Multitudes
Eurozine
Multitudes
2010-04-08
Abstracts for Multitudes 40 (2010)
Dominique Quessada
"Underveillance"
We can no longer use the terms "Surveillance" and "Control", proposed by Foucault and Deleuze, as if nothing had changed. The "global watch" currently taking shape is no longer organized on the model of visibility but on the model of computability. From a world where behaviours can be seen but not verified, we are evolving into a world of data which can be verified but not pictured. This major change pushes us to propose the term "underveillance" in order to refer to a radically new mode of governmentality.
Éric Sadin
The new paradigm of surveillance and Big Brother does not exist (although he's everywhere)
In an interview in two parts, Éric Sadin analyses the new conditions which make possible the intensification of various techniques devoted to the penetration of our behaviours. These conditions are 1) a sophisticated technological architecture, 2) a geopolitical environment which provides the collection of data with crucial strategic stakes, and 3) marketing techniques which track, compute and guess consumer behaviours. The anthropological, political, social and judicial implications of this tracking, computing and guessing are countless.
Mathieu Potte-Bonneville
Surveillance, control, government: today's DNA
How can one put Foucault's concepts to critical use when confronted with today's forms of surveillance and control? The laws about DNA testing, voted in in France in 2007, provide a suggestive case study. It shows that various techniques, analysed by Foucault in separate contexts and successive periods, are mobilized simultaneously and coordinated within the new forms of control.
Antoinette Rouvroy et Thomas Berns
The new statistical power
Through what forms of normative metabolism does the collection of statistical data shape our policies and everyday lives? Which type of subjects does it produce? How does it govern us? How can one use the resources of the law in relation to these creeping forms of normativity? These are some of the questions raised in this article.
Frédéric Neyrat
Foreword to the societies of clear-sightedness
A continuation of Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control, Frédéric Neyrat attempts to show the emergence of new types of societies, based on the preventive control of time. Irreducible to the techniques of police surveillance, these societies of clear-sightedness rely upon an imaginary of transparency, which must be contested as such, for no society is liveable without obscure corners.
Ariel Kyrou
Hypnosis to come, or: how to use Sci-Fi fables to undo the traps of underveillance
Techniques of underveillance work as automated systems of individualized production of fictions. We are confronted with a new form of control, looking for a well-being perfectly adjusted to the intuitions displayed in Minority Report and in Philip K. Dick's most delightfully paranoid tales. Playing fiction against fiction, Ariel Kyrou analyses how these new tales of security and consumption haunt us in a hypnotic mode. It calls for counter-fictions, in order to inject trouble into this normative alignment of our future.
Nataly Botero
Ironic protests on the walls
Nataly Botero analyses graffiti-stencils, which embezzle their primary iconic sources, and address crucial problems of Colombia's social, political, economic and cultural life. They represent a privileged means of expression to alternative political beliefs for at least three reasons: firstly, they encourage the spectators to take a stand towards the powers in place, piercing attitudes of political neutrality. Secondly, they generate tensions and questionings of the information given by the media, which are surrounded by a halo of quasi-religious truthfulness. Finally, the militant character of this political graffiti allows them to fight against the project of cultural homogenization, characteristic of right-wing governments.
Calderon Cano
La Minga on the move
For a year, various social movements have gathered into a joint organization entitled La Minga. It represents a new process of social mobilization promoted from the ranks of indigenous organizations, renewing in depth the methods and grammars of social struggles in Colombia.
Viveros, Cifuentes
Unfinished rebellion
In this article, the representations of black populations in Colombia, from the colonial period until today are discussed. It focuses on the rights and aspirations of social groups which have never had the opportunity to represent themselves during the process of national construction. It studies the difficulties faced by Afro-Colombians, their struggles and resistance in order to be included as citizens in a hostile context marked by the exacerbation of internal conflict and neoliberal policies.
Andrés Salcedo
Conquest + Colony + Republic = Displacement
Forced displacements of certain social groups have shaped the spatial map of Colombian history, under the colonial, republican and modern regimes. By assigning hierarchies, differences, bio-moral values and thresholds of uniformity and alterity, such displacements have prepared the ground for the development of the armed conflict which continues to this day.
Olivier Alexandre
Cinepathy. Sociogenesis of cinematographic uneasiness
Olivier Alexandre presents in a synthetic fashion the transformations of the French film economy during the past decades. It shows that the recomposition of forces has been multidimensional and complex, leading to a state of unease which emanates simultaneously from the new modes of circulation which regulate the film industry, and from the individualizing attitudes developed by those who live in and from it.