Gilbert Caluya

The post-panoptic society? Reassessing Foucault in surveillance studies

Foucaults panopticon has become the leading scholarly model or metaphor for analysing surveillance. Surveillance studies scholars have recently turned away from Foucault in an attempt to understand contemporary social and technological developments in surveillance and society. This article argues against this trend in surveillance studies by returning to Foucaults writing, interviews and lectures on the panopticon. It begins by reviewing the surveillance literature that supposedly goes beyond Foucault. It resituates the panopticon in the broader context of Foucaults theory of power to show how surveillance scholars have misinterpreted both his analysis of the gaze and power. In the second section, it assesses the ‘Deleuzian turn’ in surveillance studies against Deleuzes own writings on Foucault. By way of conclusion, it returns to Foucaults recently published lectures on security to show how these pre-empted many of the developments in contemporary surveillance studies.

‘Affective eduscapes’: the case of Indian students within Australian international higher education

In this article we examine the financial, cultural and governmental structures that frame international education as an important part of Appudurais ethnoscapes of globalization. Developing the idea of affective eduscapes we analyse the lived experiences of Indian students. Drawing on interview material, we deconstruct the idea of ‘the Indian student’, and any singular experience of international higher education.

The Aesthetics of Simplicity: Yang's Sadness and the Melancholic Community

Through an aesthetically-grounded reading of William Yangs Sadness, this essay attempts to explore the ways in which Sadness intervenes in the ethics and politics of grief as an art work. Rather than interpreting Yangs work as autobiography, I attempt to reframe this in terms of loss. Drawing on the work of photography theorists such as Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, I analyse Sadness in terms of what I call an aesthetics of simplicity, which mobilises the realism of photographic and anecdotal detail to present the uniqueness and particularity of Yangs subjects. I use this aesthetic grounding to explore the ways in which Sadness affectively intervenes into the politics of mourning, by building affective alliances not just within a particular minority community but across communities, what I call the melancholic community.

Sexual geopolitics: the ‘blue balls’ theory of terrorism

This article explores the recent occlusion of economic deprivation by sexual frustration as the hegemonic model for understanding international terrorism. In particular, it focuses on, what it dubs, ‘the blue balls theory of terrorism’, which asserts that terrorism is caused by the sexual frustration of non-western men. The first section traces the emergence of this theory across western media and academic writing and provides a brief critique of the sociobiological underpinnings of the theory. The second section takes a detour through other hydraulic tropes of sexuality in western history to foreground the heteronormative aspects of this discursive tradition. The final section returns to the blue balls theory of terrorism to show how this heteronormative conception of hydraulic sexuality has shaped contemporary theorizing about international terrorism. In doing so, this article hopes to shed light on the ways the sexual has become a privileged site for regulating non-western states.

Pride and paranoia: race and the emergence of home security in Cold War America

This article traces the emergence of home security systems within the context of housing desegregation and suburbanization in post-war America. It aims to analyse the physical materiality of home security systems within the context of racialized material inequality, drawing on advertisements and newspaper articles at the time. It argues that the growing obsession with home security that accompanied post-war domestic material cultures paralleled the increasing urban racial panic exemplified by housing riots and civil rights disorders. Home security could be read in this context as a way to regain control over private space at the very moment that conservative white, middle-class Americans felt they were losing control of public space.

Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa

through security, not outside it”. This may well be a fair point; the problem is that Cummings does not exactly show how the latest constructivist debate is applicable or relevant to Central Asia. For some reason, the chapter also ignores traditional security threats operating at the regional level such as border disputes, tensions over enclaves, trade wars and blockades, and irredentism, linking the security dynamics primarily to “new” threats (environmental issues, terrorism, organised crime) and system-level competition between external actors. On a few occasions the book’s narrative becomes too sketchy for an audience that does not have prior knowledge of Central Asia. For example, when discussing state-driven discourses of nationalism, it claims that “Uzbekistan’s national ideology partly celebrates the country’s ‘golden heritage’ (oltin meros)” (p. 112). That’s it – there is no explanation of what this “golden heritage” might be, or why it is celebrated only in part. A brief foray into the official idea of Tajikness on p. 111 may lead the reader to a false conclusion that Islam is not utilised actively and creatively by the government of Rahmon to construct the edifice of national unity. Although Cummings uses some sources from Central Asia (in Russian), she clearly explains the region to a Western audience using conventional Western idioms, concepts and perceptions. For an introductory text, this is an asset rather than a shortcoming. This book, particularly when used in conjunction with Svat Soucek’s A History of Central Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Reuel Hanks’ Global Security Watch – Central Asia (Praeger, 2010) would form a solid foundation for an undergraduate or graduate curriculum in Central Asian studies.