The Disembodied Eye: Technologies of Surveillance and the Logistics of Perception in the Ottoman Empire and Syria, 1900-1930 (2018)
Zakar, Adrien (Author)
Elshakry, Marwa S. (Advisor)
Columbia University
Elshakry, Marwa S.
Physical Details: 230 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation investigates how the development and circulation of technologies of surveillance helped refashion institutional structures, systems of representation, and conceptions of nature and society in the Ottoman Empire and Syria throughout the transition from empire to nation-states. While militarization amplified the capabilities of modern states to discipline human perception through conscription and schooling, the notion of an all-seeing perspective - materialized in the aerial view - was incorporated in the apparatus of state power. The account moves between sites across the imperial territory and as the French mandate replaced Ottoman rule in Syria. These include ventures to propagate the map as an instrument of argumentation and discovery in the capital Istanbul, attempts by Jesuit geographers and earth scientists at inculcating new forms of sight upon the public in Beirut and the Beqaa Valley, the building of post-imperial scientific institutions in Damascus, and the optics of aerial warfare as devised by French strategists and subverted by Arab guerrilla commanders. Environmental representations such as maps and aerial photographs sustained competing social and institutional structures by inculcating upon their targeted audience concrete procedures for disciplining perception, which refashioned the subjectivity, social function, and epistemic virtues of the ideal commander and citizen. In the Middle East, as elsewhere, technologies of surveillance were integrated with existing political and philosophical currents such as Ottomanism, Arabism, and French colonialism, while simultaneously refashioning them from within. The coming of aerial warfare was an integral part of this ongoing process of cultural and technological transformation, which reconfigured political, epistemic, and ethical norms of war and peace.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Tyler Morton;
(2019)
From Kites to Cold War: The Evolution of Manned Airborne Reconnaissance
(/isis/citation/CBB997279151/)
Article
Donald M. Bishop;
Erik R. Limpaecher;
(2021)
Looking Back from the Age of ISR: U.S. Observation Balloons in WWI
(/isis/citation/CBB684109801/)
Article
Elyse Semerdjian;
(2023)
Archival Wounds
(/isis/citation/CBB933499062/)
Article
Cahill, William M.;
(2012)
Imaging the Empire: The 3d Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron in World War II
(/isis/citation/CBB001212129/)
Book
Andreas Feldtkeller;
Uta Zeuge-Buberl;
(2018)
Networks of Knowledge: Epistemic Entanglement Initiated by American Protestant Missionary Presence in Nineteenth-century Syria
(/isis/citation/CBB793982994/)
Book
Kaplan, Caren;
(2018)
Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above
(/isis/citation/CBB570216110/)
Article
Steve Tamari;
(2001)
Ottoman Madrasas: The Multiple Lives of Educational Institutions in Eighteenth-Century Syria
(/isis/citation/CBB499623018/)
Book
Downing, Taylor;
(2011)
Spies in the Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence during World War II
(/isis/citation/CBB001212711/)
Book
Steven K. Bailey;
(2019)
Bold Venture: The American Bombing of Japanese-Occupied Hong Kong, 1942–1945
(/isis/citation/CBB521114387/)
Article
Edward P.F. Rose;
(2019)
Lawrence Rickard Wager (1904-1965): A distinguished geologist who helped to pioneer aerial photographic interpretation for allied forces in World War II
(/isis/citation/CBB693801613/)
Chapter
Mahdi Abdeljaouad;
(2014)
Mathematics Education in Islamic Countries in the Modern Time: Case Study of Tunisia
(/isis/citation/CBB346881103/)
Book
Ebrahimnejad, Hormoz;
(2009)
The Development of Modern Medicine in Non-Western Countries: Historical Perspectives
(/isis/citation/CBB000933048/)
Article
M.C. Elish;
(November 2017)
Remote Split: A History of US Drone Operations and the Distributed Labor of War
(/isis/citation/CBB385197379/)
Book
Kevin Howley;
(2018)
Drones: Media Discourse and the Public Imagination
(/isis/citation/CBB047987646/)
Article
Lucy Suchman;
Karolina Follis;
Jutta Weber;
(November 2017)
Tracking and Targeting: Sociotechnologies of (In)security: (Introduction)
(/isis/citation/CBB721841161/)
Article
Tyler Morton;
(2019)
Linguists get Their Wings: Airborne Voice Intercept Operators in World War II
(/isis/citation/CBB219263940/)
Article
Christiane Wilke;
(November 2017)
Seeing and Unmaking Civilians in Afghanistan: Visual Technologies and Contested Professional Visions
(/isis/citation/CBB113464170/)
Book
John Davies;
Alexander J. Kent;
(2017)
The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World
(/isis/citation/CBB585448106/)
Article
al-Qattan, Najwa;
(2014)
When Mothers Ate Their Children: Wartime Memory and the Language of Food in Syria and Lebanon
(/isis/citation/CBB001550578/)
Thesis
Tsacoyianis, Beverly Ann;
(2014)
Making Healthy Minds and Bodies in Syria and Lebanon, 1899--1961
(/isis/citation/CBB001567600/)
Be the first to comment!