Open AccessRepresentations of Surveillance and Perceptual Technologies at Military Museums
Author(s) -
Kevin Walby,
Haley Pauls
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
surveillance and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.781
H-Index - 46
ISSN - 1477-7487
DOI - 10.24908/ss.v19i1.14068
Subject(s) - invisibility , perception , camouflage , conflation , sociology , visibility , visual arts , narrative , harm , focus (optics) , aesthetics , psychology , computer science , epistemology , social psychology , art , geography , artificial intelligence , philosophy , physics , literature , neuroscience , meteorology , optics
Drawing from fieldwork at military museums across Manitoba, Canada, we explore the objects and narratives used to curate museum displays featuring what Bousquet (2018) calls “military perception.” Using Bousquet’s categories of military perception to organize our analysis, we examine how these museums position scopes, sonars, camouflage, and other devices meant to create visibility or invisibility as aesthetic objects rather than as instruments enabling state violence. With a focus on curatorial strategies and the arrangement of objects at these museums, we explore how surveillance and camouflage displays are organized to minimize the harm that military interventions cause and align the affect of the viewer with the form of Canadian nationalism animating the museum and against “enemy” others and spaces, a process we refer to as encasement. In conclusion, we reflect on what our analysis adds to literature on military museums and representations of surveillance.