- My research takes a critical approach to the intersection of popular culture and political culture. My work applies a... moreMy research takes a critical approach to the intersection of popular culture and political culture. My work applies autonomist social theory to audience studies, social media, and the cultural politics of secrecy.edit
Fascist and reactionary populist forces have undeniably swelledin the US in recent years. To effectively counter fascist movements, we need to understand them beyond their most visible and public expressions. To do this, Jack Bratich... more
Fascist and reactionary populist forces have undeniably swelledin the US in recent years. To effectively counter fascist movements, we need to understand them beyond their most visible and public expressions. To do this, Jack Bratich asserts, we must dig deeper into the psyche and body that gives rise to fascist formations. There we will find microfascism, or the cultural ways in which a fascist understanding of the world is generated from the hatreds that suffuse everyday life.
By highlighting the misogyny at fascism’s core, we are able to observe a key process in the formation of a fascist body. Recognizing the microfascism behind appeals to recover the past glory of white male subjects created by earlier foundational wars, we see how histories of settler colonialism, genocide, and domination are animating the deadly mission of fascism today. By focusing on the variety of ways the resurgent fascist tendency courts its own destruction (and demands the destruction of others), we can trace how fascism refines and expands the death and annihilation that underpins capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal systems.
The implications of On Microfascism are far-reaching and unsettling. Still, Bratich insists, the new fascism is not as powerful as its adherents wish us to believe. To defeat it, we must develop and defend a “micro-antifascism” grounded in the ethics of mutual aid and care in the everyday. Rooted in an understanding of how the fascist body is constructed, we can develop the collective power to dismember it.
By highlighting the misogyny at fascism’s core, we are able to observe a key process in the formation of a fascist body. Recognizing the microfascism behind appeals to recover the past glory of white male subjects created by earlier foundational wars, we see how histories of settler colonialism, genocide, and domination are animating the deadly mission of fascism today. By focusing on the variety of ways the resurgent fascist tendency courts its own destruction (and demands the destruction of others), we can trace how fascism refines and expands the death and annihilation that underpins capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal systems.
The implications of On Microfascism are far-reaching and unsettling. Still, Bratich insists, the new fascism is not as powerful as its adherents wish us to believe. To defeat it, we must develop and defend a “micro-antifascism” grounded in the ethics of mutual aid and care in the everyday. Rooted in an understanding of how the fascist body is constructed, we can develop the collective power to dismember it.
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This paper situates contemporary manospheric culture within archaic forms of masculine identity formation foundational to patriarchal political orders and fascism. What happens when 21 st century emergent masculinity is also what Deleuze... more
This paper situates contemporary manospheric culture within archaic forms of masculine identity formation foundational to patriarchal political orders and fascism. What happens when 21 st century emergent masculinity is also what Deleuze and Guattari call a neo-archaism? Drawing from Celia Amoros' understanding of patriarchy as being primarily composed of masculine pacts and packs, I analyse the manosphere as an neo-archaic space for the formation of brotherhoods. Moreover, these fratriarchal groupings are warbands, reviving the Männerbund as fascist patriarchal pact. An analysis that takes seriously the neo-archaic elements of the manosphere sees the archaic not as past imaginary but a revived force that erupts in the present. We can see the manosphere less as one part of the internet than a transnationally spreading zone that expands this archaic war. Finally, the paper argues that the conjuncture is riven by the revival of a patriarchal power that is primordial, defined as a first order in which gender is foundational to its mythical establishment.
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This article examines reality television as a cultural form of what Gilles Deleuze calls “control societies.” For Deleuze, the shift from disciplinary societies (enclosures, bounded spaces, institutions) to control societies (circuits,... more
This article examines reality television as a cultural form of what Gilles Deleuze calls “control societies.” For Deleuze, the shift from disciplinary societies (enclosures, bounded spaces, institutions) to control societies (circuits, modulated spaces, networked relations) is marked by a change in the processes of subjectification. The “postindividual” or the “dividual” is characterized by interchangeability, flexibility, and mobility (in accordance with post-Fordist forms of labor). On reality TV (RTV), subjects nowbecome variables to be replaced, reversed, and transformed. More specifically, individuals' subjective limits are often tested corporeally (challenges on Fear Factor) and affectively (prank shows). We can think of RTV less as a genre than as a loose assemblage of techniques and experiments. I examine a wide range of programs, concentrating on prank shows.
