Introduction, and Other Dark Matters
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Published:September 2015
Beginning with declassified fbi documents on Frantz Fanon, as well as his lectures on surveillance at the University of Tunis (1959–1960), this introduction provides an overview of theories and terms in surveillance studies, and develops the book’s main concepts: racializing surveillance and dark sousveillance. Dark sousveillance is a reading praxis and method of examining the racial logics of surveillance by questioning how certain surveillance technologies installed during slavery to track blackness as property anticipate surveillance practices of the contemporary moment. An overview of the book’s chapters is also included in this introduction.
Bibliography
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Carleton, Sir Guy, 1st Baron Dorchester. Papers, 1783. UK National Archives PRO 30/55.
Description of a Slave Ship. Printed by James Phillips, George Yard, Lombard Street, 1789. Object ID: 2026563. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Treaty of Paris, 1783. International Treaties and Related Records, 1778–1974. General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11, National Archives, Washington, DC.