains it – the law is tol-erated because of the little secret pleasures that people derive from its obscene underside. In Lacanian terms, we may say that the obscene underside of the law is the set of necessary but repressed points of failure of the legal system – in short, it is the symptom of the legal system. In particular, in the context of a legal state apparatus that is held in place by a panoptic system of surveillance, the obscene underside of the law is a liminal zone of high anxiety that, like the Emperor’s body under his new clothes, is obscenely visible to each of his subjects in the privacy of their own visual field, yet must be shrouded in a cloak of invisibility in the public realm. This is the site of the gaze. How are we to oppose such a system, which seemingly coexists with, indeed depends upon its own systematic transgression? According to Žižek, not by acts of resistance, since the system is readily able to accommodate, indeed depends upon such acts.6 Instead, Žižek suggests opposition through acts of overconformity, which, rather than protesting let alone breaking the law, insist upon it to the letter, even when ideological “common sense” suggests otherwise. In particular, this means a refusal to turn a “blind eye” from manifestations of law’s obscene underside. As Žižek puts it: “Sometimes, at least – the truly subversive thing is not to disregard the explicit letter of Law on behalf of the underlying fantasies, but to stick to this letter against the fantasy which sustains it….Is not an exemplary case of such subversion-through-identification provided by Jaroslav Hǎsek’s The Good Soldier Schweik, the novel whose hero wreaks total havoc by simply executing the orders of his superiors in an overzealous and all-too-literal way (Žižek 1997: 30, 22, 31). What constitutes such strategies of overconformity in the context of a modern panoptic regime of surveillance? Answer: openly/publicly sticking to the letter of the law by refusing the cloak of invisibility that shrouds the law’s points of failure; in other words, by refusing to indulge what Žižek calls “the ideological fantasy ”, orchestrating a direct encounter with the objet a qua gaze. To put it in Žižek’s terms, it is a matter of “actively endorsing the passive confrontation with the objet a, bypassing the intermediate role of the screen of fantasy” (Žižek 1997: 31). To be specific, it is matter of not merely saying but also acting out publicly what everyone knows in private but dares not say: not merely announcing in public that the Emperor is naked, but arresting him for indecent exposure. By Lacanianizing Foucault, as I have done here, we are able to understand the logic behind such heterodox strategies for opposing modern regimes of surveillance. Submitting to surveillance as a form of exhibitionism serves as a form of resistance against structures of powerKoskela, 4 – Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Helsinki (Hille, “Webcams, TV Shows and Mobile phones: Empowering Exhibitionism,” Surveillance and Society, Vol. 2, 2/3, 207-208, http://queens.scholarsportal.info/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/3374/3337)//SY While, as argued, in the televisualisation of human lives individuals increasingly ‘disappear’, the home webcams can be interpreted as a form of ‘bringing back’ the subject. In contrast of being targets of the ever-increasing surveillance, people seek to play an active role in the endless production of visual representations. Their shows include a “notion of self-ownership” (Mann, 2002: 533). They seek to be subjects rather than objects. In other words, it can be claimed that what they actually do is reclaim the copyright of their own lives. The logic is simple: if practically anyone else can circulate one’s images, why not do it oneself. The choice to present ones private life publicly can be understood as a form of exhibitionism. In most cultures it is considered ‘normal’ that you do obscuring gestures in order to protect your private life. You close the curtains when it’s dark outside and light inside. You don’t appear publicly if naked or in underwear. You don’t allow anyone to see your sex life, unless you want to make pornography. In this respect it is a radical act to install a camera that shows your private life to an unknown audience. This, however, raises a question how we understand exhibitionism? If installing a home webcam is exhibitionism, is it automatically a form of sexual perversion? Or is it possible to understand exhibitionism as a positive term? Could we reclaim the term, redefine it and de-sexualise it? Could it be cultural critique? Or perhaps an emancipatory action? One of the first, most famous and also most examined (however, recently abolished) cameras has been the JenniCAM by Jennifer Ringley. In 1996 she installed a camera in her college dormitory room continuing her ordinary daily life under the gazes of the global audience in the Internet. While inviting the gaze of the world into her private space, she conducted her everyday tasks, did her aerobic exercises, celebrated her birthdays – and also, occasionally, had sex. This ostensibly minor change in the conventional code of what can and what cannot be shown hit deeply in the collective cultural understanding of looking and being looked at. As Jimroglou argues in her article analysing the JenniCAM (2001: 286) it “reveals cultural tensions surrounding epistemological conceptions of vision, gender, and identity and raises questions for future conversations regarding the role of technology in the representation and construction of gendered subjects”. Jenni created a paradoxical stage, playing with conventional moral codes, in which she “stabilizes and yet disrupts the process of subject formation by repeating yet resisting cultural norms” (Jimroglou, 2001: 291). After keeping up the camera for a while Jenni received threats – more precisely, was demanded to ‘pose’ at particular time for one of her net-admirers (see Burgin, 2002). In one sense her ‘show’ was a way of creating a subject capable of resisting the traditional readings of female embodiment, however, at the same time it “would seem to offer the perfect heterosexual male fantasy” (Jimroglou, 2001: 287). The harassment she faced was a form of cyberstalking (Adam, 2001). She closed the camera for