THE RHETORIC OF DESIRING-SURVEILLANCE IN THE AGE OF ELECTRACY By SCOTT SUNDVALL A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1 © 2016 Scott Sundvall 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank, first and foremost, my dissertation director and mentor, the Sage, the Wizard, Gregory Ulmer, whose work inspired my research long before I arrived in Florida and motivated me to apply to and attend the University of Florida. I also thank my wife, Katherine Fredlund, for her unconditional support (in various capacities) during my doctoral work, especially when we had to live apart for several years. I want to also thank my family for understanding the worthiness of an intellectual pursuit in the Humanities. I thank my dissertation committee—and Laurie Gries in particular—for their mentorship and assistance in my professional development. Last, but not certainly not least, I thank my colleagues, especially as I am beyond fortunate to have so many that I could never list them all. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………..3 LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………..6 ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………..8 CHAPTER 1 OPERATIC INTRODUCTION, OR, PLEASE BE SEATED………………………….9 (Another Boring) Program (To Be Tossed)……………………………………………..9 Actors and Production Staff and Crew……………………………………….....12 Summary of Chapters/Acts……………………………………………………...12 Overture: A Death, Perhaps a Suicide, and the Rhetoric of How We Mourned…….…..15 Overture, Part One: Electracy ……………………………….………………….15 Overture, Part Two: Rhetoric and Composition………………………………...20 Overture, Part Three: Schizoanalysis………………………………….………..26 Overture, Part Four: Surveillance…………………………………….……........33 Overture, Part Five: Subjectivity………………………………………………..39 2 ACT 1: BECOMING-LAS MENINAS: THE RELATIONAL BIRTH OF MODERN SUBJECTIVITY, DESIRE-AESTHETICS, AND THE RHETORICAL LOGIC OF SURVEILLANCE……………………………………………………………………………...49 Surveillance in Mezzo-Soprano…………………………………………....……….….50 Surveillance in Opera Seria……………………………………………………………52 Tenor……………………………………………….……………....…….…….52 Countertenor……………………………………………………….…………..55 Surveillance Aria…………………………………………………….………...60 Vibrato…………………….………………………………….……......60 Portamento…………………………………………………….……….62 Vibrato Redux …………………...…………………………….…….…65 Cadenza: Strategies…………………………………………….………70 3 ACT 2: THE FANTASY AND RHETORIC OF FEAR: THE PARANOIAC TENDENCY OF DESIRING-SURVEILLANCE………………………………………….…77 Surveillance in Basso Profundo…………………………………………..…………...77 Cabaletta: The Magic of Paranoia and Social Media Platforms……………………....86 4 Recitativo: Electrate Paranoia………………………………………..……………....92 Consuming the Rhetoric of Paranoia: COPS and America’s Most Wanted…………………………………………………………………......…92 Appropriating Paranoiac Desiring-Surveillance: “If You See Something, Say Something”………………………………………………..……………..98 The Fascist We Desire, Deserve: Dredd………………………...………..….105 Surveillance Diva: Becoming-Brand in the Age of Electracy…………….…..…..…109 Surveillance in Bel Canto: Desire-Aesthetics against Subject-Ethics…..……………117 4 ACT 3: THREE RHETORICAL FIGURES, OR, TO SCHIZ THE PARANOIAC FACE OF RHETORIC AND WRITING STUDIES IN THE AGE OF ELECTRACY…….......….122 Canzone: After This Rhetoric, There Will Be This Other Rhetoric Which Came Before, Which We Think Should Come After(,) Now………………………………..…..….122 Supernumerary: The Electeur: The Rhetoric of Walking in Digital Space without a Face……………………………………………………………………….………..127 Helden: (E)choro: Heuretic Heretic……………………………………..….………..138 Prima Donna, Trouser Role: The Aumateur: The Everyday Rhetorical Artist…..…..151 5 FINALE: SURVEILLANT MONTAGE AND THE RHETORIC THEREIN…..…..164 Introduction: Beginning of the End……………………………………………..…….164 Rhetorical Figures: Revue………………………………………………....………….168 Double Aria, One: Paranoid-Critical Method (Another Note on Strategy)….………..172 Double Aria, Two: Rhetorically Escaping into Yourself (Yet Another Note on Strategy)………………………………………………………………………….....…176 Dramaturg: Deleuzians against Deleuzians; Deleuze against Deleuze; for Deleuze……………………………………………………………………......………179 Tessitura: After Media, Within Speculation, before Judgment Day………..…….…..187 Melodrama: The Future of Rhetoric and Technology……………………..………….190 Encore Ensemble: Celebrity Nude Leaks……………………………………………..196 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………….…….…209 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH………………………………………………………………….217 5 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 1-1 Electracy chart……………………………………………………………….18 2-1 Las Meninas…………………………………………………………………52 2-2 Las Meninas and panopticon ……………………………………………….54 2-3 Las Meninas and social media………………………………………………62 2-4 Electracy chart……………………………………………………………....63 2-5 Rhizomatic Las Meninas……………………………………………………65 2-6 Portrait of Pope Innocent X…………………………….