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This article examines the “metastory” surrounding Gary Webb’s 1996 “Dark Alliance” series as a moment of crisis in mainstream journalism. Two forces converge in Webb’s series and its aftermath: (1) establishment journalism confronts and... more
This article examines the “metastory” surrounding Gary Webb’s 1996 “Dark Alliance” series as a moment of crisis in mainstream journalism. Two forces converge in Webb’s series and its aftermath: (1) establishment journalism confronts and manages the reemergent phenomenon of conspiracy theory, and (2) establishment print-based journalism attempts to organize a relationship with the emergent medium of the internet. When these two forces collide in the profession, conspiracy theories and the web end up mutually defining each other. This problematization of a conspiracy theory has multiple effects—not only in disqualifying the story itself but in reshaping the profession of journalism in its relation to new technology. Eschewing technological determinism, this article demonstrates how a new technology is made sensible through a professional discourse as a way of making it manageable. In turn, professional journalism operates as technical expertise in a liberal political rationality of “governing at a distance.”
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While much of autonomist theory privileges the most developed sector of capitalism (the digital online media and communication industries), this paper asks us to turn our attention to a revived 'pre-capitalist' form of... more
While much of autonomist theory privileges the most developed sector of capitalism (the digital online media and communication industries), this paper asks us to turn our attention to a revived 'pre-capitalist' form of cultural production. This article analyzes the recent resurgence of ...
Research Interests: Sociology and Psychology
This epilogue seeks to discover hidden as well as perceptible patterns in the special issue. It senses four ghosts haunting transparency
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This essay is a response to Michael Truscello's article in this issue. It argues against an overreliance on evidence as a mark of distinguishing political research from conspiracy theories. Cultural studies research can also disrupt... more
This essay is a response to Michael Truscello's article in this issue. It argues against an overreliance on evidence as a mark of distinguishing political research from conspiracy theories. Cultural studies research can also disrupt the dominant conceptual mechanisms ...
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... AK Press, 2007). Correspondence to: Jack Bratich, Department of Journalism and Media Studies, SCILS, 4 Huntington Street, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA. E-mail: jbratich@scils.rutgers.edu ISSN 1479 ...
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In this article, I propose that we think of the recent concern over fake news, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories as a moral panic. I revisit Stuart Hall and his co-authors’ concept, updating it in two ways. First, I... more
In this article, I propose that we think of the recent concern over fake news, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories as a moral panic. I revisit Stuart Hall and his co-authors’ concept, updating it in two ways. First, I focus on how the current panic has altered what they called “primary definers” (which now includes professional journalism, as a result of their own waning authority). Second, the new alliance of panic actors (journalism, technology companies, intelligence agencies, politicians, civil society organizations) are expressions of a crisis policing that is now martialized. I assess this new nexus in terms of a breakdown of civil peace into outright hostilities; as a counterinsurgency operation. I draw on Michel Foucault’s strategic analysis of power and society that challenges boundaries between politics and war. This nexus is waging what I call a war of restoration, one that has significant implications for dissent and oppositional knowledges.
Research Interests: War Studies, Political Science, Conspiracy Theories, Social Media, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency(COIN), and 12 moreMoral Panic, Michel Foucault, Foucault (Research Methodology), Platform Studies, Counterinsurgency, Foucault power/knowledge - discourse, Dissent, Misinformation, Communication and media Studies, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Regime of Post-Truth
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This essay, written within a week of the November 2004 U.S. election, was intended as a fog cutter in the miasma of postelection gloom. Finding more than silver linings, it assesses our crucible moment, in the historical and the alchemist... more
This essay, written within a week of the November 2004 U.S. election, was intended as a fog cutter in the miasma of postelection gloom. Finding more than silver linings, it assesses our crucible moment, in the historical and the alchemist sense. We are witnessing a variety of extraparliamentary experiments on the political landscape. What can cultural researchers do in these times? What are our experiments, our own transformations, in this crucible?