a while, but then eventually put it back again. When she was asked why she chose to reinstall the camera she replied “I felt lonely without the camera” (quoted in Burgin, 2002: 230). I find this statement striking. It places the camera into a position of a companion, or perhaps a pet. Or perhaps a part of Jenni herself? The camera can be interpreted as a component in an integration of body and technology, an object embedded in a ‘cyborg subjectivity’ (Haraway, 1997) where the corporeal and the mechanic fuse into each other forming an entirety. The life of Jennifer Ringley has been analysed in a psychoanalytical context, the image being seen as a window, a mirror, a fetish, a cinema etc. (e.g. Jimroglou, 2001; Burgin, 2002; Zizek, 2002). My aim here is not to provide another psychoanalytical explanation. Rather, I use her as an example of what is happening in the field of vision. She is a particular case, indeed, but she is a pioneer rather than an exception. Since the mid 1990s home webcams have become more and more popular and spread all around the world. I shall apply to this phenomenon some of the concepts that are well known in the video surveillance discussion: power, control, and agency. Regime of order / regime of shame Jenni’s story made me think about something that could be called ‘empowering exhibitionism’. With the cameras Jenni and others like her discuss with two fundamental regimes through which power operates. I shall call these the regime of order and the regime of shame. These can be understood as two common ways of thinking how visibility and transparency connote with power and control. By the regime of order, I mean the ways in which society regulates individuals. Gathering knowledge is seen as a form of maintaining control, a look equates with a “judgmental gaze” (Burgin, 2002: 235). Everyday life is regulated, not only potential criminal acts. The regime of order was perhaps most clearly seen taking place in the former socialist countries but it also has its role in the capitalist world. A telling example of this is what Presdee (2000) has called the ‘criminalisation of culture’. By the regime of shame I mean individuals’ internalisation of control, in the Foucauldian sense. The idea of having or doing something that cannot be shown. The basic ‘need’ for privacy. The regime of shame keeps people meek and obedient as efficiently as any control coming from outside. Rejecting it, is unacceptable and immodest. Further, these controls coming from outside and from inside are most effective when functioning together: the combination of fear and shame ensures submissiveness. Indeed, home webcams challenge these both. By revealing their private intimate lives individuals refuse to take part in these two regimes. If this is exhibitionism that succeeds in overcoming these two, then exhibitionism can truly work as a form of empowerment. The liberation from shame and from the ‘need’ to hide leads to empowerment. Conceptually, when you show ‘everything’ you become ‘free’: no one can ‘capture’ you any more, since there is nothing left to capture. These voluntary shows have something to do with power, but it is difficult to grasp what exactly. Home webcams seem to be opening up radically new subjectivities, which are yet to be understood (cf. Featherstone and Burrows, 1995). What Jimroglou (2001: 289) argues in interpreting JenniCAM is that it “challenges traditional definitions of the subject and poses a unique way to conceive of subjectivity and the agency and power that is implied therein”. It is difficult to place home webcams into the ordinary conceptualisation of power. While a subject and an object are ‘fused’, as happens when the ‘object’ of a camera simultaneously “oversees her own viewing” and, hence, is “refuting and resisting the traditional representations of objectification” (Jimroglou, 2001: 292), the essence of power seems to fade away. The differentiation between dominating power and resisting power might be helpful here. Sharp and others (2000: 2) define dominating power as “[...] that power which attempts to control and coerce others, impose its will upon others, or manipulate the consent of others”. In contrast they define resisting power as “[...] that power which attempts to set up situations, groupings or actions which resist the impositions of dominating power” that “can involve very small, subtle and some might say trivial moments [...]” (Sharp et al., 2000: 3). This latter definition applies quite well to the lives lived with home webcams. Home webcams perhaps do not fit into the oldfashioned understanding of resistance, but resistance, indeed, may take new unexpected forms, being pluralised rather than homogenous, concealed rather than exposed. Webcams aiming at increasing visibility rather than hiding from surveillance, can be interpreted as a form of confrontation, surveillance turned into spectacle – a form of resistance. The alt is overidentification – unconditional submission to the demands of the surveillance state allows overt subversion of the system – has empirically worked to counter surveillanceParker 7 – Parker is a practising psychoanalyst, an analyst member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, works with the Research Institute for Health and Social Change at Manchester Metropolitan University and is involved in editing over a dozen academic journals. (Ian, 2007, ‘The truth about over-identification’, in P. Bowman and R. Stamp (eds), pp. 4-5, London: Continuum. [ISBN: 978-0-8264-9061-2], http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XmVnkwDqOHkJ:www.discourseunit.com/papers/parker_papers/2007%2520B%26S%2520Book%2520Overidentification.doc+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us // SM) Overidentification: A resistant subversive practice The ‘work of culture’ is viewed quite differently by Lacan, of course, and the ego is not hailed as the triumphal centre of the subject, so let us turn to the second way of conceptualising overidentification. This second way revels in overidentification and is a resistant subversive practice; it is directed against rational and irrational faces of authority, the reasonable calls for order and the obscene supplement of the law. Overidentification now operates as a strategy for making the conditions of possibility for the rule of the