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Seeing and Being Seen: Toward a Liberal Democratic Theory of Spectatorship

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Seeing and Being Seen: Toward a Liberal Democratic Theory of Spectatorship SEEING AND BEING SEEN: TOWARD A LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF SPECTATORSHIP A Dissertation submitted to the FaCulty of the Graduate SChool of Arts and SCiences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Government By Kristen Rose Collins, M.A. Washington, DC July 26, 2019 Copyright 2019 by Kristen Rose Collins All Rights Reserved ii SEEING AND BEING SEEN: TOWARD A LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF SPECTATORSHIP Kristen Rose Collins, M.A. Thesis Advisor: RiChard A. Boyd, Ph.D. ABSTRACT Digital media provides us with many ways of satisfying our desires to see and be seen. DemocratiC theorists have introduced Concepts such as “audience democraCy,” “ocular power,” and “speCtatorship” to emphasize the experiences of watChing in contemporary politiCs. Can the people exert power over politiCal leaders simply by watChing them, or are speCtators subjeCt to the power of those they watCh? How can we understand the Conundrum that being seen Can be potentially oppressive to an individual, who is subjeCted to the sCrutiny of the watCher, but also empowering, as those on the publiC stage influence what is seen and how they are seen? DemocratiC theorists have focused on the people’s experiences as speCtators of their politiCal leaders, with little consideration of the people’s experiences of being seen. By Conceptualizing speCtatorship as a socially embedded and dual-ended process that affeCts both those who see and those who are seen, I examine the ways various forms of inequalities – social, eConomiC, and politiCal – may shape experiences of being seen. I turn to the works of Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, and Adam Smith to show how ideas about seeing and being seen have been a part of ideas about representative government and liberalism for centuries and Can illuminate contemporary ethiCal and politiCal questions about aCCountability, media, privaCy, and surveillance. EaCh thinker brings into focus a different perspeCtive: the state seeing its subjeCts and controlling what they see, the democratiC citizens overseeing the state, and individuals observing eaCh other. I attend to partiCular epistemiC, iii psychologiCal, and affeCtive aspeCts of speCtatorship while also highlighting how inequalities mediate such experiences. WatChing can be an experience of subjeCtion for speCtators, but they Can also aCtively make moral and politiCal judgments. The power of politiCal leaders can be exaCerbated by their enjoyment of an audience, whereas unjust publiC sCrutiny can be disproportionately direCted toward the vulnerable. I argue the people’s abilities to influence the images of politiCs that all see as well as their autonomy to control the terms of their appearances to others are crucial components of liberal democratiC speCtatorship. iv Acknowledgements I am thankful for the Collegial environment and financial support provided by Georgetown University’s Department of Government. Thanks to my advisor, RiChard Boyd, I have learned much about how to embraCe original insights and develop an argument bigger than the sum of its parts. Conversations with Joshua Cherniss inspired this projeCt. I am thankful for not only his sCholarly expertise but also his admirable capaCity for sympathy for the different diffiCulties of the research process. The important questions that Bruce Douglass has asked me throughout my career have deepened this projeCt and improved my sense of my sCholarly Commitments. Still more faCulty such as Nolan Bennett, Loubna El Amine, and Shannon Stimson have also helped me beCome a better researcher. SCholars like Gianna Englert and Paula Ganga helped me see a clearer path ahead. I am grateful for many friends, but espeCially Nikhil Kalyanpur, whose support and aCuity Could get me out of a writing rut in five minutes. My chapter on Adam Smith has benefitted from disCussions with the partiCipants of the Georgetown PolitiCal Theory Speaker Series, MPSA 2018 conference (espeCially Ruth Abbey), APT 2018 conference, and University of Pennsylvania’s Andrea MitChell Center for the Study of DemocraCy’s Graduate Student Workshop, (espeCially Jeffrey Green). I am also grateful to Virgil Storr’s feedbaCk on material from same chapter and the other intelleCtual relationships I’ve developed through the Adam Smith Fellowship program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. My long-time friends and family have illustrated how intimaCy and vulnerability provide strong foundations for philosophical inquiry. I am thankful for the love Jonathan, Jesse, and Prathima, and Kiran, have always given me, as they have helped make me who I am. My father nurtured my interests in justiCe and community, encouraging me at every step. Countless v Conversations with my mother have helped me find my voiCe, given me the confidence to express it, and shown me the radiCal power in Compassion. My partner, Eugene Steinberg, has embraCed my ambitions as though they were his own, and his unwavering faith in my abilities sustains me. vi DediCated to my parents, Rosemarie Wronka and Thomas F. Collins, Jr. vii Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction: The Rise of Audience DemocraCy ............................................................ 