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It is crucial to understand the changing conditions of truth telling in the new normal of the Terror War. This article examines recent developments in the generalization of state secrecy as well as the materialization of information... more
It is crucial to understand the changing conditions of truth telling in the new normal of the Terror War. This article examines recent developments in the generalization of state secrecy as well as the materialization of information warfare. These recent changes in the production of truth also offer possibilities for rethinking our own strategic attachments to truth. What the current conjuncture tells us is that the constellation of truth, secrecy, and revelation needs rearranging.
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Discourse had an easy entry but a difficult stay in Marxism. On the one hand, Marxist terms like consciousness, ideology, and culture had already provided fertile soil for discourse to take root. On the other hand, these very terms were... more
Discourse had an easy entry but a difficult stay in Marxism. On the one hand, Marxist terms like consciousness, ideology, and culture had already provided fertile soil for discourse to take root. On the other hand, these very terms were relegated to a superstructural, even ephemeral, role in much of orthodox Marxism. The discursive turn was made possible by a crisis within Marxism itself: the failure of a certain explanatory model (the inevitability of proletarian revolution due to objective contradictions), the terrors unleashed by actually existing socialism (the USSR’s Cold War global expansion, the internments, the crushing of dissent), and the eruption of struggles during 1968 (around sexual desire, gender, ethnicity, race, and everyday life). All of these contributed, over time, to a questioning of fundamental commitments and epistemological certainties within Marxism. It was, in Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) term, a “de-struction” of the history of Marxism (p. 96).
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Examines social movement media as it relates to spectatorship, participation, control, affect.
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This article examines the recent resurgence of interest in what we call “fabriculture.” Three dimensions of fabriculture are explored: the gendered spaces of production around new domesticity and the social home; the blurring of old and... more
This article examines the recent resurgence of interest in what we call “fabriculture.” Three dimensions of fabriculture are explored: the gendered spaces of production around new domesticity and the social home; the blurring of old and new media in digital craft culture; and the politics of popular culture that emerge in the mix of folk and commercial culture. Ultimately, we conceptualize craft as power (the ability or capacity to act), as a way of understanding current activist possibilities.
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This essay introduces the reader to the special issue commemorating Michael Hardt and Toni Negri’s trilogy ( Empire, Multitude, Commonwealth).
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This article examines current events through the lens of secrecy. From public relations management of political images to new leadership figures in the electoral process, the importance of visibility in the New Normal is discussed.... more
This article examines current events through the lens of secrecy. From public relations management of political images to new leadership figures in the electoral process, the importance of visibility in the New Normal is discussed. Culture as strategy is posited as a way of thinking through the current crisis.
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This article examines recent developments in U.S. network politics. Focusing on the rise of the Tea Party as well as the standoffs in Madison, WI, it analyzes the emergent forms of populism via network forms. In addition, this conjuncture... more
This article examines recent developments in U.S. network politics. Focusing on the rise of the Tea Party as well as the standoffs in Madison, WI, it analyzes the emergent forms of populism via network forms. In addition, this conjuncture produces new mutations in the relationship between networks and sovereignty. Finally, the affective charge of these future networked movements, from fear to hope to love, need investigation.
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What are the contours of the contemporary public secret sphere? Some key manifestations can be found in the hybrids of network and sovereign power shaped by communications warfare. This article examines recent entanglements of social... more
What are the contours of the contemporary public secret sphere? Some key manifestations can be found in the hybrids of network and sovereign power shaped by communications warfare. This article examines recent entanglements of social media and political dissent, specifically those sovereign networks designed to foment and prevent youth-oriented social movements. Using a number of recent examples (including the U.S. State Department organized Alliance of Youth Movements, the 2011 uprisings in Egypt, Kony 2012, U.S. police research conferences, and Anonymous), it argues that we are witnessing a convergence of sovereign and network powers, one that expresses new modes of control while setting the conditions for new forms of evaluation and antagonism. Finally, the article asks, how do we distinguish among these hybrids, between public secrecy and popular secrecy, among entangled secret networks?