master visible in such a way as to make that rule impossible. The concept of overidentification in this radical form originates from the punk movement in Ljubljana in the early 1980s, in a politically-charged punk scene that faced a peculiar combination of repression and tolerance in the last years of the Tito regime. The combination of surveillance that aimed to identify and isolate active dissidents, and indulgence that attempted to suffocate and recuperate the rest of the population, was but a particularly intense version of forms of ideological control in the rest of Europe. Art activists knew this, which is why the strategy of overidentification was ratcheted up a step when Slovenia broke from Yugoslavia in 1991 and was proclaimed as being at last a free and autonomous capitalist country. The opposition to Tito-Stalinism in Slovenia began with punk, and a first step to a strategy of resistance organised around overidentification was the formation of Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) in 1984. Different components of NSK – the design group New Collectivism, the fine artist members of Irwin, and the band Laibach, for example – targeted the symbolic infrastructure of the regime, ridiculing and undermining it, but in such a way that it was difficult for the authorities to explicitly condemn or suppress it. This political conceptual art practice is where Žižek is coming from, and it is crucial to take this into account if we want to grasp what he has been attempting to do with Lacanian theory to read Hegel played out on a stage populated with Marxist categories, theory that was forged in and against a disintegrating regime that itself claimed allegiance to Marxism. Overidentification here takes the system at its word and takes the bizarre contradictory demands of the authorities more seriously than the system takes itself, so seriously that it cannot bear that knowing participation but cannot refuse it. This is not merely a parody of totalitarianism but functions as if it were an obsessive identification with it, playing out exactly what a system of power demands of its supporters in its overt messages but what that system also needs to distance itself from, as part of its ameliorative attempts to buffer itself from criticism and to contain the criticism it must permit. For example, the New Collectivism design group submitted a poster for Yugoslavia’s ‘Youth Day’ in 1987, the year when it was Slovenia’s turn to come up with the main publicity for an event that also marked Tito’s birthday. The panel of judges dutifully praised the design – a muscular figure leaning forward holding a torch out into the foreground – as embodying the spirit of Yugoslav socialist youth. It transpired that the original design was from 1936 German national socialist propaganda. The resulting scandal raised questions about symbolic formations operating through the ideological state apparatuses, and that ‘Youth Day’ turned out to be the last. The affirmative is a futile effort to hide from the gaze of surveillance – the alternative is to embrace and understand visibility as a means of resistanceKoskela 3 – Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Helsinki (FI) (Hille, Vol 1, No 3 (2003): Foucault and Panopticism Revisited, “‘Cam Era’ — the contemporary urban Panopticon”, http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles1(3)/camera.pdf // SM) Urban space will always remain less knowable and, thus, less controllable than the restricted panoptic space. Control is never completely hegemonic. There is always an element of resistance. Surveillance can be turned to ‘counter-surveillance’, to a weapon for those who are oppressed. As Surveillance Camera Players – a theatre group from New York presenting for surveillance cameras – show, it is possible to ‘play’ with surveillance cameras; to make opposing and critical comments (Surveillance Camera Players, 2000). Webcams aiming at increasing visibility rather than hiding from the gazes can also be interpreted as a form of resistance. Lyon (2001) has pointed out, there is not much an individual could do to resist the multiple forms of surveillance. However, resistance may also take a form of ‘a choreographed demonstration of cooperation’ (Faith, 1994: 39). It is not homogenous but pluralized. What we are facing right now is ‘the cam era’ – an era of endless representations. Arguably, we have arrived at the point where ‘we live in a society that prefers the sign to the thing, the image to the fact’ (Weibel, 2002: 219). There is no way to escape it; we will just have to try to understand it. Eventually, it may be so that the multiplied representations work as a more effective form of resistance than the efforts to avoid the gaze(s). Increasing visibility effectively resists the controlling gaze of surveillance – this prevents surveillance from being interpreted as a threatKoskela 3 – Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Helsinki (FI) (Hille, Vol 1, No 3 (2003): Foucault and Panopticism Revisited, “‘Cam Era’ — the contemporary urban Panopticon”, http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles1(3)/camera.pdf // SM) However, reciprocally there may be fascination in being seen, as the amount of ‘webcams’ showing public as well as private daily lives demonstrate (see for example Burgin, 2002). While being under surveillance may generally be involuntary, it is also the case that ‘many people are seeking to increase their visibility’ (Groombridge, 2002: 43). Just as the new forms of control are widespread, so are the forms of antipode and resistance created. No longer is panoptic surveillance, necessarily, interpreted as a threat but rather ‘as a chance to display oneself under the gaze of the camera’ (Ernst, 2002: 461). Visual representations are often connected with sexuality. Pictures circulated in the Internet range from young women turning the real-life images into pornography (by charging the viewers of their home pages) to gay communities building a (global) collective identity by presenting their lives in the net. The same point is valid in the ‘reality shows’ in TV, such as Big Brother (e.g. Weibel, 2002). ‘The algebra of surveillance structures the reveries of voyeurism, exhibitionism and narcism’ (Tabor, 2001:125). 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