The_Power_Of_Surveillance

The Power Of Surveillance Today’s world is a world of total surveillance. Video cameras, secret shoppers, and thumb print scanners are only the beginning of a long list of devises that are used today to keep society “in check”. In Staples essay, he argues that surveillance has engulfed our cultures and has infiltrated every aspect of society, raising the question, “Who holds ultimate power'”. Michel Foucault, a French philosopher of the 20th century, who uses opposing ideas of the Enlightenment in attempt to prove human worth and identity, has also addressed this question. Foucault states that man is not autonomous by nature, but rather tied into an episteme. His idea on power and knowledge displaces the human subject from the central role of domination. Consequently, arguing that knowledge is no longer the “autonomous intellectual structures that happen to be employed as instruments of power” (Foucault, 219), but rather tied to systems of social control. O’Rourke’s documentary Cannibal Tours, examines the lives of the Iatmul Indians living in Papua New Guinea by filming the interaction between the natives and the western tourists who visit them, ultimetley bluring the boundaries between self and other. The cameraman juxtaposes interviews with surveillance, society, power, westerners, tourists, natives, control, native, foucault, camera, audience, within, same, o’rourke, one, knowledge, between, watchful, watched, views, under, ultimate, thus, through, staples, social, people, inmate, ideas, iatmul, episteme, cameras, western, upon, turn