Living in the Panopticon: Paranoia and Resistance
The surveillance methods of the Stasi have gained new relevance in the light of current algorithmic control—or what Gary T. Marx calls “New Surveillance.”
1See Marx, “A Tack in the Shoe,” or Marx, “Soul Train.” Recent scholarship has engaged with the prolific pre-digital surveillance state to understand how it has informed current discourses on surveillance, exploring analogies and differences between contemporary surveillance culture and Stasi surveillance. As Lewis highlights, the “human intelligence collection” of the East German secret police is reminiscent of the datafication of humans for the profit-making of monopolistic tech companies.
2Lewis, A State of Secrecy, xiii. Shoshana Zuboff describes this “new economic order that uses human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales” as “Surveillance Capitalism.”
3Zuboff, “Big Other.” Lewis refers to the Stasi’s “mode of human contact surveillance” as “sticky surveillance” to describe the pervasive nature of the Stasi’s human-contact-based techniques, which, as we saw in chapter 2, involved the performance, cultivation and, exploitation of relationships of trust. Lewis states:
Détente was for Mielke merely an extension of class warfare by other means, and he feared especially the “politics of human contacts.” As he discovered, the advantage of deploying human intelligence collection was that informers were able to approach their targets naturalistically and thereby achieve a relationship far closer than was possible through technological forms or information harvesting. Because the source of surveillance was not geographically fixed in one place (as occurs with a camera or bugging device), surveillers were able to zoom in on their objects. Parasite-like, they could attach themselves to their targets, if not physically, then at least socially and potentially even emotionally.
4Lewis, A State of Secrecy, 101.Borrowing Gilles Deleuze’s notion of “rhizomes,” Lewis further describes the Stasi’s inter-connected and non-hierarchical network of informants as “rhizomatic surveillance”: she notes that, “the image of a rhizome describes especially well the Stasi informers’ main modes of operating as they crept surreptitiously from one secret assignation to the next.”
5Lewis, A State of Secrecy, 102. The Stasi’s informant network operated like a web, allowing the Stasi to reach into every corner of GDR life, from workplaces to social gatherings, creating an environment where anyone could be potentially under suspicion. The Stasi had spread its
web
over its population, evoking the “control society” which Deleuze famously anticipated for a contemporary world dominated by algorithmic control.
6Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” Interestingly, Lewis also describes the underground literary scene itself as rhizomatic, comprised of the kinds of networks and contacts we trace and analyse in this book.
7See Lewis, “Creative Outlets.”As we have seen, the Stasi’s extensive surveillance created a culture of anxiety, fear, and suspicion, which had an impact on the ability of individuals to create relationships of trust. We have shown already that opponents of the GDR regime knew only too well that they were under the watchful eye of the state’s secret police. Being watched changes how we think and act. In this respect, Hille Koskela’s observation that surveilled space “affects the ways in which ‘reality’ is conceptualized and understood” is pertinent.
8Koskela, “‘The Gaze Without Eyes,’” 243. The complexity of being watched is reflected in Ekkehard Maaß’s choice of words: “man wusste sich immer beobachtet” (you always knew you were being watched—see chapter 1). The grammatical reflexivity in the German “sich wissen,” literally “to know oneself” resonates with the reflexivity on the level of content. The verb “wissen” (to know) takes a reflexive pronoun (“sich”), indicating that the subject—the generic “man” represents both
the knowing subject and
the object of observation through the lens of the external gaze. In short, Maaß’s wording suggests an internalised observation characteristic of panoptic mechanisms.
The constant surveillance of the Stasi—or at least the perception of it—can indeed be understood in the framework of the “panopticon” which has arguably become the most wide-spread metaphor for centralised, that is, top-down surveillance. Originally conceived by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1785, the “panopticon”
9Bentham, The Panopticon Writings. was designed around the idea that the mere possibility of surveillance would encourage individuals to regulate their own behaviour, conforming with societal expectations. Internalising the gaze of the “other,” that is, social norms and codes of behaviour, would lead to “self-governance,” or rather, to an automated disciplining of the self. Michel Foucault later elaborated on Bentham’s prison model in
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of a Prison (1975),
10See Foucault’s theoretical development of Bentham’s Panopticon in Foucault, Discipline and Punish, esp. ch. 3, “Panopticism.” and developed the theory of “panopticism,” introducing the term “disciplinary power” to describe the process of self-policing, in which individuals internalise external surveillance to conform with societal norms. Foucault’s theoretical elaborations on the panopticon complicate the one-sidedness of surveillance, as his framework allows the watchers themselves to become visible and subject to observation.
