resisting sovereign surveillance: an activist agenda from the incarcerated

Presentation made by Jessa Lingel and Aram Sinnreich at the Internet Research 15 Conference in Daegu, Korea, 10/23/14. Full draft of the article is available at http://j.mp/incodification. Presentation audio: https://soundcloud.com/original-sinn/incodification_ir15 Abstract: This paper reviews penal history in order to consider forms of resistance to mass surveillance. Because experiences of surveillance are endemic to incarcerated life, identifying tactics of resistance among these populations provides valuable insights for potential forms of counter-conduct in other circumstances of ubiquitous monitoring. We focus on three forms of protest: hunger strikes, alternate communication networks and viral dance videos, which we frame through Foucault’s theory of askesis. We introduce the term incodification as a means of describing conditions of continuous surveillance ingrained into infrastructures of everyday life, even as these conditions give rise to tactics of resistance like those identified in this paper. Our objective in introducing this term, and with our analysis as a whole, is to provoke theoretical and activist projects that account for and subvert infrastructures of incodification.