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Democratic curiosity in times of surveillance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2016

Jef Huysmans*
Affiliation:
Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London
*
* Correspondence to: Jef Huysmans, School of Politics and International Relations, ArtsOne Building, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS, London. Author’s email: jef.husmans@qmul.ac.uk

Abstract

Taking my cue from feminist curiosity and literature on the everyday in surveillance studies, I am proposing ‘democratic curiosity’ as a tool for revisiting the question of democracy in times of extitutional surveillance. Democratic curiosity seeks to bring into analytical play the social and political power of little nothings – the power of subjects, things, practices, and relations that are rendered trivial – and the uncoordinated disputes they enact. Revisiting democracy from this angle is particularly pertinent in extitutional situations in which the organisation and practices of surveillance are spilling beyond their panoptic configurations. Extitutional surveillance is strongly embedded in diffusing arrangements of power and ever more extensively enveloped in everyday life and banal devices. To a considerable degree these modes of surveillance escape democratic institutional repertoires that seek to bring broader societal concerns to bear upon surveillance. Extitutional enactments of democracy then become an important question for both security and surveillance studies.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2016 

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References

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62 Although the concept of ‘dispute’ as used here draws on Boltanski and Thévenot’s studies, I am not following the precise meaning they give to the concept, which in their use is explicitly focused on practices of justification. For the purpose of this article, I am more interested in developing the uncoordinated quality of disputes. See Boltanski, Luc and Thèvenot, Laurent, ‘The sociology of critical capacity’, European Journal of Social Theory, 2:3 (1999), pp. 359377CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boltanski, Luc and Thèvenot, Laurent, De la justification. Les èconomies de la grandeur (Paris, Gallimard, 1991)Google Scholar.

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