The Watchman in Pieces: Surveillance, Literature, and Liberal Personhood
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.77 (669 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0300155417 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 376 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-02-08 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
I have rarely been so excited and enlightened by the argument of a literary study as I was by this.”—Edward Mendelson, Columbia University. “An ambitious, illuminating, and convincing book
The authors show that, since the Renaissance, changes in observation strategies have driven innovations in literature; literature, in turn, has provided a laboratory and forum for the way we think about surveillance and privacy. As ideas about personhood—what constitutes a self—have changed over time, so too have ideas about how to represent, shape, or invade the self. Spanning nearly 500 years of cultural and social history, this book examines the ways that literature and surveillance have developed together, as kindred modern practices. In a society increasingly dominated by interlocking surveillance systems, these habits of mind are consequently necessary for fully realized liberal citizenship.. Ultimately, they contend that the habits of mind cultivated by literature make rational and self-aware participation in contemporary surveillance environments possible
the watchers are pretty much wasting their time The Watchman in Pieces is a detailed literary study of surveillance in its ideas and in its practices over several centuries. It turns commonplace perceptions upside down--those being watched are told, and believe, that the watchers are controlling the narrative, so innocent or guilty, the watched worry. The book's argument is, those under surveillance control the narrative. And if so,