…………………..73 2-7 Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X………………………73 2-8 Las Meninas under erasure…………………………………..……………..76 3-1 Wizard of Oz…………………………………...……………………………88 3-2 COPS…………………………………………………………………..……92 3-3 America’s Most Wanted…………………………………………………….94 3-4 Advisory system…………………………………………..………………..99 3-5 If you see something……………………………………………….……….102 3-6 Dredd emblem………………………………………...………….………...106 3-7 Dredd surveillance……………………………………………….………...106 3-8 Nietzschean profile……………………………………………….………...112 3-9 Stealth wear…………………………………………………….…………..120 4-1 The Usual Suspects…………………………………………….……….…..139 4-2 They Live…………………………………………………………...……….151 5-1 Ubiquitous vertical desiring-surveillance…………………………………...169 6 5-2 Ubiquitous horizontal desiring-surveillance……………………………….170 5-3 Nomadic/schizoid desiring-surveillance…………………………………...170 5-4 Classical surveillance……………………….………………………………171 5-5 Modern surveillance………………...………………………………………171 5-6 Electrate surveillance……………………………………………………….171 7 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy THE RHETORIC OF DESIRING-SURVEILLANCE IN THE AGE OF ELECTRACY By Scott Sundvall August 2016 Chair: Gregory Ulmer Major: English This dissertation examines the rhetoric of surveillance as a concept and a practice, and it further uncovers how surveillance modalities can be understood, appropriated, and applied to theories and pedagogies of rhetoric and writing studies. Using Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s schizoanalysis as methodology, my dissertation argues that surveillance is a concept and practice that is desired (desiring-surveillance) rather than something that is or should be resisted. Couched within the context of Gregory Ulmer’s electracy and Victor Vitanza’s desire- aesthetics of the Third Sophistic, and staged with an operatic form, my dissertation considers the historical development and present state of subjectivity and its relationship to surveillance and rhetoric and writing studies. 8 CHAPTER 1 OPERATIC INTRODUCTION, OR, PLEASE BE SEATED (Another Boring) Program (To Be Tossed) …my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying…. —Friedrich Nietzsche This suggests one final approach to the Text, that of pleasure. —Roland Barthes WARNING (FROM THE CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER): Sitting too close to the Entertainment can cause the Entertainment to see you as easily as you can see the Entertainment; you may blur with and into the Entertainment, causing paranoia, self-scrutiny, narcissism, fear and trembling, vertigo. Though you might also enjoy this blurring, causing ecstasy, excess, schizoid leaps, vertigo. With fair warning, we say: either way, “a very good schizo dream. To be fully a part of the crowd and at the same time completely outside it, removed from it: to be on the edge, to take a walk like Virginia Woolf (never again will [you] say, “I am this, I am that).”1 Either way, take a tip from Joe: desire-aesthetics “can get you pretty fucked up.” Do note: any and all violations will be marked on your permanent record, catalogued and stored here. (Yes, right here).2 “Surveillance by the face, as Strindberg said:” We are watching you.3 This opera intends to investigate the intersections of rhetoric and writing studies, electracy, and surveillance. As an initial point of departure, the opera will seek a recovery and rethinking of the term “surveillance” itself (not just what does it mean, but how does it work), its emerging iterations and modalities within the digital institution, and its implications for the 1 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 29. 2 See: Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage (1979). The concept album, appropriated and remixed here as well as in the formative section of all Acts and the Intermission, follows the narrative of Joe, a fledgling rock and roll musician, caught in a dystopic world where music is criminalized. The album opens with, and repeatedly employs, the voice of the Central Scrutinizer to introduce narrative shifts and to give general warnings. 3 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 115. 9 theory, practice, and pedagogy of rhetoric and writing studies. We intend to broaden the concept of “surveillance” beyond its common articulation in terms exclusive to State surveillance (government) and Capital (corporate) surveillance (e.g., data-mining practices often referred to as “dataveillance”)—both of which concern vertical, top-down surveillance modalities—and extend it to everyday electrate