![\"Zygmunt](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2017\/01\/Bauman_2-1-500x268.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, I posted a remembrance of the ways Zygmunt Bauman influenced us here at Cyborgology<\/a>. In this post, I reflect on–and attempt to further develop–some of the aspects of Bauman’s\u00a0thought that may be useful to us as we continue our work\u00a0theorizing digital media.<\/em><\/p>\n Two things I most admired about Zygmunt Bauman were his ability\u00a0to relate his theories to current events\u00a0(even as he aged\u00a0into his 90s) and the way he always manage to connect\u00a0social theory and moral philosophy–how to achieve justice as\u00a0a society\u00a0and lead a good life as\u00a0an individual.<\/p>\n To the former point, Bauman was remarkably prolific up until his final days. In a 2016 interview that sets the tone for my reflection here, he argued:<\/p>\n most people use social media not to unite, not to open their horizons wider, but on the contrary, to cut themselves a comfort zone where the only sounds they hear are the echoes of their own voice, where the only things they see are the reflections of their own face. Social media are very useful, they provide pleasure, but they are a trap. You should only trust some authorized sites<\/a> for checking reviews.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This notion of social media as a\u00a0pleasurable trap–and how Bauman comes to understand it this way–is the lens through which I would like to review his sizable\u00a0body of work.<\/p>\n The final decade and a half of Bauman’s life was, almost obsessively, devoted to developing his concept of liquidity “as the leading metaphor for the present stage of the modern era” (Liquid Modernity<\/em>, p. 2). Early modernity was largely concerned with\u00a0the development of enduring structures that could control space for extended periods of time. Nation states and prisons exemplify how control was tied to spatial relations in early modernity. Late, “liquid” modernity, however, is distinguished by accelerated movement of both information and material objects. Rigid structures tied to particular spaces become less important than the movement of the flows that pass\u00a0easily\u00a0between them.\u00a0Bauman explains\u00a0(Liquid Modernity,\u00a0<\/em>pp. 10-11):<\/p>\n the long effort to accelerate the speed of movement has presently reached its ‘natural limit’. Power can move with the speed of the electronic signal – and so the time required for the movement of its essential ingredients has been reduced to instantaneity. For all practical purposes, power has become truly exterritorial, no longer bound, not even slowed down, by the resistance of space… It does not matter any more where the giver of the command is – the difference between ‘close by’ and ‘far away’… has been all but cancelled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This being the case, Bauman argues that we need to move beyond the theoretic frameworks used to make sense of control in early modernity–most significantly, we need to move beyond the metaphor of the panopticon described by Michel Foucault in\u00a0Discipline and Punish<\/em>. The guards of\u00a0liquid modernity can watch from anywhere and the prisoners can be watched anywhere. Bauman explains\u00a0(Liquid Modernity<\/em>, p. 10) that panoptic control is<\/p>\n burdened with… handicaps… It is an expensive strategy: conquering space and holding to it as well as keeping its residents in the surveilled place… [rapid movement]\u00a0gives the power-holders a truly unprecedented opportunity: the awkward and irritating aspects of the panoptical technique of power may be disposed of. Whatever else the present stage in the history of modernity is, it is… above all, post-Panoptical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Though not without its flaws<\/a>, Bauman’s\u00a02013 collaboration with David Lyon, titled\u00a0Liquid Surveillance<\/em>,\u00a0most forcibly made the case that we need to move beyond the metaphor of the panopticon if we truly hope to understand how the relationship between visibility and control works in the age of social media. A decade earlier in\u00a0Liquid Modernity<\/em>, Bauman\u00a0(drawing on\u00a0Thomas Mathiesen<\/a>), had already suggested we examine “synoptic” power structures, where the many now watch the few but\u00a0the few still\u00a0maintain\u00a0influence over the many by producing\u00a0spectacles for the many to consume.