Surveillance

Surveillance

1. panoptical

   • interiorised selfsurveillance
     • belief that one is under surveillance, one censors oneself so as to avoid unorthodoxy
       • the detection of which would be detrimental.
       • Winston self-censors and plays for the camera, pretending to believe and think what he is supposed to and hiding his true thoughts and beliefs
         • “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within the range of a telescreen”
         • “smallest things could give you away”
   • Jeremy Bentham, who used it to describe a building in which from a single point a single inspector could monitor many occupants.
     • they were under inspection, occupants would avoid behaviour the detection of which would have a penalty.
       • “the persons to be inspected should always feels themselves as if under inspection, at least as standing a great chance of being so”
       • The Handmaids are ironically always watched, but always not supposed to be seen.
         • white wings are designed to hide her face and her dress supposed to hide her body from view, to avoid tempting men.
   • There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment . . .You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
   • There appears to be no God in Nineteen Eighty-Four but Big Brother has a similar job
   • n. Crime extends from action and speech to thought itself—“thoughtcrime”

2. surreptitious

   • believing that one is in a private space not under surveillance
     • detect what people really think or believe by surveilling their speech and action when they are disinhibited in the (illusory) belief that they are in a private setting.
     • He believes his diary is private and, believing that, allows himself to express his true thoughts in it
     • He believes the room he rents with Julia is private and believing that, allows himself to express his true desires and thoughts there
     • he is mistaken, and these seemingly private spaces were being surveilled, which of course he suspected all along in accordance with the contrary belief that he also held!
   • one is disinhibited and acts and thinks freely, thus making it possible for an unsuspected spy to detect what one really believes
   • When Winston believes he is in range of a camera, for example, he self-censors. He disguises his beliefs and thoughts by putting on an orthodox face, and even tries to avoid unorthodox thoughts lest he give himself away involuntarily

3. Winston seems to believe, as he is constantly reminded by propaganda, that surveillance is ubiquitous and there is no escaping it

   • “you had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard”
   • “every movement was scrutinized”

4. “Big Brother Is Watching You”

   • propaganda about surveillance, propagating the belief necessary for panoptic surveillance.
   • As he ascends the seven stories to his flat, on each landing he sees the same “poster with the enormous face”.
   • It seems to gaze at him, “being so contrived” that the eyes follow him about as he moves.
   • Winston takes a coin from his pocket and reflects on the pervasiveness both of surveillance and propaganda9 :
     • the same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrapping of a cigarette package—everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you . . . there was no escape.
       • The images succeed in making Winston feel that he is being watched,

5. telescreen

   • broadcasts.
   • The telescreen could not be turned off so there was no respite from its constant propagandizing.
     • In Goldstein’s book, the development of a technology with the dual capacity for broadcasting and receiving—propaganda and surveillance—is hailed as a turning point in the history of state power.
       • “in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance
         • What made it not just possible but conceivable for government to extend its reach beyond “the overt act” to “what their subjects were thinking” was the development of technologies not available to tyrannies
     • : technologies of surveillance to keep “citizens under constant surveillance”
       • . Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police

6. the Thought Police

   • the secret police of the superstate Oceania, who discover and punish thoughtcrime, personal and political thoughts unapproved by the Party.
   • The Thinkpol use criminal psychology and omnipresent surveillance (telescreens, microphones, informers)
   • “Eyes of God” are the equivalent of the Nazi Gestapo, ever-present and watching for misdemeanour, or even mis-thinking
     • The “Guardians of the Faith”, and Angels, are also secret surveillance, as are the Aunts.
     • Even the bedroom has an eye in it: “in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out.”
   • Firstly, the Guardians serve as a visualisation of the power the government holds
   • Guardians known as the Eyes are secret spies for the government. They work incognito and report any irregular behaviour to the government. The uncertainty of whether a Guardian is an Eye or not, constrains the citizens’ behaviour, as Offred’s and Ofglen’s encounter with the visiting tourists shows:

7. At the second highest layer in society are the Eyes, which is a fitting name for this male military group “who sees all.”

8. The Handmaids not only circulate in restricted spaces but are also watched wherever they move. Their bodies are constantly tested and observed in order to make sure that they obey the laws

   • imprisons Handmaids and limits their bodily conduct
     • She describes her tattoo as “four digits and an eye, a passport in reverse. It’s supposed to guarantee that I will never be able to fade,
     • The eye on her ankle is an ever present reminder that her body is a coded object under surveillance. It is a tool over which an outside force has power.
     • The hospital becomes a system of surveillance that extends even into a woman’s body and severs it from her selfhood.
     • The monitoring of the handmaids’ bodies annihilates a sense of corporeal individuality as they become a collectively owned property. “We are containers; it’s only the insides of our bodies that are important”
   • The monolithic society keeps the bodies of the Handmaids under ceaseless surveillance
   • The circular mirror the hallway – in the Commander’s house - becomes the symbol of the dystopian watching eye “I see the two of us as…in the brief glass eye of the mirror as we descend” and the hostile male gaze that objectifies the female body.
     • he coercion of surveillance is applied on the body and its mobility.
   • The invisible omniscience roams constantly in the Republic of Gilead

9. There is a “Compucheck” that tracks the handmaids‟ progress via the number on their passes

   • ne; no one is allowed to move freely in the city without passes
   • The training from the Red Center strives to indoctrinate the new Handmaids with Gilead’s heavily religious customs, while emphasizing the impurities and immoralities in society before the regime took control.

10. “caught up in a network of surveillance and countersurveillance”

11. constant awareness of surveillance, under the searchlight moon