Another one from college, for a theory class in Anthropology. This was an experimental bit of writing for me. Submitted December 5, 2008.
The Propagation of Panoptic Control by the Culture of Terror
Traditional forms of anthropological prose, following the literary turn, flow from ethnography to analysis, self-reflection to objective description. Increasingly, the construction of such texts resembles a form of art. The purpose of this piece is to produce stylistically Geertzian ethnographic accounts completely separated from accompanying theoretical analysis, effectively mimicking an artist’s presentation of his or her work, where a set of pieces whose depth and form is initially interpreted by the audience. Further guidance is provided by an artist’s statement. The following essay consists of four literary accounts, with a statement that explains these accounts in abstraction but does not allude to them. However, the progression of the analysis closely follows the events, reflections, and revelations of the accounts.
300, for my safety
“300 times.”
“Three hundred times?” My verbal reaction lasted two seconds. My mind would dwell over the estimation for far longer. Great Britain was a leading advocate of the preventative force of CCTV surveillance, and London, her greatest city, was riddled with cameras. A typical stroll through the downtown area of the city would yield the London law enforcers – or whoever else was concerned – three hundred animated mugshots of me. Pulling at the front door of Notre Dame’s student center in London, I produced an empty doorframe that quickly filled with the atmosphere of downtown London: air, a bit of pollution, and a lot of surveillance. Inhaling the mixture, I step outside. 1.
12. The student center is conveniently located across the street from the symbolic Trafalgar Square. The Nash-designed square eventually became the center of London while holding the role of the only large, open public gathering place in the city. I strode across the square to admire Admiral Nelson, 43 wondering if CCTV was gazing at the historic amputee that saved the Empire from Napoleon. Uninspired by Nelson’s naval genius, I broke away 68 from the sight to comb the Strand for a wine seller. To prepare for the potential conversation when I did find a wine shop, I peered at my now-unfolded notebook paper bearing the scribbling of a New York Times best cheap wine list. I nearly bumped into a Londonite in my distracted state, and apologized midstride 84. Squinting down the road 95, I saw some possibilities 100.
Over the next half-mile I entered and exited three different wine shops 150 and two liquor stores 195. Other than a 2005 bottle of red wine from the Beaujolais region, little success befell my quest. Alas, the list read that the 2006 harvest was the real bargain of value. I bought the bottle regardless, and it was time to head back to the student center. London was an unfamiliar city; naturally I took an unfamiliar route to Trafalgar Square 245 avoiding the dreadful repetition of backtracking. From Trafalgar Square, a self-designated landmark of familiarity, I quickly returned 254 to the awaiting indoors of the student center.
My arrival was met with everyday, shallow inquiry.
“How was your walk?”
“Oh, pretty good. 250, 260 maybe.”
“What?”
I looked away from the question and out the nearest window to see a building adjacent to the student center. An excellent vantage point. 255.
The most dangerous photograph I’ve ever taken
From my old house on Ka’onohi Street, Aiea, O’ahu, Hawai’i (living on an island creates problems with location names: street, city, island, state), I can see Pearl Harbor. The rise and fall of the tide brings various warships of the United States Navy to port; a battleship is no atypical sight to an Aiea denizen. Rarely, the ocean current tugs in a truly atypical sight, but it certainly does happen.
I’m not sure why Pearl Harbor was named Pearl Harbor. I can make a couple guesses. Guess one: there were a lot of oysters in the harbor at some point. Guess two: the harbor was given its name in 2006, when the United States parked its 280-foot X-Band Radar system in its waters. The unit is critical to the missile defense of the Pacific theater. Resting atop the structure is a mammoth pearly white sphere, likely housing the radar’s innards. I was very curious, and above all I wanted a picture.
Taking a photograph of anything in Pearl Harbor is easily said, and easily done. It is largely exposed, and conveniently situated at its shore is a park two miles from my house. I packed up my gear and drove straight to the park. Parking is no problem; the place is empty. Sitting in my car, I fastened a telephoto lens onto my digital SLR camera. Stepping outside, I aim, focus, and… freeze.
I stopped mid shot. Lines upon lines of discussion about photographer’s rights spurred by recent arrests scrolled in front of my eyes. Photographers were being harassed by the police over taking pictures of bridges, what would happen if I were caught pointing my lens at a critical component of an anti-ballistic missile system? I looked around. There were a few joggers on the park’s paths. Could they be watching? I quickly lifted the viewfinder to my eye, snapped two quick pictures of the radar, and hurried back to my car. I left, physically unscathed but worrying in my mind. I’ve taken over 12,000 photographs over the past five years, and none were remotely as dangerous.
Security checkpoints and fasten your seatbelts
15 minutes. 20 minutes. Time ticks as I wait in line. I actively make estimations of how much longer in my mind nearly subconsciously; only in impatient boredom does the process bubble into consciousness. Boarding pass and identification card in hand, there is little else to serve as a distraction beside the careful observation of the airport security screening process before me. The possible future airplane passenger waits apprehensively at a floor-drawn line for the signal. The security guard notions the sheepish traveler forward. Still intimidated, the terrorist scuttles through the metal-detecting-identity-changing doorway, emerging as just another person who is a threat to no one. I breathe a sigh of relief as the cleansing process continues to efficiently ensure my safety. I unconfidently step through the doorway, unsure if I am a terrorist. I materialize from the opposite end without hearing the “beep” and take my bombless weaponless bags from the conveyor, reflecting upon the immediate evidence that I am innocuous.