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In a time when interactive technologies and participatory usage are equated with DIY citizenship, how do we account for the return of sovereign power in the form of police interventions into usage? How are decentralized social media... more
In a time when interactive technologies and participatory usage are equated with DIY citizenship, how do we account for the return of sovereign power in the form of police interventions into usage? How are decentralized social media deployed as instruments by ...
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Debout is/was, if anything, a furtive phenomenon. How do we account for the emergence, withdrawal, and stuttering attempted returns of Nuit Debout? Nuit Debout needs to be analyzed, and yet its existence confounds analysis. Its... more
Debout is/was, if anything, a furtive phenomenon. How do we account for the emergence, withdrawal, and stuttering attempted returns of Nuit Debout? Nuit Debout needs to be analyzed, and yet its existence confounds analysis. Its operational tactic (intense actions while up all night, then dispersal) defies usual characterization as a social movement. This was compounded by its overall timeline: a rapid upsurge followed by stunning disappearance. What conceptual tools do we have to make sense of the milieu out of which Nuit Debout emerged? And what do media ecologies have to do with it? This article undertakes such an analysis by developing a theoretical framework around social bodies, compositionism, and social reproduction. It draws from autonomist social theory to address what is, or was, Nuit Debout. Spring 2016 saw a momentous historical expression in the ongoing global circuits of struggle. Coming less than six months after the brutal coordinated attacks on Parisian nightlife...
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Nuit Debout is/was, if anything, a furtive phenomenon. How do we account for the emergence, withdrawal, and stuttering attempted returns of Nuit Debout? Nuit Debout needs to be analyzed, and yet its existence confounds analysis. Its... more
Nuit Debout is/was, if anything, a furtive phenomenon. How do we account for the emergence, withdrawal, and stuttering attempted returns of Nuit Debout? Nuit Debout needs to be analyzed, and yet its existence confounds analysis. Its operational tactic (intense actions while up all night, then dispersal) defies usual characterization as a social movement. This was compounded by its overall timeline: a rapid upsurge followed by stunning disappearance. What conceptual tools do we have to make sense of the milieu out of which Nuit Debout emerged? And what do media ecologies have to do with it? This article undertakes such an analysis by developing a theoretical framework around social bodies, compositionism, and social reproduction. It draws from autonomist social theory to address what is, or was, Nuit Debout.
Research Interests: History and Communication
What would the Enlightenment era be without a will to transparency? And how would modern communication persist without a similar desire—for openness, for clear channels, for a world without obscurity? Transparency runs the gamut from the... more
What would the Enlightenment era be without a will to transparency? And how would modern communication persist without a similar desire—for openness, for clear channels, for a world without obscurity? Transparency runs the gamut from the macrological demands on political institutions to make their operations public (a la the emergence of the public sphere against the dark recesses of monarchical power) to the micrological exhortations for individuals to speak their desires in amorous relationships. Transparency has been the foundation for a modern subject of knowledge, where seeing (better) equals knowing (better). More communication = more transparency = more good life (namely democracy, healthy relationships, informed health choices, better functioning organizations).
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While much of autonomist theory privileges the most developed sector of capitalism (the digital online media and communication industries), this paper asks us to turn our attention to a revived ‘pre-capitalist’ form of cultural... more
While much of autonomist theory privileges the most developed sector of capitalism (the digital online media and communication industries), this paper asks us to turn our attention to a revived ‘pre-capitalist’ form of cultural production. This article analyzes the recent resurgence of DIY craft culture around the following themes: 1) immaterial and affective labour; 2) gender and the home; 3) time and capitalism’s historicity. It challenges the periodisation of immateriality by highlighting the informational and communicative practices embedded in craft culture. In so doing, we can rethink the temporality of capitalism by teasing out a labour thread that passes through capitalism without being reduced to its purview. The gendered dimension of digital labour displays affective and immaterial qualities that have persisted resiliently before, during, and, in time, after capitalism. Craft as power (the capacity to act) is an ontological accumulation of species-being that pushes us to r...
