Drama as Dataveillance

Raley's "Dataveillance and Countervailance" discusses the effects of modern data-mining on privacy, the economy, and human social interactions. In a dataveillance culture, data is power, and whoever has the best access to the most data is on top. In some ways, Lyly's Gallathea functions as a simply allegory of a world controlled by data: the gods, especially Neptune, fulfill the roles of data-controlling corporations, while Gallathea, Phillida, and the other townspeople are the everyday consumers, knowledgeable about the existence of data-harvesting but clueless to its actual process.  According to Raley, in a dataveillance culture "voluntarily surrendering personal information becomes the means by which social relations are established and collective entities supported" (125). The "voluntarily surrendering" of information brings to mind the voluntary sacrifice "of the fairest and chastest virgin in all the country" that should be brought to the tree so that Neptune's monster, the Agar, may take her (1.1.47). When this voluntary surrender is thwarted by Gallathea's and Phillida's escapes into the forest--the early modern equivalent of going off the grid?--social relations cannot be established, and collective entities are not supported. Eventually, the resolution to this problem is Gallathea and Phillida's marriage, which is only a possibility after each has voluntarily surrendered their secret identity as virgins. Through this action, the social relations and collective entities that have suffered can thrive again.

Raley also discusses data harvesting practices in a manner that brings to mind the cutting and rearranging of Smyth's article from last week. Raley quotes Haggerty and Ericson:

Surveillance technologies do not monitor people qua individuals, but instead operate through processes of disassembling and reassembling. People are broken down into a series of discrete informational flows which are stabilized and captured according to pre-established classificatory criteria. They are then transported to centralized locations to be reassembled and combined in ways that serve institutional agendas. Cumulatively, such information constitutes our “data double,” our virtual/informational profiles that circulate in various computers and contexts of practical application. (127)

As is typical for other depictions of Greek gods, Neptune doesn't care about the townspeople as individuals, rather, he is only concerned with the ways in which these people and their actions can be "transported to centralized locations [. . .] in ways that serve" his agenda. The play's most important centrallized location is the sacrificial tree, at which virgins must wait for the coming of the Agar. What exactly the Agar does with these virgins is unknown, but Tityrus hints at the possibility of consumption--an especially gruesome way of "disassembling."

But aside from simple plot allegories, the "data double" and the anxious dialectic of biological body vs. body of data reveals parallel structures in the culture of dataveillance and in drama as a genre. Raley argues that our "data doubles" are fragmented "dividuals" of data which are then read onto the biological body. This could be helpful: if your "data double" frequently visits apparel websites, a corporation could use that info to send you coupons to buy apparel at their website. But it could also be harmful: if your "data double" frequently visits websites about building homemade bombs, your biological body could be targeted as a terrorist, even if your biological body has no plans to build said bomb. According to Raley, "Data is in this respect performative: the composition of flecks and bits of data into a profile of a terror suspect, the re-grounding of abstract data in the targeting of an actual life, will have the effect of producing that life, that body, as a terror suspect" (128).

Data functions performatively in drama as well, and as an audience, we often function as data-miners. When viewing a drama, it is common sense to view the biological body acting in front of us as simply an actor: Hamlet is not actually Hamlet, but rather an individual who has trained to recite lines publicly. The lines, costume, and physical motions that this individual expresses on stage are only "the composition of flecks and bits of data," but like data-miners, the audience almost automatically goes about connecting this flecks and bits into a mimetic individual so that they can understand the character's motivation and history, or predict the character's next move. The entire careers of many actors, filmmakers, critics, and scholars have been made by the mimetic move to interpret Hamlet as a drag king (see Sarah Bernhardt) or as a Freudian Oedipus (see everything else). These interpretations rely entirely on connecting flecks of data in order to create elaborate backstories and motivations which may or may not be true.

I do not mean to argue that we shouldn't connect these flecks of data, or that audiences are foolish for viewing dramatic characters as actual individuals. But just as in dataveillance, it is important to remember that a dramatic character/"data double" is not an individual, and to recognize that the process of connecting flecks of data can often be problematic. Maybe the solution to this problem--if it really is a problem at all--can be found in Raley's art-activists who create "mirror worlds" in order to inform the public about dataveillance. After all, many early modern dramatists viewed their own plays as holding up a mirror to mankind, like the art-activists, in hopes of educating the public about their own follies and weaknesses.