After the standard slumber at the airport gate, I allow myself to be herded in yet another queue. But this queue is different, because I know that everyone is innocuous. Eventually, I am shuffling down the airplane’s crowded aisle. I sit at my designated seat, and in a fit of déjà vu, exhale a sigh of relief. The plane takes off. Two hours into the flight, the fasten seatbelts symbol lights up, preceded by the trademark “something is about to happen” airplane tone. The pilot’s voice sprawls out of the intercom unintelligibly, the message’s clarity lost in some form of user error. An articulate Samuel L. Jackson repeats the pilot’s warning, commanding the passengers to “hold onto your butts.” The plane shakes violently in the turbulent air, jarring loose the illusion of safety I had in my head. I became overwhelmed and confused as the plane fell apart around me, then reassembled itself when turbulent air turned to smooth, safe flying air. I settle into my seat, and breathe a sigh of relief.
To all employees customers: employees must wash their hands
Scrubbing gently, I clean my hands using the coffee shop’s provided soap. The bathroom is small but unsullied, with a single large picture frame on one wall whose advertisement is changed when Starbuck’s needs to market a new drink. Above the sink are a mirror and a plastic sign adorned with one-inch letters that read, “Employees must wash their hands before returning to work.” A quality establishment, I thought to myself. They remind their employees to wash their hands.
My hands washed, I made a move to exit the bathroom. Opening the door, I glanced at the mirror. Startlingly, the reflection showed a Starbuck’s employee. I furiously raised one arm and waved my hand left and right. The reflection reverted back to an image of the person before it. I left, puzzled, but ready to order a coffee.
Arriving at the register, I could not turn my eyes away from the hands of the people serving me. Those are clean hands, I assured myself, the sign told me exactly what employees did before returning to work from the bathroom. I purchased my coffee and sat down at a table that just happened to be a chess board. I sipped quietly from my cup. The coffee was warming, and above all, clean.
Statement
The Foucauldian notion of the social panopticon is an adaptation of the Bentham panopticon – an architectural design – that shifts the concept from prison surveillance to an “all seeing” state overseer (Dobson & Fischer 2007: 307). Power relationships in totalitarian regimes revealed themselves under the theoretical framework of panoptical control. Left unexplained was how state power could propagate itself so strongly among the people of society as a group, eventually solidifying itself in the consciousness of the individual. Applying Michael Taussig’s culture of terror to panoptical control yields a model that explains the pervasiveness and raw power of visible and invisible surveillance among a population. Taussig asked the question of the “colonial reality:” how did so few colonists dominate a massive population of Africans with such efficiency (Taussig 2002: 173)? The modern question reads: how does the state and its institutions, arguably a minority by number, assert a panoptic dominance among a large population?
Constructing a culture of terror among the people is an essential aspect of panoptic control. The thought of control permeates deep into the conscious and subconscious, becoming inexorably tangled with the pseudo-normalcy of everyday life. This panoptic inspection, the awareness that a person is always being watched, is inescapable (Strub 1989: 42). But traditional descriptions of totalitarianism rarely stray far from a top-down model (Malby 2005: 663), with state institutions twisting the dials and pushing the buttons of societal control. When considering the culture of terror, it is revealed that the intrusive fear of panoptic control is deposited in a top-down manner, but propagates itself horizontally. People are molded into agents of panoptic control as individuals question each other’s motives, and the very reality of the quotidian. At the height of the culture of terror’s influence, agents of panoptic control are created within the consciousness of the individual, eventually manifesting as debilitating paranoia.
The framework of the panopticon can be divided into two parts of which equality is unimportant: the -panopticon and the +panopticon. The -panopticon weaves the blanketing culture of terror in the population. The success of the surveillance agents in maintaining the culture of terror is the outwardly projected illusion of security, the +panopticon. The realms of surveillance and established security are visibly asserted, and both lend to the hegemony of the panopticon. The illusion of security can be presented as a distortion of Taussig’s colonial mirror. In the panoptic, pseudomirror, feigned notions of security are sometimes indirect, yet made tangible when deflected onto the fooled subject. With panopticism already penetrated deep into the mind of the controlled, there is little room in the consciousness for anything but the shallow analysis of deceptive signs.
The first stages of a society progressing into a culture of terror are marked by subtle wrinkles in the perceived reality of the state’s citizens. Actions and events that constitute normalcy are impeded by the perversion of the truth by minor paranoia. Hesitation preceding even habitual action occurs, and the rhythm of the quotidian is disrupted ever so slightly. The +panopticon and the -panopticon simultaneously work to gray the region between the visible and the invisible, until a thin veil of morning fog forms a perpetual doubt about what is real.
References Cited
Dobson, Jerome E., and Peter F. Fisher
2007 The Panopticon’s Changing Geography. Geographical Review 97(3):307-323.
Strub, Harry
1989 The Theory of Panoptical Control: Bentham’s Panopticon and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 25(1):40-59.
Taussig, Michael
2002 Culture of Terror: Space of Death. The Anthropology of Politics: Ethnography, Theory and Critique: 172-186.
Walby, Kevin
2005 Open-Street Camera Surveillance and Governance in Canada. Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice 47(4):655-683.