1 Chapter 2 Thomas Hobbes on the Powers of the Audience .......................................................... 37 Chapter 3 Jeremy Bentham’s DemocratiC Inversion of the PanoptiCon ....................................... 80 Chapter 4 Adam Smith on How Inequality Distorts SpeCtatorship ............................................ 126 Chapter 5 Conclusion: Toward a Liberal DemocratiC ApproaCh to SpeCtatorship ..................... 181 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 211 viii Chapter 1 Introduction: The Rise of Audience Democracy “I’m going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will beCome.” – Jean-Paul Sartre1 “Someone who has never refleCted cannot be clement, or just, or pitying; nor Can he be wiCked and vindiCtive. He who imagines nothing feels only himself; in the midst of mankind he is alone.”– Jean-JaCques Rousseau2 In the spring of 2001, George Kateb proposed that the teChnologiCal development of expansive data colleCtion and surveillance, though motivated by various purposes that did not include “total domination,” could beCome “irreversibly tyranniCal” as the result of a single “trauma,” a warning resembling propheCy to those concerned about the expansion of AmeriCan domestiC surveillance programs after 9/11.3 Before that violent speCtaCle rendered fear and 1 Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays. New York: Vintage Books, 1958, 21. 2 Jean-JaCques Rousseau, “Essay on the Origins of Languages,” in The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. ViCtor GourevitCh, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1997, 247-299, 268 3 Neil A. Lewis, “After Sept. 11, a Little-Known Court Has a Greater Role,” The New York Times, May 3, 2002, seC. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/03/us/after-sept-11-a-little- known-Court-has-a-greater-role.html; EriC LiChtblau, “House Votes for a Permanent Patriot ACt,” The New York Times, July 22, 2005, seC. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/22/politiCs/house-votes-for-a-permanent-patriot-aCt.html; NiCole Perlroth, Jeff Larson, and SCott Shane, “N.S.A. Able to Foil BasiC Safeguards of PrivaCy on Web,” The New York Times, September 5, 2013, seC. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html; Charlie Savage, Eileen Sullivan, and NiCholas Fandos, “House Extends Surveillance Law, RejeCting New PrivaCy Safeguards,” The New York Times, OCtober 30, 2018, seC. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/us/politiCs/fisa-surveillance-Congress-trump.html; Charlie Savage, “Disputed N.S.A. Phone Program Is Shut Down, Aide Says,” The New York Times, March 5, 2019, seC. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politiCs/nsa-phone-reCords- program-shut-down.html. 1 seCurity the obvious justifiCations for saCrifiCes of privaCy, however, Kateb claimed society was already marked by a “loss of appetite” for privaCy.4 AmeriCan democratiC culture intensifies “human sociality” towards partiCular behaviors: friendliness and openness even among strangers, exhibitionism, and a craving of “audiences that are larger and grander than oneself,” in order to fulfill a desire for “the aesthetiCized reality of one’s self.”5 Yet the culture that Kateb desCribes resonates with Adam Smith’s centuries old desCription of commercial society. Smith desCribes how members of a commercial society “Converse with the openness of friends,” resulting in a “frank, open, and sincere” civil society (Theory of Moral Sentiments, V.2.10-11, 207-208). Such openness is the product of individuals seeking to improve their social status all out of the desire “to be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notiCe of with sympathy” (I.iii.2.2, 50). The desire for attention, however, is inextriCably linked to a corresponding “pleasure” derived in “seeing” the “happiness” of others, with whiCh Smith begins his treatise (I.i.1.1, 9). With this desire, Smith suggests an answer to Kateb’s rhetoriCal question about what drives the development of teChnologiCal systems capable of surveillance: the desire “to penetrate into eaCh other’s bosoms, and to observe the sentiments and affeCtions whiCh really subsist there” (VII.iv.28, 337). But aCknowledgement of the twin desires to see and to be
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