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Between 2007 and 2018, the pick-up artist community—“gurus” who teach online networks of heterosexual men to seduce women—gave rise to a different online community, that of “incels,” who create homosocial bonds over their inability to... more
Between 2007 and 2018, the pick-up artist community—“gurus” who teach online networks of heterosexual men to seduce women—gave rise to a different online community, that of “incels,” who create homosocial bonds over their inability to become a pick-up artist. In this article, we offer a conjunctural analysis of this shift and argue that this decade represents a decline in, or even a failure of, neoliberalism’s ability to secure subjects within its political rationality. We argue that neoliberalism cannot cope with its failures, especially its promises of self-confidence. Such promises themselves become exposed as confidence games, which are then rerouted through networked misogyny, resulting in ordinary and spectacular violence against women. Moreover, incels express their rage through language of uprising and a war on women. Their actions are on a continuum of reactive violent responses to women’s refusal of social reproduction roles and aim to defend and restore patriarchal order.
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This essay is a response to Michael Truscello’s article in this issue. It argues against an overreliance on evidence as a mark of distinguishing political research from conspiracy theories. Cultural studies research can also disrupt the... more
This essay is a response to Michael Truscello’s article in this issue. It argues against an overreliance on evidence as a mark of distinguishing political research from conspiracy theories. Cultural studies research can also disrupt the dominant conceptual mechanisms of measuring truth, by disabling a concept like “conspiracy theories.” This opens a space for inventing new concepts to address the varieties of skepticism as well as the types of faith in reason. Anarchist cultural studies can thus be one that interrogates what Deleuze and Guattari call “the Stateform of thought,” deployed not just by institutions but in molecular conceptual practices. * Jack Z. Bratich is associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. He is author of Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture and co-editor of Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality. His recent work applies autonomist social theory to social media and the cultural politics of secrec...
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This article examines recent developments in U.S. network politics. Focusing on the rise of the Tea Party as well as the standoffs in Madison, WI, it analyzes the emergent forms of populism via network forms. In addition, this conjuncture... more
This article examines recent developments in U.S. network politics. Focusing on the rise of the Tea Party as well as the standoffs in Madison, WI, it analyzes the emergent forms of populism via network forms. In addition, this conjuncture produces new mutations in the relationship between networks and sovereignty. Finally, the affective charge of these future networked movements, from fear to hope to love, need investigation.
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Page 1. http://tvn.sagepub.com/ Television & New Media http://tvn.sagepub.com/content/ 5/2/109 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/ 1527476403255810 2004 5: 109 Television New Media Jack Zeljko Bratich... more
Page 1. http://tvn.sagepub.com/ Television & New Media http://tvn.sagepub.com/content/ 5/2/109 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/ 1527476403255810 2004 5: 109 Television New Media Jack Zeljko Bratich ...
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Is cultural studies becoming-strategic in accordance with its context? In this era where traditional conceptual tactics have not provided the desired results, perhaps we can experiment with new techniques. This essay explores one such... more
Is cultural studies becoming-strategic in accordance with its context? In this era where traditional conceptual tactics have not provided the desired results, perhaps we can experiment with new techniques. This essay explores one such tactic and commitment, namely the faith in ...
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Page 65. Cultural Studies, Immanent War, Everyday Life JACK Z. BRATICH University of New Hampshire September 24, 2001 IN RECENT DAYS," America's New War'has been given an official name:" Operation In-finite... more
Page 65. Cultural Studies, Immanent War, Everyday Life JACK Z. BRATICH University of New Hampshire September 24, 2001 IN RECENT DAYS," America's New War'has been given an official name:" Operation In-finite Justice." On one level, this name is itself an injustice. ...
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This article examines the news events of summer 2005, focusing on the Valerie Plame leak investigation, the revealing of the identity of Watergate's Deep Throat, and various stories pertaining to the Terror/War. In analyzing the ways... more
This article examines the news events of summer 2005, focusing on the Valerie Plame leak investigation, the revealing of the identity of Watergate's Deep Throat, and various stories pertaining to the Terror/War. In analyzing the ways evidence is deployed rhetorically, it begins to question an oppositional strategy that relies on publicity and exposure. The article instead calls for a refocus on the "secret sphere" of politics (especially within journalism), which is not the same as eliminating secrecy in the name of the public sphere. Finally, cultural studies' strategic capacities are assessed with regard to evidence, secrecy, and revelation.
