Lynne Alice's question suggests that a more genealogical analysis
of photo-power would reveal not just the empirical realities of
its use in surveillance, etc., but also how photo-power became
affiliated with the exercise of governmentality. Technology alone
is only powerful when enfolded into such an exercise. John Berger,
for instance, in _About Looking_, has some splendid essays on
photography, about its disciplinary role in making uniform and
stable through imagery much that was not, for example, "peasant life."
For example, in 1900 in France, all the French mayors were invited to
Paris, and many of the 30,000 of them who came, realized from other
photographs that they had seen, that they had to wear suits, some of
them for the first time. The suit, as a standard of "civilized"
dress, was important to be seen in within the photograph that would
be taken of them. Hence, Berger claims that for the peasant mayors,
the combined cultural hegemony of the suit and the photograph
worked to unify and class-ify them.
Anyway, there's a great deal of theoretization on the uses of
photography, video, police tapes, etc. The point would be to
map out where power and technology find their greatest investments
and mutual enhancements. Why here and not there, why now and
not then, in other words.
Stephen Katz,
Trent University.
of photo-power would reveal not just the empirical realities of
its use in surveillance, etc., but also how photo-power became
affiliated with the exercise of governmentality. Technology alone
is only powerful when enfolded into such an exercise. John Berger,
for instance, in _About Looking_, has some splendid essays on
photography, about its disciplinary role in making uniform and
stable through imagery much that was not, for example, "peasant life."
For example, in 1900 in France, all the French mayors were invited to
Paris, and many of the 30,000 of them who came, realized from other
photographs that they had seen, that they had to wear suits, some of
them for the first time. The suit, as a standard of "civilized"
dress, was important to be seen in within the photograph that would
be taken of them. Hence, Berger claims that for the peasant mayors,
the combined cultural hegemony of the suit and the photograph
worked to unify and class-ify them.
Anyway, there's a great deal of theoretization on the uses of
photography, video, police tapes, etc. The point would be to
map out where power and technology find their greatest investments
and mutual enhancements. Why here and not there, why now and
not then, in other words.
Stephen Katz,
Trent University.