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Something Changed? Imaginaries of Surveillance and (In)security in Transatlantic Science Fiction Novels in the Decade after 9/11
No full textBased on a formally sampled survey of 120 post-9/11 transatlantic science fiction (SF) novels in English published between 2002–2011 inclusive, and a thematic reading of thirty-eight of these works, this paper analyses the place and treatment of surveillance and security in the culture of Empire. The paper identifies several important post-9/11 interventions in SF and argues that, in comparison to some of the weak mainstream literary work on 9/11 and the Long War, SF has produced some of the bleakest and most insightful responses. However, it also argues that there is a clear transatlantic division between the critical, sharp, and cynical work being produced by British SF authors and the predominantly nostalgic, militaristic, or techno-utopian responses of North American SF authors. It concludes with some reflections not just on the place of post-9/11 surveillance and security in SF but on the continuing relevance of SF to critical surveillance and security studies, and in broader social terms
Of Resurrection and Surveillance: Politics and Imaginaries of Literary Heritage in Early Pahlavi Iran
No full textThis article examines how modern ideas about and experiences with surveillance were formed in twentieth-century Iran by close reading and contextualizing the first modern science fiction in Persian literature, written by ‘Abd al-Ḥosayn San’atizāda in 1937 in Iran. This novella, Rostam in the Twenty-second Century, is a humorous commentary on the emerging modern surveillance in Pahlavi Iran. This article analyses the novella’s narrative strategies as a lens into the formation of Pahlavi surveillance. It begins by outlining the rudimental development of a surveillance regime as the state increasingly sought to monitor and control the public sphere, regulating not only people’s appearance and behavior but also their understanding of the past and their collective memory. Drawing from media theory, this state-based development is conceptualized as “surveillance dispositive,” which aims to detail how the Pahlavi state apparatus remediated and enforced a new national literary heritage as a strategy to observe and control the Iranian populations. The article then examines how this surveillance dispositif shaped emerging social experiences with state supervision and control. Drawing on surveillance studies and taking the novella as the primary object of analysis, it invokes the concept of the “surveillance imaginary” to elucidate how Iranian society grappled with a new condition of being watched under the Pahlavi surveillance regime. The novella is shown to diagram a narrative abstraction that reveals the relationship between the surveillance dispositif and its corresponding imaginary
Hearing Things: Gloria Naylor’s 1996, Havana Syndrome, and the Acousmatic Fantasy
No full textIn 1996, Gloria Naylor (2005) recounts a traumatic encounter with the surveillance state, one that begins with sonic harassment but ends with psychological instability. Uncertain what voices fill her mind, Naylor composes what she calls a fictionalized memoir, in which she projects the paranoia of surveillance onto the unstable medium of narrative voice. The indignity of “hearing things,” which features prominently in Naylor’s story, evokes a critical tradition that ranges from Eve Sedgwick’s (1997) theorization of paranoia to Joseph Masco and Lisa Wedeen’s (2024) more recent reimagination of “conspiracy/theory.” Although this interdisciplinary body of scholarship has established the indelibly literary demeanor of the surveilled life, it has yet to address hearing things as a fundamental problem of the digital world. As this essay argues, 1996 contests state surveillance not by reciprocating the data-collection process, but through fantasies of mystery voices and unverifiable—that is, acousmatic—sounds. The second section of this essay contends that increasingly ubiquitous and imperceptible surveillance technologies have made Naylor’s narrative strategy even more essential today. In 2016, American diplomats began to report hearing inexplicable noises as well as an array of neurological symptoms that news media have come to name Havana Syndrome. The diplomats’ government agencies largely dismissed their symptoms, and the experience of hearing things fell outside the procedures of clinical medicine, leading many to rehabilitate their minds through aesthetic means. This essay links the provocative narrative form of 1996 with the art therapies at Walter Reed Medical Center, before forecasting Naylor’s influence on the emerging counter-surveillant practices of the digital age
Under the Gaze of Ra: Surveillance and Subjection in Sonallah Ibrahim’s The Committee and Basma Abdel Aziz’s The Queue
No full textThis paper examines how surveillance socially controls individuals and designates them as subjects in Sonallah Ibrahim’s The Committee (2001) and Basma Abdel Aziz’s The Queue (2016b), employing surveillance studies and Louis Althusser’s (1971) theory of state apparatuses—focusing equally on both repressive state apparatuses (RSAs) and ideological state apparatuses (ISAs)—and concept of interpellation as its theoretical framework. In The Committee, interpellation is enforced through the state apparatuses; characters internalize their being under the constant gaze of the State and develop a kind of self-discipline that ensures their automatic conformity to the dominant ideology. Similarly, The Queue portrays the effects of social control and surveillance on individuals. The queue becomes a symbol of the complete subjection of the people to the almost incomprehensible dictates of the authoritarian regime. By analyzing the dynamics of power and the interplay of surveillance and/by the state apparatuses in these two novels, this paper demonstrates how surveillance operates as a powerful mechanism of social control, shaping individual consciousness and behavior in profound ways. It highlights the enduring relevance of surveillance studies in understanding the complex relationship between the power of the gaze and individual subjection in contemporary societies
Evgenii Kharitonov and the Aesthetics of Sousveillance
No full textThis article analyzes the fiction of the Russian author Evgenii Kharitonov through the lens of Steve Mann’s (2013) theorization of “sousveillance” and Édouard Glissant’s (2010) conception of the right to opacity. As a gay man and dissident writer, Kharitonov was under observation by the KGB throughout his life, and his stories frequently confront the inherent violence of homophobic surveillance in the Soviet Union. However, this article demonstrates how Kharitonov actively resists Soviet surveillance by drawing attention to the performance of gay invisibility that it enforces and challenging the implicit conceptions of homosexuality that it entails. Through a close reading of several short stories from his collection, Under House Arrest [Pod domashnim arestom] (1998), I argue that Kharitonov’s stories use strategies of sousveillance to explore the opaque spaces where gay communities could exist outside the visibility and conceptual legibility of official surveillance