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This essay explores a non-negationist approach to the ‘‘critical’’ by recounting cultural studies’s recent articulation of intellectual work to social movement practice. The academicization of cultural studies is evaluated not as... more
This essay explores a non-negationist approach to the ‘‘critical’’ by recounting cultural studies’s recent articulation of intellectual work to social movement practice. The academicization of cultural studies is evaluated not as cooptation of criticality, but as subsumption, which creates new platforms for action. Ultimately, Cultural Studies would benefit from its own ‘‘reception study’’ in which its powers to be affected could be enhanced to reconnect it with ongoing popular struggles.
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... View all notes. Rather than surrender to a totalitarian state of secrecy, then, we ... Programs such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) create untraceable interactions (communication, financial transactions), and ... and to unmask others,... more
... View all notes. Rather than surrender to a totalitarian state of secrecy, then, we ... Programs such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) create untraceable interactions (communication, financial transactions), and ... and to unmask others, Taussig alerts us to the mystery-making impact of any ...
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... can be best summed up by a Korean War veteran, as reported in The New York Times (Day 20046. Day , Sherri (2004) 'Near ... of private 'watchdog' groups against the social problem of 'hate speech' and armed... more
... can be best summed up by a Korean War veteran, as reported in The New York Times (Day 20046. Day , Sherri (2004) 'Near ... of private 'watchdog' groups against the social problem of 'hate speech' and armed populists (for a broad range of these examples see Redden 200028. ...
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In this article, I propose that we think of the recent concern over fake news, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories as a moral panic. I revisit Stuart Hall and his co-authors' concept, updating it in two ways. First, I... more
In this article, I propose that we think of the recent concern over fake news, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories as a moral panic. I revisit Stuart Hall and his co-authors' concept, updating it in two ways. First, I focus on how the current panic has altered what they called "primary definers" (which now includes professional journalism, as a result of their own waning authority). Second, the new alliance of panic actors (journalism, technology companies, intelligence agencies, politicians, civil society organizations) are expressions of a crisis policing that is now martialized. I assess this new nexus in terms of a breakdown of civil peace into outright hostilities; as a counterinsurgency operation. I draw on Michel Foucault's strategic analysis of power and society that challenges boundaries between politics and war. This nexus is waging what I call a war of restoration, one that has significant implications for dissent and oppositional knowledges.
Research Interests:
King’s College London 14-15 May, 2015 In the wake of the Snowden revelations about the surveillance capabilities of intelligence agencies, this interdisciplinary symposium gathers experts to discuss the place and implications of secrecy... more
King’s College London
14-15 May, 2015
In the wake of the Snowden revelations about the surveillance capabilities of intelligence agencies, this interdisciplinary symposium gathers experts to discuss the place and implications of secrecy in contemporary culture and politics.
