Posting a draft paper, co-written with Chris Perkins. Currently under review with Security Dialogue journal.

Visuality, Secrecy and Cartography: Reversing the Panopticon Through Counter-Mapping

MARTIN DODGE & CHRIS PERKINS

Abstract

We invoke a neo-Foucauldian model of the panoptic gaze to understand the practices of military visuality and of newly emerging efforts to resist and subvert deep-seated and long-held governmental secrecy over military/intelligence activities and their sites of operation. The case studies set out in the second half of the paper are attempts question excessive secrecy underlying the military panoptical power by conscious re-purposing of topographic mapping and remotely sensed imagery as an active site of resistance. They show the importance of a contextual reading of panoptic visuality in the post 9/11 era.

Keywords:

Panopticism, Secrecy, Visuality, Counter-Mapping, Power