Speaking the Unspeakable: Silence Under Surveillance in Two Chinese Science Fiction Stories
No full textHow do people negotiate their agency while they are deeply entangled with the reality filtered or revised by the authorities via pervasive surveillance? How does science fiction, or literature in general, identify the issue and stage the confrontation between the watchers and the watched? This paper discusses the politics of silence under surveillance in two Chinese science fiction (SF) stories, Ma Boyong’s “The City of Silence” (2005) and Zhang Ran’s “Ether” (2012). Placing the texts in the trajectory of Chinese SF’s critical reflection of and intervention into social reality, I argue that the two SF stories speak out the unspeakable, literarily and metaphorically, thematically and aesthetically. The unspeakable means a state of being silent due to the probing eyes and ears of technology. In narrative, the stories delineate how silence is imposed and employed as a rejection to the pervasive eyes and ears. While it is a matter of disempowerment, not letting the surveillant hear also disrupts the power of surveillance. In aesthetics, science fiction is a genre that speaks out within the system, in which non-conformist/different voices are silenced. To speak or not speak, hide or not hide, disguise or not disguise: such dilemmas bring up ethical and moral challenges as surveillance is legitimized and normalized
“Mazing the Minotaur Back”: Subjectivity, Agency, and Counter-Surveillance in Ali Smith’s How to Be Both (2014)
No full textThis article discusses the formal choices and strategies adopted by Scottish author Ali Smith in her novel How to Be Both (2014) to contribute to our understanding of contemporary surveillance practices, delve into the complexities of subjective experiences of surveillance—especially in its gendered aspects—and explore the possibility of agency and resistance. Such strategies include mobilizing seemingly outdated genres, adopting a non-linear narrative structure that produces a defamiliarizing effect, and drawing on modes such as humour and irony. When the novel appeared in 2014, Edward Snowden’s revelations on mass state surveillance were very much on readers’ minds. How to Be Both addresses the challenges raised by the scandal in terms of representation and conceptualization by drawing on generic resources such as the spy novel or the film noir, developing a subplot around one of the protagonists’ deceased mother, who may or may not have been spied upon in connection with her political activism. But the novel also goes beyond the immediate context of the Snowden revelations by following the mourning daughter in whose daily life surveillance is deeply imbricated. Through their subjective experiences, the novel raises unsettling—and deliberately unsettled—questions about the entanglement of surveillance with desire, the longing for recognition and interpersonal connections, and the possibility of forms of counter-surveillance that articulate the individual and collective levels, and that are playfully referred to as “mazing the minotaur back.
Book Review: Inside Public-Sector Innovation - How Local Governments Put Ideas into Action
No full textColoniality and Decolonial Alternatives in Brazilian Higher Music Education
No full textThe colonization process in Brazil, which started in 1500 and ended officially in 1822, still has a strong influence on Brazilian music education. Thus, music education in Brazil is majoritarian based on colonial traits, as evidenced by several studies in this context. On the other hand, currently, innovative and creative alternatives have been tested and implemented in several institutions of music education aimed at building decolonial perspectives for music teaching. At this juncture, this paper presents the results of a research project conducted in music undergraduate programs of the 30 most prominent universities in the country. The study was carried out from February 2021 to December 2023. The general research goal was to understand traits of coloniality in higher music education and identify decolonial alternatives implemented in undergraduate programs in Brazil to surpass, in some way, the colonial reality in music teaching and learning in this universe. Qualitative research supported the study, encompassing bibliographical and documentary methods. The results showed two main traits of coloniality: the dominance of Western classical musical canons and the maintenance of the curriculum course-based-disciplinary designs as the only option for curricular structuring. However, the findings also identified several decolonial alternatives that, even embryonically, have built creative and innovative strategies to teach music in higher education
Effects of Movement on Ensembles’ Performance of March Tempo Stability
No full textPerformance tempi and tempi variations within a musical genre have been widely investigated. The purpose of this study was to explore potential variations in tempo and rubato depending on whether the performance was created while the performers were sitting in a concert setting or marching while they performed. Rhythmic aspects of four performances of four different marches were examined. Two of the performances of each march were in a concert setting, and two were in a marching setting. Findings indicated that performances of the marches in a concert setting were performed at a significantly faster tempo than those being performed while marching. Patterns of tempo change were similar across marches from section to section for bands performing in concert. Patterns of tempo change were also similar across marches from section to section for bands performing while marching. However, there were some substantive differences between the timings of sections for bands sitting and those marching. Most of these noted tempo changes were very slight. Instances of rubato were present in all performances and were fairly idiosyncratic. However, in the places in the music where there were the largest changes in timing in the concert performances, there were also changes in the marching performances. Further, the changes in both settings were in the same direction and with just about the same magnitude of tempo change. These results, while far from conclusive, raise some interesting questions regarding ensemble performance practices