… 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.