\u00a0Liquid Surveillance<\/em>\u00a0pushes the conversation a step further, suggesting we consider “ban-optic” power structures (a term coined by Didier Bigo<\/a>), which, unlike the panopticon, are not confined to a specific institution but are applied to society– and even the global population–as a whole. The fundamental mechanism behind ban-optic\u00a0structures is social sorting by way of profiling and algorithmic prediction. The ban-opticon\u00a0pressures us to conform to normalized patterns of behavior or else be categorized as a potential threat and, thus, subjected to greater surveillance and diminished rights. Perhaps even more concerning, ban-optic power structures often draw boundaries of exclusion based on\u00a0involuntary\u00a0categories such as race, citizenship, or genetic markers.\u00a0These discussions of the ban-opticon now seems prescient\u00a0as we transition toward a\u00a0Trump presidency.<\/p>\n While these were important insights, I would argue that it is not\u00a0what Bauman\u00a0explicitly said here about surveillance that is most significant, but the discussions that his worked\u00a0helped open the door to.<\/p>\n First, the conversation about surveillance and social media has finally moved past\u00a0the metaphor of the panopticon. Excellent books like David Savat’s Uncoding the Digital<\/em>\u00a0[my review<\/a>] are attempting to develop entirely new frameworks for understanding more fluid forms of surveillance. Bauman stretches the concept of the\u00a0synopticon almost beyond recognizability to the point that his recent\u00a0work\u00a0all but begs for new conceptual tools. Further development\u00a0of terms like “omniopticon” (used by Nathan Jurgenson and George Ritzer to describe many-many surveillance dynamics) are still sorely needed.<\/p>\n Second, we we have begun to see that the model of surveillance is no longer an iron cage but a velvet one<\/a>–it is now sought as much as it is imposed. Social media users, for example, are drawn to sites because they\u00a0offer a certain kind of social gratifaction that comes from being heard or known. Such voluntary and extensive visibility is\u00a0the basis for a seismic shift in the way social control operates–from punitive measures to predictive ones. Bauman explains (Liquid Surveillance<\/em>, pp. 65-66):<\/p>\n With the carrot (or its promise) replacing the stick, temptation and seduction taking over the functions once performed by normative regulation, and the grooming and honing of desires substituting for costly and dissent-generating policing… I would rather abstain from using the term \u2018panopticon\u2019 in this context. The professionals in question are anything but the old-fashioned surveillors watching over the monotony of the binding routine; they are rather trackers or stalkers of the exquisitely changeable patterns of desires and of the conduct inspired by those volatile desires.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n The imposing nature of the panopticon is rapidly being designed out of surveillance technologies, and Silicon Valley’s goal of “frictionless” sharing on social media exemplifies this trend. Social control, itself, has become more adaptive and individualized–more fluid–and Bauman’s work gives us a language to talk about this.<\/p>\n Pleasurable traps depend on this sort of fluidity; they must adjust themselves to most efficiently channel the desires and behaviors of each individual. When effective, such traps are not experienced as an imposition but as opportunity. In his most hyperbolic moments,\u00a0Bauman made statements<\/a> such as:<\/p>\n we no longer employ technology to find the appropriate means for our ends, but we instead allow our ends to be determined by the available means of technology. We don\u2019t develop technologies to do what we want to be done. We do what is made possible by technology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If we take this too seriously,\u00a0we might conclude that Bauman believed we have all become\u00a0dupes. But, he, himself, gives us tools to understand why this is not so.<\/p>\n Bauman suggests that–following\u00a0modernity’s failure to divide the world up into definite and enduring categories–ambiguity and ambivalence\u00a0define post-modern logic. It is useful to think about\u00a0pleasurable traps as being ambivalent to our ends\/desires. Ambivalence is necessary to achieve flexibility. There is no singular, ideal way to be ensnared. Pleasurable traps modulate themselves to be the means to many different ends; they only encourage users to adapt when they reach the limits of their own adaptability. And, they only tend to bar entry when they exhaust efforts to co-adapt with the user.<\/p>\n![\"Medusa\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2017\/01\/medusa-400x346.jpg\")
<\/h3>\nPleasurable Traps: Beyond the Panopticon<\/h3>\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
![\"Hansel](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2017\/01\/6a00e54fcf738588340191032fac72970c-800wi-400x336.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n