7(2) 2021: Networked Images in Surveillance Capitalism

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The Digital, Capitalist Gaze
Schröter, Jens (2021) , S. 245-264
Today, there are surely more images in circulation and more vis- ibility than ever before. This is due mostly to the diffusion of digital technologies in the context of global capitalism. The following paper undertakes to address this situation by relating the image/visibility to digital technologies and capitalism. The core idea is to analyse this situation on the basis of a theory of the gaze as a theory of the subject’s constitutive visibility. One classical notion of the gaze, as elaborated by Lacan, will be discussed. The latter conceived the subject as always already visible. Being seen or surveilled is not something that happens subsequently to an already constituted subject; instead, it plays its part in forming the subject from the very beginning. This can explain the desire and fascination invested in images today. This approach to the gaze is historically differentiated and related to image technologies. Contrary to Lacan’s somewhat ahistorical conception of the gaze, it becomes clear that historically, the gaze is dependent on the available media technologies, which means that the primordial visibility of the subject is realised in different ways. Finally, this is related to a dis- cussion of capitalism, the socioeconomic context to which all modern image technologies belong. It is thus argued that the gaze in modern societies is a digital and capitalist gaze.