Rohan N. Samarth
Glick
Visual Culture and Violence
March 30, 2014
Governmentality: Photography’s Capitalist Reincorporation
Technological advances in media, like photography, often appear to come with a democratiz-ing bent, displacing means of production out of the hands of a wealthy elite and into those of the average citizen. Currently, the same argument could be made in regards to the internet age, where anyone with access is encouraged to express themselves relentlessly throughout endless social media and communicative platforms. Though such media technologies may seem to pos-sess a liberalizing quality, no medium exists in a vacuum. Constrained within capitalist pressures towards the accruing of private surplus and its intimate ties with state control and social normali-zation, these media must also serve an underlying re-solidification of dominant private interest and governmental power—even behind this appearance of enhanced freedom. Photography then exhibits this strange contradictory duality: a seemingly democratic means of production and con-sumption which simultaneously re-inscribes hierarchal social relations. I would argue that this democratizing appearance arises from a superficial description of the medium’s qualities, de-tached from its social and political production. Photography’s history of intimate collusion with status quo power dynamics ultimately denies its liberalizing qualities in a form of capitalist re-incorporation and recuperation.
Though photography might seem contradictory to the powers of the state, this contradiction arises from the change in the nature of modern power. As Foucault so revolutionarily described, power in the modern age is no longer exerted by singular agents (like a monarch) and is ...
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...to control.” Between rebellious spaces, as well as from within them, emerged hierarchies solidifying class control, the support of corporate interest, and the ultimate reinscription of the strict demarcation of discursive spaces by social hierarchy. With photography, the range of counter-hegemonic cultural produc-tion failed to expand its power to change dominant ideology. Rather than liberalize image pro-duction across these spaces, photography allowed the acceleration of their firm sectionalization through the emergence of new hierarchies and the re-entrenchment of extant ones. In line with Foucault’s new understanding of governmental control, the medium helped established a power of surveillance hidden behind the guise of democratization—its effect of hierarchized power and control thus rendered invisible despite the grand irony of the medium being itself visual.
Camera Lucida was Roland Barthes’ last written piece, published posthumously in 1980. This book deals with the topic of photography and the death of Barthes’ mother in 1977. The role of photography is questioned; he asks what about photography makes it a valid media? We read about the operator (the photographer), spectrum (the subject) and spectator (the viewer), also about the studium (what we see in the photograph) and the punctum (the unclassifiable, the thing that makes the photograph important to the viewer). According to Barthes the photograph is an adventure for the viewer, but it is ultimately death, the recording of something that will be dead after the picture is taken. This idea is the main focus of Barthes’ writing, the photograph “that-has-been”, in Latin “interfuit: what I see has been here, in this place which extends between infinity and the subject; it has been here, and yet immediately separated; it has been absolutely, irref...
Among the books discussed over the duration of the course, the most recurrent theme has been the dominance of power relationships and the construction of institutions driven by power. The framework for these socially ingrained power relationships that has been transformed over time has been laid out by Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish. According to Foucault, power is everywhere, dispersed in institutions and spread through discourses. The state functions on a number of dispositions which are hierarchical, naturalized and are the modes of power for the power elite. The result of this social and economic control is observed in nations and across nations through the beauty myth, the prison system, the creation of informal systems or the overarching cultural hegemony and attempted reform of the non-western world. The key to the success of this has been through the misrecognition of the constructed systems of power which are instated through very fundamental mediums that they are not questioned. These structures of control by the state are adopted and reproduced from the base of the familiar, through arrangements and dispositions that pose themselves as natural, as they are embodied and programmed in the play of language, in common sense, and in all what is socially taken for granted. In this essay I will examine these above mentioned structures of the power and how these models are used to discipline individuals and states.
Susan Sontag’s essay on how photography has limited people’s understanding of the world contains many interesting points that can be agreeable while at the same time having few that I tend to disagree with. Photography can be good and bad; it can open our minds up to new cultures and experiences through its imagery. However, at the same time it can limit our understanding of the world around us and of the world around the image it is portraying.
Foucault once stated, “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests” (301). By this, he means that our society is full of constant supervision that is not easily seen nor displayed. In his essay, Panopticism, Foucault goes into detail about the different disciplinary societies and how surveillance has become a big part of our lives today. He explains how the disciplinary mechanisms have dramatically changed in comparison to the middle ages. Foucault analyzes in particular the Panopticon, which was a blueprint of a disciplinary institution. The idea of this institution was for inmates to be seen but not to see. As Foucault put it, “he is the object of information, never a subject in communication”(287). The Panopticon became an evolutionary method for enforcing discipline. Today there are different ways of watching people with constant surveillance and complete control without anyone knowing similar to the idea of the Panopticon.
