Surveillance has emerged as a generalized practice used by governments and industries to monitor, determine and predict human activity. It is central to the functioning of twenty-first century capitalism and modern social welfare (Marks, 2015). The growing sophistication of surveillance practices has given rise to concerns and discussions in the public sphere, but also provided a popular theme in literature, film and the arts, and constitutes nowadays a topic of scholarly investigation, with its own dedicated field, known as “surveillance studies”, which received new impetus in the aftermath of 9/11. The field has proved from its very inception to be a highly cross-disciplinary and reflexive one.

In the first issue of Surveillance & Society, David Lyon attempted to map out the disciplines that constitute and/or could shed light on surveillances studies. He identified sociology, political science, and geography as key disciplines, but already noted that history and philosophy could make significant contributions, as well as computing and information science, law, social psychology and anthropology. He pointed out that other cross-disciplinary fields were also relevant, such as “those of consumer studies, social movements studies, globalization studies, labour studies, media studies and so on”. Significantly, his charting ended with examples from literature (Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale) and the cinema (Andrew Nicoll’s GATTACA).

Recent publications have both illustrated and called for an increasingly nuanced and diversified approach to Surveillance studies, on several fronts, and the Humanities have a central role to play in this shift in perspective. Torin Monahan, building on David Lyon’s suggestion that media studies join the discussion, discussed what the “cultural studies of surveillance” might be. These would focus on social practices of surveillance, giving greater importance to “elements of popular culture, media, art, and narrative”. They would also allow for a shift in focus - no longer from the top down -, thus making it possible to study how surveillance is experienced from below, and resisted or at least appropriated (Monahan, 2011).

Surveillance studies have often displayed a “negative ontology” (Castagnino), in which surveillance is necessarily intrusive and threatening. These assumptions raise questions about how we think of boundaries, narrative, agency. Calls have been made for scholars to move beyond this “apocalyptic rhetoric” and Manichean vision, and to better distinguish between the different practices covered by the term “surveillance” (Rosen and Santesso, 2013). The present initiative builds on the suggestions that an articulated discussion with the humanities could be fruitful in producing a more complex picture (Rosen and Santesso, 2013) and that literary works in particular could flesh out operative concepts in surveillance studies (Vareschi, 2018). It seeks to set the conditions to initiate a conversation, or “productive dialogue” (Marks, 2015), between arts and humanities, and the various fields in which surveillance is used.

The centres co-organising the event – the Law and Humanities research centre of CERSA (Panthéon-Assas University), and the ANU Centre for Law, Arts and the Humanities – are unique in their respective countries and share a commitment to taking multidisciplinary approaches on contemporary issues.

Methodology

The aim of the Symposium is to create the conditions of a conversation between disciplines. The multidisciplinary approach has guided the choice of the two confirmed keynote speakers – Alexis Tadié (English) and Lesley Seebeck (Cyber security). Over two days, sessions will gather academics from the Humanities and from other disciplines to discuss common topics and present perspectives on Surveillance, rather than having successive sessions devoted to one discipline only. The last day ends with a round table, where two Arts and Humanities academics discuss the outcomes of the symposium with two academics from other disciplines.

The points at which the different disciplines intersect may be mapped out as follows:

1/Concepts, that is setting the framework of the conversation by looking at the key concepts involved in surveillance studies (surveillance, privacy, identity, trust, consent, agency and security) and investigating how the humanities engage with issues of surveillance;

2/Critical perspectives, such as exploring how surveillance is discussed and represented in post-colonial and neo-liberal societies;

3/Policies and practices, that is policies, in terms of regulation and geopolitics; and also practices, on the part of governments and industries (e.g. monitoring, risk management) but also on the part of citizens, who adapt their behaviour, and develop habits of thought and ways of reading in response the generalization of surveillance in their environment.

While literature and other arts may contribute to think inventively about the challenges raised by surveillance, other disciplines may help correct the bias which consists in ignoring benign or empathetic forms of surveillance.

Comparative, cross-country approaches may also make for interesting discussions, as schemes such as ID cards or CCTV cameras are not perceived similarly in France and in Australia.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Prof Alexis Tadié is professor of English literature at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and an honorary senior research fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is interested in the encounters of English literature when it meets other disciplines such as philosophy or the history of ideas, when it travels to other parts of the world such as India or the Middle East, when it is confronted to social practices such as sports. He works in particular on the hesitations and repositionings that such encounters provoke. He is interested in studying philosophy in its own terms, having written monographs on Bacon and on Locke for instance, as well as understanding the philosophical dimension of literary texts. He has also developed an interest in the (sometimes ambiguous) celebrations of sports which literature offers and in the largely unstudied corpus of literary texts which represent and redefine tennis or running, football or cricket. Prof Tadié works on the theory of fiction from a philosophical point of view, studying in particular the ways in which fictional texts provoke ambiguous responses in readers and hesitations in their attitudes towards texts.

Dr Lesley Seebeck started as the CEO of the Cyber Institute, Australian National University, on 30 July 2018. Most recently, she was Chief Investment and Advisory Officer at the Digital Transformation Agency, arriving there from the Bureau of Meteorology where she served as Chief Information Officer from mid 2014 to late 2017. In March 2017, she was recognised as Federal Government CIO of the Year. Dr Seebeck has extensive experience in strategy, policy, management, budget, information technology and research roles in the Australian Public Service, industry and academia. She has worked in the Departments of Finance, Defence, and the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Office of National Assessments, and as an IT and management consultant in private industry, and at two universities. Dr Seebeck has a PhD in information technology, an MBA, a Masters in Defence Studies and a Bachelor's degree in Applied Science (Physics).

Details

The symposium is organized by Claire Wrobel, Jelena Gligorijevic, Desmond Manderson and Anne Brunon-Ernst. It will take place at the ANU (Canberra, Australia) on 28-29 August 2020. It is funded by AFRAN, Law and Humanities/Cersa, Centre Bentham/Sciences Po Law school and Centre for Law, Arts and the Humanities of the ANU