Masters of the Screen: On Media, Optics, and Photography as Fatal Strategy

Departing from Bernard Harcourt’s The Counterrevolution , this paper considers how American counterinsurgency theory-based government and paramilitarizated optics together created Baudrillard’s “irruption of the obscene”—where Rapid Dominance strategy bleeds across the delineation between military and civilian realms, where mass media becomes the site of warfare—and re-examines Rapid Dominance along these new terms: when loss of illusion unfolds alongside declarations of “transparency” and “truth,” when everything becomes optics as mediated by a screen—the limits of which we can no longer detect—there can be no visual comprehension of our environment. Here, the strategy continues to issue a condemnation-to-paralysis, a being-ensnared in the cyclical effects of vertigo and fascination within the trance of spectatorship, but who is the new adversary? How is the field of vision renegotiated and what is camouflage? Disrupting our visual hypnosis, this paper uses Baudrillard’s Fatal Strategies alongside Virilio’s Vision Machine to argue that resistance is still possible—the faculties of battlefield-perception can be wrenched back— presenting visual communication as weapon against the omnipotence of Rapid Dominance: a new photographic language through technological manipulation that breaks the flow of information, refracts shock and awe and puts on display our full monstrosity as the pharmakon of perception.

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Rebecca Lee Sanchez

Conference

Publication date: June 2019

Publication date (Print): June 2019

Pages: 83-89

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[0001]European Graduate School

Seewjinenstrasse 6, CH-3930 Visp

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/POM19.13

SO-VID: 2f8027ae-64e4-42e3-9a94-4486ab345d6f

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Politics of the Machine Beirut 2019

Conference acronym: POM2019

Conference number: 2

Conference location: Beirut, Lebanon

Conference date: 11-14 June 2019

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Politics of the Machine

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/POM19.13

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

M. DeLanda 1991 War in the Age of Intelligent Machines Zone Books New York
B.E. Harcourt 2018 The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against its Own Citizens Basic Books New York
J. Baudrillard 2002 Screened Out Verso New York
J. Baudrillard 1983 Fatal Strategies Semiotext(e) New York
E.M. Cioran 1975 A Short History of Decay Arcade Publishing New York
S. KracauerT. Levin 1993 Photography Critical Inquiry 19 Spring 421 436
P. Virilio 2012 The Administration of Fear Semiotext(e) New York
P. Virilio 1994 The Vision Machine Indiana University Press Indiana

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[1] M. DeLanda 1991 War in the Age of Intelligent Machines Zone Books New York

[2] B.E. Harcourt 2018 The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against its Own Citizens Basic Books New York

[3] J. Baudrillard 2002 Screened Out Verso New York

[4] J. Baudrillard 1983 Fatal Strategies Semiotext(e) New York

[5] E.M. Cioran 1975 A Short History of Decay Arcade Publishing New York

[6] S. KracauerT. Levin 1993 Photography Critical Inquiry 19 Spring 421 436

[7] P. Virilio 2012 The Administration of Fear Semiotext(e) New York

[8] P. Virilio 1994 The Vision Machine Indiana University Press Indiana

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