In the nineteenth century, the innovation and invention of new technology took off. More inventions and innovation came out of the nineteenth century up until World War I than any other time period in history. From the concept of time, the improvement of transportation, and even the telephone; the camera has definitely made its mark in history. In 1839, the camera had gradually become the new major medium used in the nineteenth century. It was the invention that changed artwork and gave everyone a new way to represent itself to the world. Gay-Lussac called it “a new art form in a new civilization.” Photography represented Paris in three major ways. The new technology influenced a new way of painting where the artist began capturing their subjects in action versus a still portrait pose. And with the Daguerreotype being available to everyone in the public, it was becoming easy to travel to Paris for events. The regular working class people and artists to go to Paris to see the city and bring imaged back home. And finally, because of how photography represented Paris, the tourism industry began to grow gave the city of Paris the money and inspiration to reconstruct their city into the city we picture it to be, a city full of change, innovation, and excitement.
As each person feels alone and alienated under big brother’s watchful eye, they have no choice but to build the only relationship and bond they can, with that of their oppressor. The knowledge that the thought police watches the citizen’s every move influences the masses towards a “norm” of a constant state of fear and discipline resulting in utmost loyalty to Big Brother. Also, because people have no idea when they’re being watched, they learn to behave as if always under scrutiny. This transforms people into their own forms of a panoptic gaze, policing their own thoughts and actions from the fear of possible surveillance. Foucault refers to it as “ becoming the bearers of our own oppression”.
Susan Sontag discusses the reality of the modern person’s addiction with “needing to have reality confirmed” by photos. Sontag says “we accept it as the camera records it” then goes to say “this is the opposite of understanding.” I agree with her wholeheartedly, as accepting photos as they are limits ones understanding of the world. The trust in photography led to the rise of pictures hoaxes, in which people take pictures out of context and assign it a new background; as well as Photoshop, which becomes increasingly popular as the years go by. Photoshop allows one to manipulate a photo to portray what they desire it to.
As seen in paintings of battle scenes and portraits of wealthy Renaissance aristocracy, people have always strived to preserve and document their existence. The creation of photography was merely the logical continuum of human nature’s innate desire to preserve the past, as well as a necessary reaction to a world in a stage of dramatic and irreversible change. It is not a coincidence that photography arose in major industrial cities towards the end of the nineteenth century.
...isms conveys the idea that the panoptic paradigm is no longer a fitting model to interpret present-day surveillance issues, and that society ha moved to a post-panotpical age, which shares some of the features of its panoptical Foucaultian father and panoptic Bentham grandfather, as one inherits traits from a relative” (196). Foucault once wrote, “We live in a society in which panotpicism reigns” (citation needed). While some in surveillance theory circles believe this statement is no longer applicable to their area of study. However, using reinterpretation acknowledges the limits of panopticism, and how reassessing what panopticism a la Foucault is, and what the panoptic paradigm is, can contribute to the surveillance debate. One way scholars have done this is to go back to beginning with Bentham and to distinguish Bentham’s Panopticon from Foucault’s panopticism.
However, it is heavily questioned by scholars of surveillance studies for the fact that prisons, from which the idea originated from, do not necessarily employ such concept as securing the exits and entrances of the prison is the goal and principle of prison operation and the ultimate way of taking control (Alford, 2000). Foucault’s idea is also under fire for its overemphasis on control and discipline because he neglected visibility is also a necessary factor that enables individuals to resist such control mechanism in the world (Gordon, 2002). Foucault’s understanding of visibility is a product from his empirical research on the marginal and extreme institutions like prisons and asylums in the past. It proves to be dysfunctional in real-world settings despite Foucault’s efforts to prove societies function just as a Panopticon where everyone is always being watched and lives in a power relation they contribute to. The Panopticon itself is a revealing concept, but it was never
They try and bring people together within these public spaces through their ridiculous sketches and ‘improvisations’. By filming their endeavors within their public space, they are providing their own surveillance cameras and can choose to film what they want within this already surveyed space. As technology continues to grow and expand, the questions brought up by Krauss and Mann will only continue to fuel debate. The newest public space being investigated through art is the Internet. Privacy comes into question more and more often with the advent of Facebook, Youtube and Chat Roulette.
In Michael Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish”, the late eighteen century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's model of Panopticon was illustrated as a metaphor for the contemporary technologies of mass surveillance.
Photojournalism plays a critical role in the way we capture and understand the reality of a particular moment in time. As a way of documenting history, the ability to create meaning through images contributes to a transparent media through exacting the truth of a moment. By capturing the surreal world and presenting it in a narrative that is relatable to its audience, allows the image to create a fair and accurate representation of reality.
Since the beginning of civilisation the question can art have the capacity to transform the world politically and morally has invariably haunted the philosophers and social scientists alike. This paper makes an attempt to address two different but interrelated questions in the light of photography by primarily focusing on Abu Ghraib pictures. First, I intend to look critically at Butler’s claim that framing of reality in a certain way imposes constraints on what can be heard, seen and read during the times of war. And second, I propose to consider the various ways in which the relationship between photography and ethical responsiveness can be explored by invoking the idea of face propounded by Levinas in one of his interviews.
The question of how society will function when all checks that a few thousand years of civilization have imposed have disappeared has yet to be answered. Society has been trained to view photographs as representations of Reality, but digital imaging has quickly tossed that mindset aside. The underlying Problem results in questioning of everyday events such as, the ability to look at a Photo and trust that the images we see are truly representative of the situation.