The Potential of Leaks: Mediation, Materiality, and Incontinent Domains
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THE POTENTIAL OF LEAKS: MEDIATION, MATERIALITY, AND INCONTINENT DOMAINS ALYSSE VERONA KUSHINSKI A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO AUGUST 2019 © Alysse Kushinski, 2019 ABSTRACT Leaks appear within and in between disciplines. While the vernacular implications of leaking tend to connote either the release of texts or, in a more literal sense, the escape of a fluid, the leak also embodies more poetic tendencies: rupture, release, and disclosure. Through the contours of mediation, materiality, and politics this dissertation traces the notion of “the leak” as both material and figurative actor. The leak is a difficult subject to account for—it eludes a specific discipline, its meaning is fluid, and its significance, always circumstantial, ranges from the entirely banal to matters of life and death. Considering the prevalence of leakiness in late modernity, I assert that the leak is a dynamic agent that allows us to trace the ways that actors are entangled. To these ends, I explore several instantiations of “leaking” in the realms of media, ecology, and politics to draw connections between seemingly disparate subjects. Despite leaks’ threatening consequences, they always mark a change, a transformation, a revelation. The leak becomes a means through which we can challenge ourselves to reconsider the (non)functionality of boundaries—an opening through which new possibilities occur, and imposed divisions are contested. However, the leak operates simultaneously as opportunity and threat—it is always a virtual agent, at once stagnant and free flowing. Belying its figurative possibilities, the materiality of the leak is central to this project. Material in both philosophical and Marxist senses, leaking imbricates matter and actors in constellations of relations that bear potential in helping us comprehend a wide range of concerns. It is to these ends that I argue leaks provide both effective and affective means for performing interdisciplinarity. This project insists that whether they take form as data, images, crude oil, bodily fluids, or slips of the tongue, leaks share the same origin in logics of containment. In interrogating these logics of containment, I ii assert the potential in letting leak, a mode through which difference is not collapsed, but rather no longer policed. iii DEDICATION For those who have suffered within boundary spaces, while contesting and crossing borders, and in their resistance of barriers. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project has been supported by numerous people, most significantly by Andrew Merrill, whose partnership and encouragement has sustained my ability to envisage and complete this work. I want to extend my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Shannon Bell for her unwavering support of my ideas and to Steve Bailey and Janine Marchessault, my thesis committee members, for helping me see this project through. My examination committee members, Will Straw and Mary Bunch, provided me with generous and thoughtful feedback that I will take with me as I consider the future development of this work. I would also like to thank Anne MacLennan for preparing me for an incredibly fulfilling PhD experience, Marc Couroux whose course inspired the paper that eventually transformed into this dissertation, and to Sheryl Lightfoot for encouraging my pursuit of graduate school when it had not yet crossed my mind. I owe a great deal of thanks to my colleagues, Carmen Victor and Jonathan Petrychyn especially. Further, I would like to thank Tiffany Sia and Andrew Vaterlaus-Staby of Speculative Place for residency, discussion, and inspiration while I was working on this project in Hong Kong. I owe incredible thanks to my family: Wendy, Vera, Betty Anne, Kate, Gary, and Lenù, as well as to my kin, Heather, Gillian, and Nick. Thank you to those who encouraged my wellbeing throughout this process, Andrea and Sara in particular. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii Dedication ..................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 Defining the Leak .............................................................................................................. 1 Tracing the Leak .............................................................................................................. 15 Chapter 2: Leaky Mediation ........................................................................................................ 24 Media as “In-between” .................................................................................................... 26 Communication as Failure ............................................................................................... 34 Technology, Networks …................................................................................................. 37 Analogue and Digital Leaks ............................................................................................. 47 The Pentagon Papers ............................................................................................ 51 Cablegate............................................................................................................... 56 Material Differences ........................................................................................................ 60 The Newspaper ..................................................................................................... 65 The Data Dump ..................................................................................................... 73 Leaky Affects ....................................................................................................... 82 The Leak-Image/Leaked Image ....................................................................................... 89 Chapter 3: Political Realities of Leaks ......................................................................................... 98 Defining Politics ............................................................................................................ 100 Structures of Politics ...................................................................................................... 109 Sites of Politics .............................................................................................................. 113 Late Modernity ................................................................................................... 114 Territoriality ....................................................................................................... 117 Presidential Leakiness .................................................................................................... 126 Making Politics Legible ................................................................................................. 137 Legislating Leaks ............................................................................................... 138 Visualizing Capital ............................................................................................. 144 Situating Leaks ……....................................................................................................... 154 Leaky Borders .................................................................................................... 154 The Port City ...................................................................................................... 160 Assembling Leaks .............................................................................................. 170 Chapter 4: Materializing Leaks .................................................................................................. 176 Contesting the Modern Body .......................................................................................... 179 “New” Materialisms ....................................................................................................... 191 Ecologies of Relations .................................................................................................... 200 Rematerializing Leaks .................................................................................................... 210 vi Ensuring Leaking ................................................................................................ 212 Pipeline Ecologies .............................................................................................. 239 Chapter 5: Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 259 (Re)Theorizing the Leak ...............................................................................................