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Article:
The Ubiquitous View: Surveillance, Imagination, and the Power of Being Seen

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Abstract

The _Essay discusses the relation between surveillance and imagination. It unfolds the argument that surveillance as a form of (political) oppression is necessarily cen-tering on a decisionistic act of the individual who has to opt for deviant or conformist behavior under conditions of obvious social and political surveillance. Today, how-ever, especially due to processes of an ongoing digitalization, surveillance is becom-ing a mode of self-expression, experiencing a shift towards its habituation and nor-malization within social reality. This development marks a clear difference from the classic habituation of surveillance as estranged, governmental practice. What seems to remain intact with regard to contemporary concepts of surveillance is the im-portance of the view and the meaning of surveillance as a politics of the image and the imaginary.

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Published in:

Ahrens, Jörn: The Ubiquitous View: Surveillance, Imagination, and the Power of Being Seen. In: On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture, Jg. 6 (2018), .10.25969/mediarep/4069
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As long as there is no further specification, the item is under the following license: Creative Commons - Namensnennung