Sankar Varma K.C
With the advent of capitalism, especially with its delineating sort of culture, monopolies are on the rise. This very formation of a monopoly definitely calls for a surveillance that can be ‘socialist’ in nature and not capitalistic. Hence a parallel plot could be explored, by critically engaging digital capitalism and monopoly surveillance (with the rise of digital monopolies and surveillance capitalism).
We have reached a stage where everybody who is part of a ‘collective’ has started developing a feeling wherein they are assured of what they speak is the ‘absolute truth’ and ‘right.’ In other words, people have started believing “my right is the only right and your right is the most wrong right.” It is here that one can bring in the concept of ‘monopoly’ and it can be viewed through a very cynical and intellectual lens as well. The very reason is that with the advent of social media, the normalized routine of a daily life of an individual is altogether different now. For instance, as soon as we get up in the morning, we now search out for our mobile phones to find what is there already—even before we rush to the bath room for routine things and reading a newspaper with a cup of tea.
Hence it is no longer a question of ‘your right and my right’ but the right in itself has lost all its rights. In other words, the very concept of rights has always had an aesthetic restriction that was to be followed, but with the advent of capitalism these aesthetic restrictions, as earlier put, have become commanding and forced rules that call for surveillance.
The problem is not that it calls for surveillance but capitalism has started involving in the daily affairs of one’s normal self, and life of an individual has become an affair that is highly digitized in nature. Michel Foucault says every day when you get up in the morning, think about the atrocities, rape, trauma and all the mishappenings that you are forced to encounter and go on informing us, working against all of these. In a way, this is a strategy wherein an individual self who is a part of a society works against himself/herself for a societal good. This sort of working against one’s self for a collective good has started diminishing with the advent of digital monopolies and surveillance capitalism.
As we read Varughese (2016), it becomes clear that ‘science’ has occupied our media space in unprecedented ways. The dominant response to threats from cultural relativism and obscurantism vis-à-vis science, which is perpetuated by the Hindu Right in our context, has mostly been a defence of the authority of science. But, this defence of science has also demonstrated the inalienable socialites that it is implicated in, as mobilisations such as the ‘March for Science’ and the ‘Kerala Rally for Science’ demonstrate. The way out for modern science might then be to acknowledge and embrace its constitutive historicity and sociality, rather than retreat to its old fortresses of authority. However, this constituting of an old fortress of historicity rather than authority can help the current surveillance from going social and we do have examples for the same which include the Purogamana Kala Sahithya Sangam(PuKaSa), Kerala Sasthra Sahitya Parishad(KSSP) which are collectives that have and continue to awaken and enlighten for the dare to know kinds. It will be productive to ask what the role of the KSSP has been in founding notions of risk as a consequence of its emphasis on popular science, and its participation in the protest against the Silent Valley project in the early 1980s. Hence it can be pretty much revived that the legacy of these collectives stands tall but following it has always been a burden and the reason goes back to the exercise of power. This very exercise of power is a monopolistic thought, and hence a pluralistic notion like the ideals the earlier mentioned collectives follow needs to be put in track for a shooing away of digital monopolies and surveillance capitalism as these collectives mentioned have started becoming weak on the other front because of the digital communications.
The authenticity of a thing is the quintessence of all that is transmissible in it from its origin on, ranging from its physical duration to the history to which it testifies. Since the historical testimony is based on the physical duration, the historical testimony of the thing, too, is jeopardized by reproduction, in which physical duration has been withdrawn from human activity. Admittedly, it is only the historical testimony that is jeopardized; yet what is really jeopardized thereby is the authority of the thing, the weight it derives from tradition. One might summarize these aspects of the artwork in the concept of the aura, and say: what withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work of art is the latter’s aura. This process is symptomatic; its significance extends far beyond the realm of art. It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. Hence along with these notions of the Frankfurt school German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1994-2004), I would like to mix the perennial gale of capitalism’s impact which is nothing but a creative destruction as proposed by Joseph Schumpeter. Hence a looking back into the history can create a discourse that is collective in nature and for this a surveillance of a society is called for which must be robbed of any capitalistic intent.
References
Benjamin, Walter (1994-2004): “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (2nd Version),” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 3, Cambridge, MA: Bellknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Varughese, Shiju Sam (2016): Contested Knowledge: Science, Media, and Democracy in Kerala, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Radhakrishnan, Ratheesh (2018): “Plotting Science: Media Narratives and Imaginations of Scientific Discourse,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 53, Issue No. 16, 21 April.
Sankar Varma is a commentator on social issues. His current interest is political economy of the media.
