Dietmar Kammerer , Bilder der Überwachung (Frankfurt am Main

In "Bilder der Überwachung" (images of surveillance), Dietmar Kammerer moves beyond the common limits of surveillance studies, which primarily focus on the repressive function of video surveillance.Instead of denouncing the entire system of surveillance as nothing but an extension of eighteenth-century panoptic power, he simply asks why CCTV is still so widespread and widely accepted?According to Kammerer, this acceptance is neither a question of technological determinism nor a simple discursive effect of politics or police authorities.Rather, it also results from the (pop)cultural image of surveillance technology and observation practices.The "representation of systematic observation, based on technology," 1 as it is conveyed by the mass media, shapes the collective conception of surveillance.In this way the particular imaginary of the surveillance society is established.Kammerer takes his distance from purely theoretical approaches as they are found in Cultural Studies.Instead of perpetuating a Foucauldian-type exegesis ad infinitum, he strives for an empirical analysis.He directs his attention to pedestrians whose steps are traced by cameras, to the practice in control rooms, to the algorithms of face recognition software, and to the status of video footage as evidence.Consequently, a great deal of the book is devoted to a diligent analysis of the dispositif of surveillance: micro practices, technologies, and representations.The book has two parts.While the first deals with "surveillance images," i.e., the development and implementation of CCTV and monitoring devices, the second part takes issue with "images of surveillance," i.e. how surveillance is represented within the mass media.Unfortunately, the theoretical and methodological toolbox of this analysis remains implicit for too long.Only in the fourth chapter, does Kammerer begin to discuss the general aspects of ocular power and the fundamental ambivalences that haunt visibility.Here, he criticizes Foucault's reading of the panopticon in two regards.First, he challenges the absolute dissociation of "the see/being seen dyad," 2 and argues instead that the prisoners have to see at least something in order to keep the panoptic mechanism going.Secondly, he casts into doubt the alleged absolute rationality of the disciplinary machine by underscoring its theatrical, illusionary and fictional aspects. 3Kammerer also criticizes the discourse of electronic panopticism 4 for applying the historical categories of Foucauldian analysis all too easily to the 1

Political science · Art, Aesthetics, and Perception · Psychiatry, Mental Health, Neuroscience · Technology, Environment, Urban Planning