The triggering force of panoptic self-disciplinisation is anxiety. As suggested in the initial idea of Bentham’s penitentiary design, inmates—who could not see the guard in the watchtower—faced the constant possibility of being watched, but had no certain knowledge that surveillance was or was not present at any given time. Anxious about making errors and fearing the potential danger of being caught and penalised, the inmates would comply with the rules. From Bentham’s utilitarian perspective, focusing on maximising collective well-being, and in line with his visions as social reformer, panoptic mechanisms were believed to lead to a productive and flourishing society. The downsides of such systems are, as often discussed, the way the panopticon nourishes paranoia. Individuals who want to conform to these disciplinary powers as they fear the punitive consequences, as well as individuals who resist the panopticons in which they live, are prone to develop an overly heightened sense of awareness of potential surveillance.
The material in the Stasi archives mirrors the paranoia of the Stasi officers about potential subversive activity; IM reports also reveal the impact of surveillance—of living in the “panopticon”—on the mental state of those being observed. As we saw in chapter 1, Franz Fühmann acted as an advisor and key supporter of emerging critical writers. In a file note dated May 25, 1977, Fühmann is reported as stating, “daß er ständig kontrolliert wird, daß seine Post 6-8 Wochen geht” (that he is being constantly controlled and that his mail takes six to eight weeks).
11File note dated May 25, 1977. He concludes from the length of the mail delivery process that he is constantly being monitored. Various IMs observed “daß sich bei ihm [Fühmann] so etwas wie Verfolgungswahn herausbildet” (that he [Fühmann] is developing something like a persecution complex).
12Source from IM “Anna Harloff,” dated December 2, 1978. In another report dated November 2, 1976, the IMS “Dölbl” observes:
daß Fühmann gegenwärtig psychisch sehr anfällig ist. Er vertrete beispielsweise die Meinung, daß die Parteiführung jedes Wort, das er schreibt, gegen ihn anwenden würde. Es existiere eine sog. “Kladde,” in der jede seiner Äußerungen, ob in Wort oder Schrift, registriert werde.
13Meeting report by IMS “Dölbl,” dated November 2, 1976.[that Fühmann is currently very vulnerable psychologically. He was of the opinion, for example, that the party leadership would use every word he wrote against him. There is a so-called “Kladde” (notebook) in which every utterance he makes, whether spoken or written, is registered.]
Heuristic knowledge (e.g., the rule of thumb that delayed post means that it is being intercepted) results in a state of paranoia, affecting Fühmann psychologically. Uwe Kolbe’s wording in a letter to Fühmann illustrates well how shared knowledge about the repressive measures of the Stasi is embodied: “Ich höre so ‘Geschichten,’ also rieche, habe die Nase voll von diesem Gestank aus Polizeimaßnahmen, Ausquetschen irgendwelcher unsch
ludiger [sic] Mädchen … Ja, wahrscheinlich einfach … geborgen, wahrscheinlich s e l b s t so wenig gefährdet in den haarsträubenden Existenz- und Staasi-Katastrofen. Ich find’s bedenklich, daß ich so angstlos bin, was mein
e [sic] Sein betrifft.” (I hear such ‘stories,’ that is smell, I’m fed up with this stench of police measures, squeezing out innocent girls … Yes, probably simply … sheltered, probably m y s e l f
so little endangered in the hair-raising existential and Stasi disasters. I find it troubling that I am so unafraid when it comes to my own being).
14Letter from Kolbe to Fühmann, dated September 14, 1984. Emphases in original. However, as we will show in this chapter and the next one, critical artists resisted this form of disciplinary power in both subtle and confrontational ways. They made use of the subversive power of literature, questioning and critiquing through their writings the ways in which disciplinary systems shape individual behaviour, and they also used their knowledge of the Stasi to confront surveillance directly.