Thursday 14th May
6.30-8.30
Opening Talk: Jamie Bartlett, Demos, Author of The Dark Net
Respondent, Zach Blas on the ‘Contra-Internet’
Edmond J. Safra Lecture Theatre, The Strand Campus, King’s College London
Free Registation at: https://secretsofdarknet.eventbrite.co.uk/
15 May: Symposium
Free registration at: https://politicsofsecrecy.eventbrite.co.uk/
9-9.15
Introduction: Secrecy’s Frame
Clare Birchall (King’s College London) & Matt Potolsky (University of Utah)
9.15-10.45
Roundtable 1: Between Opacity and Openness
Mark Fenster (College of Law, University of Florida)
(Secrecy and the Hypothetical State Archive)
Zach Blas (Artist, University of Buffalo)
(Informatic Opacity)
Mikkel Flyvverbom (Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen Business School)
(Transparency and the Management of Visibilities)
Vian Bakir (Creative Studies and Media, Bangor University)
(Deceptive Organised Persuasive Communication: (a) Misdirection and (b) Secretly Altering Reality to Fit the Lie you want to Tell)
11.15-12.30
Roundtable 2: Aesthetics of the Secret
John Beck (Institute of Modern & Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster)
(Photography’s Open Secret)
Neal White (Artist, Bournemouth University)
(Secrecy and Art in Practice)
Clare Birchall (American Studies, King’s College London)
(Art “After” Snowden)
12.30-1.30
Lunch
1.30-3.00
Roundtable 3: Open Secrets
Jack Bratich (Communication and Information, Rutgers University)
(Spectacular Secrecy and the Public Secret Sphere: Rumsfeld, Anonymous, and Snowden)
Deme Kasimis (Political Science, Yale University)
(Passing as Open Secrecy: Migrants and the Performance of Citizenship in Classical Greek Thought)
Adam Piette (English, Sheffield University)
(The Open Secret of Nuclear Waste)
Matt Potolsky (English, University of Utah)
(Beyond Fiction: The NSA and Representation)
3.30-4.45
Roundtable 4: Covert Spheres
Timothy Melley (English, Miami University)
(The Democratic Security State: Operating Between Secrecy and Publicity)
Øyvind Vågnes (Visual Culture, University of Copenhagen)
(Drone Warfare and the Language of Precision)
Hugh Urban (Comparative Studies, Ohio State)
(The Silent Brotherhood: Secrecy, Violence, and Surveillance from the Brüder Schweigen to the War on Terror)
5.00-5.30
Summary: Secrecy’s Future
14-15 May, 2015
In the wake of the Snowden revelations about the surveillance capabilities of intelligence agencies, this interdisciplinary symposium gathers experts to discuss the place and implications of secrecy in contemporary culture and politics.
Thursday 14th May
6.30-8.30
Opening Talk: Jamie Bartlett, Demos, Author of The Dark Net
Respondent, Zach Blas on the ‘Contra-Internet’
Edmond J. Safra Lecture Theatre, The Strand Campus, King’s College London
Free Registation at: https://secretsofdarknet.eventbrite.co.uk/
15 May: Symposium
Free registration at: https://politicsofsecrecy.eventbrite.co.uk/
9-9.15
Introduction: Secrecy’s Frame
Clare Birchall (King’s College London) & Matt Potolsky (University of Utah)
9.15-10.45
Roundtable 1: Between Opacity and Openness
Mark Fenster (College of Law, University of Florida)
(Secrecy and the Hypothetical State Archive)
Zach Blas (Artist, University of Buffalo)
(Informatic Opacity)
Mikkel Flyvverbom (Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen Business School)
(Transparency and the Management of Visibilities)
Vian Bakir (Creative Studies and Media, Bangor University)
(Deceptive Organised Persuasive Communication: (a) Misdirection and (b) Secretly Altering Reality to Fit the Lie you want to Tell)
11.15-12.30
Roundtable 2: Aesthetics of the Secret
John Beck (Institute of Modern & Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster)
(Photography’s Open Secret)
Neal White (Artist, Bournemouth University)
(Secrecy and Art in Practice)
Clare Birchall (American Studies, King’s College London)
(Art “After” Snowden)
12.30-1.30
Lunch
1.30-3.00
Roundtable 3: Open Secrets
Jack Bratich (Communication and Information, Rutgers University)
(Spectacular Secrecy and the Public Secret Sphere: Rumsfeld, Anonymous, and Snowden)
Deme Kasimis (Political Science, Yale University)
(Passing as Open Secrecy: Migrants and the Performance of Citizenship in Classical Greek Thought)
Adam Piette (English, Sheffield University)
(The Open Secret of Nuclear Waste)
Matt Potolsky (English, University of Utah)
(Beyond Fiction: The NSA and Representation)
3.30-4.45
Roundtable 4: Covert Spheres
Timothy Melley (English, Miami University)
(The Democratic Security State: Operating Between Secrecy and Publicity)
Øyvind Vågnes (Visual Culture, University of Copenhagen)
(Drone Warfare and the Language of Precision)
Hugh Urban (Comparative Studies, Ohio State)
(The Silent Brotherhood: Secrecy, Violence, and Surveillance from the Brüder Schweigen to the War on Terror)
5.00-5.30
Summary: Secrecy’s Future