… tomorrow afternoon! I’ll be presenting a mini-analysis of new cultures of surveillance and security as part of UMBC’s GRIT-X series. Here’s the extra- short version:
“If you see something, say something.” Superficially, this ubiquitous mandate reveals the security state’s intention to reduce citizens to obedient spectators who collude in the work of surveillance. Does this represent a new expansion of state power? Yes, but not only; the American visual culture of the Global War on Terror is complex and multifaceted. I argue that “see something, say something” actually reveals a limit to state control over the visual. Moreover, the ambiguity of these ‘somethings’ opens up a range of possibilities for creative and political spectatorship overlooked in conventional analyses of surveillance.