Media, Surveillance and Affect

Book excerpt: Surveillance has become a part of everyday life: we are surrounded by surveillance technologies in news media, when we go down the street, in the movies, and even carry them in our own pockets in the form of smartphones. How are we constructing imaginaries of our realities and of ourselves as living in structures of control? What affects, emotions and feelings do we develop in societies of control, and how do we narrate them? Media, Surveillance and Affect represents a big step in revealing the depth of the entanglement of surveillance technology not only with our everyday lives, but with our imaginaries and affective experiences. Combining insights from affect studies with narratological and visual cultural studies approaches, the case studies in this book focus on how surveillance cameras and surveillance camera images have been used to narrate affective stories of Great Britain. Cases discussed include the memory work surrounding the murder of James Bulger in 1993 and of Lee Rigby in 2011, but also novels and artworks. With a multidisciplinary approach Media, Surveillance and Affect will appeal to students, scholars and specialists interested in fields such as media and cultural studies, literary studies, cultural sociology and surveillance studies.