Piotr M Szpunar
Biographic Data
| ID | 640295 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Piotr M Szpunar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Piotr M |
| FAMILY NAME | Szpunar |
| SIGNATURE | SZPUNAR P M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Albany, State University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2676-7432 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 66 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Temporality of Climate Witnessing
The act of witnessing is often predicated on the experience of an event in its here and/ or now . Climate confounds these space-time coordinates, requiring a reconsideration of the witness and the temporality of witnessing. Transposing media witnessing by way of the “geological turn” in media studies, this article tracks ice as a proxy for climate, as both storage medium and image, to develop a notion of climate witnessing that pivots on the t/he…
Mediated Futures in Anesthetic Space
Media are intimately connected to the future. They are simultaneously posited as encouraging speculation and foreclosing futures. Through an examination of the “canal craze” at the turn of the twentieth century in which the telescopic lens was believed to reveal Earth’s future by way of focusing in on its nearby twin, this paper moves beyond notions of open and closed visions by considering the function of noise in mediated futures. That the cana…
Soft news in soft war
The US Maximum Pressure campaign, a conglomeration of diplomatic, economic, and military sticks, was ostensibly designed to force Iran into renegotiating the 2015 nuclear deal; critics say the real aim is regime change. The auxiliary media efforts in support of the policy are part of an ongoing soft war. One dimension of these efforts is the export of a popular American media format, the outrage genre or cable news magazine, to Iran via Voice of …
Promnesic futures
What is the function of the past in visions of the future? For critics, futures built on recycled futures-past, at best, signal a failure of imagination and, at worst, foreclose much-needed alternatives. Against a backdrop in which the future is predominantly thought of as a threat, this paper offers a more nuanced account of the entanglement of past and future at lieux de futur, complex assemblages of imagination, relations to time, scales of th…
Memory politics in the future tense
The grounding myth of American collective memory is built on the idea of America as a promise, what it shall be. Crises place futures in doubt. Against these two considerations, this article examines how the future can be used to shape the past. In the American context, the future as a general promise is invoked in times of crisis to reassure a nation by way of laundering difficult pasts so as to fit a narrative of progress in spite of the contin…
Homegrown
An insightful study of how identity is mobilized in and for war in the face of homegrown terrorism. “You are either with us, or against us” is the refrain that captures the spirit of the global war on terror. Images of the “them” implied in this war cry—distinct foreign “others”—inundate Americans on hit television shows, Hollywood blockbusters, and nightly news. However, in this book, Piotr Szpunar tells the story of a fuzzier image: the homegro…
The I’s of the Informant
The informant is both a controversial medium of security and a maligned cultural figure. Their actions and stories about their actions are integral nodes in the economy of fear that structures surveillance society. This paper examines how Cold War and war on terror informants tell stories about themselves (Budenz 1947; Speckhard and Shaikh 2014) against the backdrop of a “fear of small numbers” (Appadurai 2006) on the home front. The overlapping …
Communication and (Un)Inspired Terror
Terrorism has long been theorized as a communicative act. Absent in the array of theories is an adequate consideration of violence committed by third parties (e.g., lone wolves), individuals with no clear link to any group. Often, this complex mediated phenomenon is reduced to the “inspired” reproduction/transmission of a message. For a more nuanced understanding, I develop a theory of phatic violence centered on relation/mediation rather than in…
The futures of anticipatory reason
This article examines invocations of the future in contemporary security discourse and practice. This future constitutes not a temporal zone of events to come, nor a horizon of concrete visions for tomorrow, but an indefinite source of contingency and speculation. Predictive, preemptive and otherwise anticipatory security practices strategically utilize the future to circulate the kinds of truths, beliefs, claims, that might otherwise be difficul…
A guileful ruse
When Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in the throes of territorial demise, laid claim to the deadliest mass shooting in US history, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, pundits declared it a sign of desperation. This paper begins from a different premise: that the case simultaneously exposes how ISIS regularly appropriates rather than inspires violence and the limits of this tactic. An analysis of ISIS propaganda and three ISIS-attributed incident…
Collective future thought
This article introduces and develops the concept of "collective future thought" and its implications for the interdisciplinary field of (collective) memory studies. The study of collective memory has much to gain from the complexity that interjecting future thought introduces into the various processes that are the foci of the field. This article defines the concept: the act of imagining an event that has yet to transpire on behalf of, or by, a g…
The horror at Fort Hood
American exceptionalism – the constitutive myth of American national identity – has been disseminated through literature, film, and foreign policy. This article analyzes another site: online comments in response to the New York Times coverage of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting. It is a site in which citizens participate in myth-making and maintenance. This article makes two broad claims. First, that readers’ comments in response to the Fort Hood shoo…
Journalism ethics and Levinas' Third
This paper develops a theory of journalism ethics centered on the concept of interruption. Interruption provides a space in which the “Other” can speak; an instance in which those with whom we have no other contact but through news media can disrupt us. While steeped in Levinasian philosophy, the theory of journalism ethics developed here challenges some of its key tenets: unlimited responsibility for the Other and the single passive ethical impe…
