A quick post about last week's discussion before we move on to the next set of readings. I think it's important to recognize that surveillance traces back to centuries-old ideas that are pre-panopticon. Specifically, a discussion of the idea of "perspective" is relevant here.
We often associate this "invention" of perspective with Leon Battista Alberti, but it was an Arab mathematician Alhazen who came up with the idea of recreating in two-dimension the perspectival experience of the world. This was then adapted by Europeans, constructing the position of the painter/photographer/creator as the omniscient viewer who has knowledge and control of the gaze.
The roots of surveillance, then, can be traced back to non-western ideas that have then been taken and reconstructed to shore up the European subject and the idea of the self. This ties into the European beliefs about the superiority of certain cultures over others. Considering the racialized and gendered nature of surveillance today, it's pretty disheartening to see that some constructions of ideologies persist throughout centuries....
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