Surveilling the Surveillants: From Relational Surveillance to WikiLeaks

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter deals with the analysis of Julian Assange as a public figure through the use of three perspective angles. In the first part, Assange’ history is briefly outlined, tracing it back to the systems of thought of authors such as Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu, with the aim of highlighting how the Australian journalist’s biography helps to illuminate his (and our) historical time and, vice versa, how historical time helps to depict his biography and his courageous journalistic campaigns more precisely. The second part shows how the apparently subversive aspects of Assange’s activity in fact need to be analysed within the web of social control and the subsequent fight between rulers and outsiders. The criminalisation of Julian Assange is, by this token, a consequence of the reaction enacted by power against militant practice aimed at claiming an alternative use of the web. The third paragraph examines three basic principles of Enlightenment which are apparent in the WikiLeaks approach and explicitly recalled by Assange: the connection between the duty to improve knowledge and the right to communicate, publicity as a test to reveal injustice and the understanding of freedom of the press as an antitotalitarian device.