Neither ‘Non–’nor ‘Becoming’
The concept of whiteness is seductive; it strikes a chord and resonates, highlighting what was long ignored in the history of immigrants in America. However, in reading the literature, one cannot help but be troubled by the reduction of a plethora of relations to a singular binary, as important as that binary may be. This paper examines the experience of Polonia (the Polish Diaspora) in America, drawing on broad historical evidence as well as a p…
Western journalism’s ‘Other
In 1995, when discussing the critiques of the New York Times made by academics and pundits, Michael Schudson stated that the newspaper has never been anything ‘like the late, unlamented Pravda’. This comparison, utilized in a variety of ways over time, originated in the canonical Four Theories of the Press (Siebert et al., 1963[1956]). This juxtaposition, more broadly, uses the Cold War ‘Other’ to define what western journalism is, or should be, …
Monuments, mundanity and memory
On 1 July 2006, three youths were photographed urinating on the National War Memorial in Ottawa, Canada. This event affected Canadian collective memory in a very particular and subtle way. It acted as a catalyst for the (re)emergence of two discourses concerning Canadian collective memory. Each had competing claims and demands and became entangled in a negotiation that took place through the mass media. This negotiation led to the alteration of ‘…
Collective future thought
This article introduces and develops the concept of "collective future thought" and its implications for the interdisciplinary field of (collective) memory studies. The study of collective memory has much to gain from the complexity that interjecting future thought introduces into the various processes that are the foci of the field. This article defines the concept: the act of imagining an event that has yet to transpire on behalf of, or by, a g…
Western journalism’s ‘Other
In 1995, when discussing the critiques of the New York Times made by academics and pundits, Michael Schudson stated that the newspaper has never been anything ‘like the late, unlamented Pravda’. This comparison, utilized in a variety of ways over time, originated in the canonical Four Theories of the Press (Siebert et al., 1963[1956]). This juxtaposition, more broadly, uses the Cold War ‘Other’ to define what western journalism is, or should be, …
The futures of anticipatory reason
This article examines invocations of the future in contemporary security discourse and practice. This future constitutes not a temporal zone of events to come, nor a horizon of concrete visions for tomorrow, but an indefinite source of contingency and speculation. Predictive, preemptive and otherwise anticipatory security practices strategically utilize the future to circulate the kinds of truths, beliefs, claims, that might otherwise be difficul…
Monuments, mundanity and memory
On 1 July 2006, three youths were photographed urinating on the National War Memorial in Ottawa, Canada. This event affected Canadian collective memory in a very particular and subtle way. It acted as a catalyst for the (re)emergence of two discourses concerning Canadian collective memory. Each had competing claims and demands and became entangled in a negotiation that took place through the mass media. This negotiation led to the alteration of ‘…
Soft news in soft war
The US Maximum Pressure campaign, a conglomeration of diplomatic, economic, and military sticks, was ostensibly designed to force Iran into renegotiating the 2015 nuclear deal; critics say the real aim is regime change. The auxiliary media efforts in support of the policy are part of an ongoing soft war. One dimension of these efforts is the export of a popular American media format, the outrage genre or cable news magazine, to Iran via Voice of …
Memory politics in the future tense
The grounding myth of American collective memory is built on the idea of America as a promise, what it shall be. Crises place futures in doubt. Against these two considerations, this article examines how the future can be used to shape the past. In the American context, the future as a general promise is invoked in times of crisis to reassure a nation by way of laundering difficult pasts so as to fit a narrative of progress in spite of the contin…
The I’s of the Informant
The informant is both a controversial medium of security and a maligned cultural figure. Their actions and stories about their actions are integral nodes in the economy of fear that structures surveillance society. This paper examines how Cold War and war on terror informants tell stories about themselves (Budenz 1947; Speckhard and Shaikh 2014) against the backdrop of a “fear of small numbers” (Appadurai 2006) on the home front. The overlapping …
The horror at Fort Hood
American exceptionalism – the constitutive myth of American national identity – has been disseminated through literature, film, and foreign policy. This article analyzes another site: online comments in response to the New York Times coverage of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting. It is a site in which citizens participate in myth-making and maintenance. This article makes two broad claims. First, that readers’ comments in response to the Fort Hood shoo…
Monuments, mundanity and memory
On 1 July 2006, three youths were photographed urinating on the National War Memorial in Ottawa, Canada. This event affected Canadian collective memory in a very particular and subtle way. It acted as a catalyst for the (re)emergence of two discourses concerning Canadian collective memory. Each had competing claims and demands and became entangled in a negotiation that took place through the mass media. This negotiation led to the alteration of ‘…
Neither ‘Non–’nor ‘Becoming’
The concept of whiteness is seductive; it strikes a chord and resonates, highlighting what was long ignored in the history of immigrants in America. However, in reading the literature, one cannot help but be troubled by the reduction of a plethora of relations to a singular binary, as important as that binary may be. This paper examines the experience of Polonia (the Polish Diaspora) in America, drawing on broad historical evidence as well as a p…
Western journalism’s ‘Other
In 1995, when discussing the critiques of the New York Times made by academics and pundits, Michael Schudson stated that the newspaper has never been anything ‘like the late, unlamented Pravda’. This comparison, utilized in a variety of ways over time, originated in the canonical Four Theories of the Press (Siebert et al., 1963[1956]). This juxtaposition, more broadly, uses the Cold War ‘Other’ to define what western journalism is, or should be, …
