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Surveillance as Gesture

Alienation in the Age of the Doorbell Camera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2024

Talley Murphy
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Abstract

Surveillance is gestic, in Bertolt Brecht’s sense: it constitutes and is constituted by a set of practices that police and control the social at the level of gestures. In a surveillant Gestus of the everyday, gestures conscribe bodies as subjects of surveillance, from the touchscreen scroll that operates Amazon’s Neighbors social network to the hands-over-head posture imaged by airport body scanners. Gestures, not digital devices, watch—and enforce—the bounds of a “criminal” human.

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Article
Information
TDR , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , June 2024 , pp. 93 - 111
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press for Tisch School of the Arts/NYU

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