Seeing the Biblical World of Sodom-Mamre Through Surveillance

What is it about?

If there were CCTV surveillance footage from the Sodom-Mamre narrative in the Book of Genesis, would this help us to understand what is going on? Or does the desire to see and be seen lead to continual cognitive dissonance and narcissism? The Sodom narrative can be interpreted as a story of surveillance. Characters observe each other in a veillant field and act based on their desire for omnividence: the power to see all. The divine character in Genesis desires to observe human life, and the human characters reflect this desire, with bureaucratic decisions based on surveillance, countersurveillance and sousveillance. Lot's wife “Ado” stands in the gap between wanting to see and understand, and the limitations of seeing all. In the end, the longing to see and know leads to violence through the cognitive dissonance and narcissism. This essay references surveillance studies, critical biblical scholarship, Lacanian psychoanalytic and related philosophical traditions concerning desire, particularly the desire of the eyes, the gaze, linked with ancient and modern surveillance practices.

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Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Surveillance is a perennial phenomena which is studied to understand the methods and motivations authorities use to observe their own populations, using different technologies for visual surveying and data collection. Although surveillance has been a political mechanism for millenia, the world is moving to higher levels of sophistication of this two-way social contract, the 'end of privacy' and social consequences of monitoring. As a link to the ancient world of Genesis editors and readers, contemporary readers can use surveillance to understand obedience, belonging, covenantal inclusion or exclusion and violence in the biblical text.

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