Seeing and Being Seen: Spectatorship and Surveillance in Liberal Democracies
Pundits and scholars alike often blame today’s illiberal threats to democracy on a political culture that is uniquely emotional, theatrical, visual, and online. Anxiety over people’s taste for entertainment may be a timeless concern, yet it neglects the structural conditions that situate the people as spectators rather than participants of formal politics. The people are spectators because they are also objects of surveillance, subject to the judgments of each other, of private companies, and of the state. It is one thing to experience democracy like an audience watching politicians like actors on a stage; it is quite another thing entirely for this theatrical experience to take place from within a panopticon.
Seeing and Being Seen uses Enlightenment and liberal thought to interrogate the power exercised through observation and judgment. I argue people must be in control of their own publicity if we are to restore the democratic freedom lost in our televised era. I return to the works of Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham to clarify what is lacking in our contemporary conversations: the problem is not that we like to watch but that material inequality and political actors shape who is seen with scrutiny or with sympathy. For example, the politically and socioeconomically eminent often benefit from the public’s admiration. Demagogues more easily direct unjust public scrutiny toward historically marginalized members of the community, such as people living in poverty. I develop a notion of the democratic “backstage” through which the people can influence what goes on in the public stage without being directly observed. Drawing on textual evidence and original archival research, I defend practices of anonymity, concealment, and secrecy under conditions of political, social, and economic inequality to meet the challenges of our digital age.
Seeing and Being Seen uses Enlightenment and liberal thought to interrogate the power exercised through observation and judgment. I argue people must be in control of their own publicity if we are to restore the democratic freedom lost in our televised era. I return to the works of Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham to clarify what is lacking in our contemporary conversations: the problem is not that we like to watch but that material inequality and political actors shape who is seen with scrutiny or with sympathy. For example, the politically and socioeconomically eminent often benefit from the public’s admiration. Demagogues more easily direct unjust public scrutiny toward historically marginalized members of the community, such as people living in poverty. I develop a notion of the democratic “backstage” through which the people can influence what goes on in the public stage without being directly observed. Drawing on textual evidence and original archival research, I defend practices of anonymity, concealment, and secrecy under conditions of political, social, and economic inequality to meet the challenges of our digital age.