Marx, Windows Into the Soul: Surveillance and Popular Culture, Chapter A
Marx, Windows Into the Soul: Surveillance and Popular Culture, Chapter A Culture and Contexts (intro from printed book) News stories don’t satisfy on a human level. We know that Guantanamo is still open, but do we really know what that means?’ The idea is to experience an emotional understanding, so it’s not just an intellectual abstraction. -Laura Poitras, filmmaker The structure, process and narrative units that make up most of the book rely on language in presenting facts and argument. In contrast, the emphasis in this unit is on forms of artistic expression. .Images and music are one component of the culture of surveillance that so infuses our minds and everyday life. The symbolic materials and meanings of culture are social fabrications (though not necessarily social deceptions). They speak to (and may be intended to create or manipulate) needs, aspirations, and fears. Culture communicates meaning and can express (as well as shape) the shared concerns of a given time period and place. Surveillance technology is not simply applied; it is also experienced by agents, subjects, and audiences who define, judge and have feelings about being watched or a watcher. Our ideas and feelings about surveillance are somewhat independent of the technology per se. As with the devil in Spanish literary tradition (image below) the artist can serve to take the lid off of what is hidden, revealing deeper meanings. Here the artist acts in parallel to the detective and the whistleblower: Marx, Windows Into the Soul: Surveillance and Popular Culture, Chapter A In the original version of the book I divided the cultural materials into two units.
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