Panoptic Spaces
Panoptic Spaces
Space: In the previous weeks I have thought about space mostly for its physicality. During this weeks reading on social networking and the article by Judith Butler I would like to add that space is also located in the visual. Within the visual there are “text, images, audio, and video.” Understanding space as visual forces us to look at the ways we interact with space through all of our senses.
Place: has a story, a legacy, a narrative created around it. It is important to think of this narrative as being imbued with race, gender, class etc. Place is where contestation occurs. There is a conflict surrounding the real and imagined boundaries of place.
Questions:
1. While reading Anders Albrechtslund’s article, “Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance,” his discussion surrounding subjectivity and empowerment were of particular interest to me. It appears that he is trying to trouble to idea of the gaze by asserting that social networking is about of identity construction. Although I understand this assessment, I am not sure if one is ever roomed from the gaze of dominant structures and power relations. For instance, social networking is not only about people producing their own information, they are also producing information about others directly and indirectly. I thought about sites such as WorldStar Hip-Hop where images of people of color are usually posted without their knowing. Is it possible that people are simultaneously making themselves subjective while taking away the subjectivity of others? I’m just trying to think through the ways that power works within these scenarios.
2. Albrechtslund also discusses social networking as another component of ones identity that is similar to race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. It is clear that he trying show that surveillance and social networking doesn’t always have to be negative. This is a point that I appreciate. I want to think about how surveillance works when compounded with all these other components of identity. What does surveillance look like when we are talking about the policing of bodies of color on social networking sites? This question adds to my prior question. I am not sure if power switches the hand of the watcher when we think about issues of race and gender.
3. Judith Butler’s, “Endangered/ Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia,” forced me to consider the multiple ways bodies of color are read and reimagined within nation making. How does myth making become a part of the surveillance of people of color and confine them to certain places? I was also thinking of this in terms of deportation. The types of narratives and moral panics being created about immigrant bodies of color allow the state to deploy deportation as a tool of surveillance. Does surveillance take on a new meaning when we it is read against bodies of color?