Journalism ethics and Levinas' Third
This paper develops a theory of journalism ethics centered on the concept of interruption. Interruption provides a space in which the “Other” can speak; an instance in which those with whom we have no other contact but through news media can disrupt us. While steeped in Levinasian philosophy, the theory of journalism ethics developed here challenges some of its key tenets: unlimited responsibility for the Other and the single passive ethical impe…
The horror at Fort Hood
American exceptionalism – the constitutive myth of American national identity – has been disseminated through literature, film, and foreign policy. This article analyzes another site: online comments in response to the New York Times coverage of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting. It is a site in which citizens participate in myth-making and maintenance. This article makes two broad claims. First, that readers’ comments in response to the Fort Hood shoo…
Collective future thought
This article introduces and develops the concept of "collective future thought" and its implications for the interdisciplinary field of (collective) memory studies. The study of collective memory has much to gain from the complexity that interjecting future thought introduces into the various processes that are the foci of the field. This article defines the concept: the act of imagining an event that has yet to transpire on behalf of, or by, a g…
A guileful ruse
When Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in the throes of territorial demise, laid claim to the deadliest mass shooting in US history, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, pundits declared it a sign of desperation. This paper begins from a different premise: that the case simultaneously exposes how ISIS regularly appropriates rather than inspires violence and the limits of this tactic. An analysis of ISIS propaganda and three ISIS-attributed incident…
Communication and (Un)Inspired Terror
Terrorism has long been theorized as a communicative act. Absent in the array of theories is an adequate consideration of violence committed by third parties (e.g., lone wolves), individuals with no clear link to any group. Often, this complex mediated phenomenon is reduced to the “inspired” reproduction/transmission of a message. For a more nuanced understanding, I develop a theory of phatic violence centered on relation/mediation rather than in…
The futures of anticipatory reason
This article examines invocations of the future in contemporary security discourse and practice. This future constitutes not a temporal zone of events to come, nor a horizon of concrete visions for tomorrow, but an indefinite source of contingency and speculation. Predictive, preemptive and otherwise anticipatory security practices strategically utilize the future to circulate the kinds of truths, beliefs, claims, that might otherwise be difficul…
Homegrown
An insightful study of how identity is mobilized in and for war in the face of homegrown terrorism. “You are either with us, or against us” is the refrain that captures the spirit of the global war on terror. Images of the “them” implied in this war cry—distinct foreign “others”—inundate Americans on hit television shows, Hollywood blockbusters, and nightly news. However, in this book, Piotr Szpunar tells the story of a fuzzier image: the homegro…
The I’s of the Informant
The informant is both a controversial medium of security and a maligned cultural figure. Their actions and stories about their actions are integral nodes in the economy of fear that structures surveillance society. This paper examines how Cold War and war on terror informants tell stories about themselves (Budenz 1947; Speckhard and Shaikh 2014) against the backdrop of a “fear of small numbers” (Appadurai 2006) on the home front. The overlapping …
Promnesic futures
What is the function of the past in visions of the future? For critics, futures built on recycled futures-past, at best, signal a failure of imagination and, at worst, foreclose much-needed alternatives. Against a backdrop in which the future is predominantly thought of as a threat, this paper offers a more nuanced account of the entanglement of past and future at lieux de futur, complex assemblages of imagination, relations to time, scales of th…
Memory politics in the future tense
The grounding myth of American collective memory is built on the idea of America as a promise, what it shall be. Crises place futures in doubt. Against these two considerations, this article examines how the future can be used to shape the past. In the American context, the future as a general promise is invoked in times of crisis to reassure a nation by way of laundering difficult pasts so as to fit a narrative of progress in spite of the contin…
Soft news in soft war
The US Maximum Pressure campaign, a conglomeration of diplomatic, economic, and military sticks, was ostensibly designed to force Iran into renegotiating the 2015 nuclear deal; critics say the real aim is regime change. The auxiliary media efforts in support of the policy are part of an ongoing soft war. One dimension of these efforts is the export of a popular American media format, the outrage genre or cable news magazine, to Iran via Voice of …
Mediated Futures in Anesthetic Space
Media are intimately connected to the future. They are simultaneously posited as encouraging speculation and foreclosing futures. Through an examination of the “canal craze” at the turn of the twentieth century in which the telescopic lens was believed to reveal Earth’s future by way of focusing in on its nearby twin, this paper moves beyond notions of open and closed visions by considering the function of noise in mediated futures. That the cana…
The Temporality of Climate Witnessing
The act of witnessing is often predicated on the experience of an event in its here and/ or now . Climate confounds these space-time coordinates, requiring a reconsideration of the witness and the temporality of witnessing. Transposing media witnessing by way of the “geological turn” in media studies, this article tracks ice as a proxy for climate, as both storage medium and image, to develop a notion of climate witnessing that pivots on the t/he…
Sociology (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · History (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · History (5 works) · Media studies (5 works) · Politics (5 works)